Emptying the refrigerator (and some rambling)

It's been a long time! O_O

I haven't posted much lately because our freezer looks like the north pole and for that I've been using up stuff to be able to clean it. Not much shopping and not pretty pictures of what we eat, just plain boring but tasty meals. Its a shame you can't photograph tastyness!

Also, major house cleaning project has been initiated so if I didn't have anything interesting to show in the beggining, I don't feel like cooking until everything is clean. It's the longest setback I have had since I started blogging but it will probably be worth it.

On my next To-do-foods I want to try some inarizushi and the tamagoyaki again with or without square pan. I did find a way to maybe get the pan: one of my classmates lives in that town and she does over there for the weekend. It's a shame I can't go see it with my own eyes but just the trip would be more than I can afford right now (around 45€ which could be spent getting uhm, bento gear! or anything else at all)

School isn't going all that great either... I am running out of options to make a good exam at the end of the year simply because I'm tired of begging people to play with me... I want to get at least a decent mark which for me is quite high and I'm stressing because we're 3 months from the exam and I still haven't done half of what I need and the worse part: It doesn't depend on me...

Enough rambling about bad things!

I have plans for when the freezer is clean and all set, and I'll have plenty to blog about at that time. Until then please bear with the lack of posts, they will come sometime later.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you're looking for bento giveaways check Adventures in Bento making and Bento zen !

My bento boxes are here!

I was so happy to receive this! :D This is a first view of my box:

It's a 2 layered bento box with the capacity of 610 ml (top tier 380, bottom tier230) microwaveable and adorable to my eyes. I couldn't have been happier with it. Here's a better image of the tiers:

I didn't just get one for me tho. Here's the one for my bf:

It doesn't have bunnies but it comes with a casing with a pair of chopsticks inside. Also microwaveable and with 2 tiers, it's a bit bigger than mine of course, total value being 830ml ( top tier 390ml, bottom tier 440ml). He liked it a lot, now I just have to put them to use!

* on a sidenote I was happy to be able to read and identify from the boxes the "top" and "bottom"so I could specify the capacity of each one, I know it's just 2 kanji, but it still made me happy.

One downside of this was, I realized how much I need a tamagoyaki frying pan and I'm still not sure where to get it, so I don't think I'll be using the bento boxes much for now. I know I could put other things in there, but I'd like to try the more traditional ones and then, drift to my own imagination. Expect to see the old tupperwares sometimes when there's food that can stain the bento boxes or food that is a mix of one thing like the stir-fry I made yesterday.

*goes off to her new adventure in search for the tamagoyaki frying pan*

Stir-fried noodles

I was hoping to post something on the weekend but house cleaning took over and I have been desperately waiting for my bento boxes:

Emptying the refrigerator/freezer for a clean up has started! I try to use all that's in there or at least 80% of it. For this I used the rest of frozen veggie mix, fake crabmeat, noodles, carrot, tomato an the last slices of chorizo.

I didn't expect it would make that much but I was sure he wouldn't feel hungry after this. Unfortunately he hasn't been too well with his stomach so he couldn't eat it :(

I don't really have much to say, except "I want my bento boxes!!"

Until then! :)

Meatballs & mashed potatoes

One of my experiments that went great!

I always do meatballs with tomato sauce but I wasn't much into tomato sauce today. We've eaten Ikea's meatballs with mashed potatoes and they're tasty and no tomato sauce, that's where I got the inspiration for this try out.

You can't see from the picture because of the sauce but I made a little "fence" for the meatballs putting them in the center with mashed potatoes around it and sauce on top. on the left there's oven baked sweet potato, carrots and broccoli. Mine had spinach purée instead of the carrot.

The taste turned out great, tho next time I'm going to stir-fry the meatballs alone first so they get a little golden brownish colour.

We dined out today so I don't know if I'll make something for tomorrow. *craves for her japan stuff*

Salmon Teriyaki #2

I just finished the big stock of teriyaki sauce I had in the fridge:

We bought a more expensive salmon and I was worried it might be just that, but it was of great quality and tasted wonderfully. I had to bathe my cat so I didn't do anything fancy but the salmon teriyaki was simply delicious!

Not being able to heat my food is a bit of an issue to me, specially with fish because I hate cold fish. Even so, I took lunch for me too and by the 3rd bite I got used to the room temperature fish.

After I took the picture, I put some teriyaki sauce over the rice, the bf loves and I don't argue with that.

Lately we have been playing an MMORPG which makes us sit at the computer until bedtime :D

On another issue, I am almost positive I'm cursed (or doomed)! The friend who brought me stuff from Japan met with me on Monday, but  things were still packed so, he said he'd go home and be back later with them. By then I couldn't care less what he gives me; been waiting on this for 2 years now and seems I did not get any luck. I ended up not meeting him thus not getting my stuff and not being able to take pictures and blog about them. I will do it when they're in my hands!

Two meals

It's been a long week and too many things to do/places to go. I did some cooking but nothing too complicated:

Thursday's lunch

I had to use up the eggplants on my fridge but I didn't expect to suddenly have my bf say he wanted the ones I made for myself.  I added the furikake because it had no colour but still... It has been awfully cold here (for me of course, it's about 2ºC and I think I'm going to die already) and the problem of having a big kitchen is the cold. No matter what I put there, it'll get me freezing and running back to the very warm bedroom. So I avoid cooking too much at this time.

The lunch consists on eggplant with turkey sauté'd, plain rice topped with furikake and the eggplant I showed the recipe on a previous post. This time I put the chili peppers and it was wonderful. I never liked eggplant because my mum didn't know that the sour flavour could be removed and it was always so yucky... Now I love it and I can cook with it with pleasure.

Friday's lunch

Friday was also a rush thing... I only remembered to make next day's lunch at midnight and by then I was in bed, ready to sleep. This was one of the few I made in the morning; I find it too hard for me to wake up and start going at it in the kitchen. Took me around 5 to 7 minutes to scramble the eggs, warm up the rice, slice the tomato and fry the korokke. After cooling/packing, I went right back to bed with my cats.

This week I didn't put much veggies because the supermarket's veggies were in very bad shape. It annoys me a lot to have to go through 30 zucchini to find that 29 are rotten or almost there and 1 is old but still not rotting. I have tried finding other places to get my veggies but they don't really change much. It depends on the week I guess.

If I'm lucky, I'll get a few things from Japan on Monday so I'll save the rest for when I can talk about those ^^

Have a wonderful weekend!

Yakitori

First skewered try:

I really like the blue tupperware but I'm not sure why.

It was a shame I didn't have fresh leek to add here. Even being breast chicken meat, it didn't get dry or chewy because I cooked them very slowly. This is a great thing for parties because it looks and tastes good and it's easy to grab. The rest was just some quick assembling and it's done! There's couscous, carrot, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and cucumber. It had to be fast and simple because I've been avoiding the kitchen a bit: I have washed the dishes for 3 weeks straight now *cries* and I really hate it. Hopefully I won't have to wash them today (since I begged my bf to wash them for me)

I've been wanting spring to come for a while now, I miss the colorful fruits and bigger variety of vegetables. I'll be taking a trip on the weekend and borrowing the car again! (no more 2km of walking with shopping bags YAY!) Hopefully I'll be able to take some "springy" photos of the scenery and maybe some typical food.