I made chocolate whoopie pies with vodka caramel cream cheese filling (tinted green) for a co-worker’s going away celebration in March around St. Patricks Day. The cookies in a bag are from my boyfriend’s mom and are molasses spice cookies (I think the recipe is on the side of the Grandma’s Molasses jar). She also made the delicious chocolate cake in the bottom left. My boyfriend and I made the oatmeal raisin cookies in the bottom right (recipe from the Quaker Oat’s container).

For a work potluck, I made a simple blueberry and quince tart by layering blueberries and poached quinces on top of a pie crust and topping it with a simple crumble. Some parts of the quince were a bit tough since I didn’t remove the parts near the seed pods all the way, but it was a great way to use up fading fruit!

Around Christmas last year I made gingerbread houses with my family and spent two days during December making homemade truffles (Oreo, Fleur de Sel, and Hibiscus Tea) and peppermint bark for family, friends, and co-workers with my bestie Stephanie. We packaged them up with twine, artist tape, and stickers for the season. If I get around to it, I’ll post our truffle adventures, including a truffle class and recipes.  I also made gingerbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and milk chocolate espresso cookies since exchanging cookies during the winter is a family tradition.

At a local chocolate shop, my mom picked up these Star Wars chocolate molds. My dad loves Star Wars so I made him some chocolate pops. Some of them have malt powder or pop rocks in them to give them texture.

These are also creations for work potlucks. In the top left corner is a red velvet cupcake with cream de cacao caramel cream cheese frosting and red and white decoration. Next to that are cinnamon rolls with strawberry/peach preserves, almonds/walnuts, white chocolate chips, raisins and a candied ginger cream cheese glaze.  The bottom row are pictures of s’more cupcakes with marshmallow fluff topping, hershey chocolate, and a teddy graham. I didn’t have a kitchen hand torch, so I popped these under the oven broiler. They turned from “not-charred-enough” to “burnt!” very quickly. Oh well, I’m the type of person that always lights my marshmallows on fire anyways.

Like I said, my dad loves Star Wars, especially Yoda. For Father’s Day this year I made Star Wars sugar cookies using the cookie molds sold at Williams-Sonoma. Of course my cookies don’t look as good as the display ones, but it took a ridiculous amount of time to decorate and bake them! I was quite proud of myself when I viewed the final product.

In the winter I fell in love with ratatouille and made an adaptation of the original recipe by opting to use Rasika Goan Curry instead of tomato paste/sauce. As I predicted, it was delicious. I had cooked the curry with shrimp in it for dinner the night before and used the left over sauce as the base so I wouldn’t waste the expensive sauce.

A yummy drink enjoyed on New Year’s eve (Chairman’s Rum & Domaine de Canton, if I remember correctly), spiced with a chunk of crystallized ginger.

I also participated in an iced tea competition at Zen Tara Tea. We were given 2 oz of tea and could add whatever we wanted to to make our iced tea concoction. I brewed hibiscus tea and crystallized ginger together (left) and was an honorable mention. Stephanie had something crazy with almond milk and ice cream (and cookies) and got second place! I love visiting this small tea shop and trying new teas or getting new accessories. They have great educational tasting events too.

I’ve made these mini pumpkin whoopie pies with candied ginger and cream cheese filling several times and they’re always a hit. It’s best to make them with a partner because the assembly gets a bit time-intensive. The right-side is home-made rice pudding with slivered almonds, a treat my mom used to make us when we were growing up.

I went to stand in line with Stephanie for Harry Potter 7, part 1 (you realize how old these pictures are now), so made a bento we could dig into while we waited. There are glazed carrots, ratatouille, curried butternut squash soup, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. To the left are tortellini with butternut squash soup as the sauce. The rest are Thanksgiving leftovers (turkey fried rice mixed with curried butternut squash soup) and a cocopop with shaved manchego, chile, and prosciutto on top.

I recently picked up a spice blend from the Spice & Tea Exhange  and used it to create backwoods hickory rubbed potatoes and chicken. The other photos are delicious homemade sai min and roast pork soup that I had while eating at my parents’ house. I don’t remember eating this good when I lived there!

This past October I made “Happy Birthday” linzer cookies for my dad since he’s been requesting them ever since Christmas 2009! I think they turned out pretty awesome after I used my alphabet cutters from Japan to cut-out a special message for him in each cookie. I also made linzer cookies for Christmas 2010, though they didn’t turn out as well.

Another of my dad’s favorite things to eat are macaroons. These are ridiculously easy to make and reminded me of the days back when I worked at Godiva and would dip these every morning. They’re crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside — just the right amount of sweetness!

Last but not least, here are some awesome pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting that my boyfriend’s mom made. We have a running joke with this pink container that it’s never sent back empty, always returned with delicious treats inside!

This is a big chunk of what I’ve been making in the past months, but I have some special posts coming up, including totoro cookies, blueberry coffee cake, carrot cake cupcakes, and peach cobbler bars, peach jam, and peach cinnamon rolls.

Have you ever seen the movie Ratatouille? It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, and holds a special place in my heart. My boyfriend and I were able to snag special screening passes for this movie before it was officially released and right before I started studying abroad in Japan. The movie was great and I saw a lot of cute advertisements for Ratatouille (or Remy’s Yummy Resto as it’s called) when I was there.

Ratatouille Train Station Advertisement in Japan, 2007

After Smitten Kitchen’s Ratatouille popped up in my RSS feed, I knew I had to have some.

I’ve had jarred ratatouille from Trader Joe’s before and it was good, but this was so much better. It came together very quickly (thank you mandoline!) and used all local ingredients. I misread the recipe and didn’t pack the slices as close as I should have, so I made another mini pan of ratatouille. Instead of thyme, I used some local basil and topped the ratatouille with some bovre cheese. I also used tomato paste mixed with some leftover pasta sauce for the red sauce on the bottom. This was alright as a meal, but would have been much better served as a side or atop some pasta (or couscous like SK did).

Since this recipe yields so much, I was able to pack three lunches with it! You know it’s got to be good if my boyfriend asked for it to be boxed up. The round blue box was mine and the pink box went to a vegetarian coworker.

July’s Washoku Warriors challenge was to make one of two dishes: Hiyashi Chuka (Chilled Chinese Noodle Salad) or Somen (Thin Noodles on Ice). I chose to make the hiyashi chuka because it was very flexible and came together in just a few minutes.

The recipe had two different dressing recipes and I chose the one that required no prep time and had the least amount of ingredients. I added a little more sugar and a little less sesame oil for personal preference. Next time, I would add a splash of plum vinegar or citrus juice to brighten the dressing a tad. The original garnishes called for were red pickled ginger, tomato, cucumber, shitake mushrooms, egg, ham, and sesame seeds.

I wanted to keep with the color scheme, so replaced the tomato with red pepper and switched out sesame seeds with flax seeds and some black sesame seeds. I omitted the ‘shrooms since I don’t care for them, and replaced the red pickled ginger (beni shoga) with regular pickled ginger. I also don’t care for cucumbers so next time I’ll replace it with zucchini. I don’t really like sesame oil, so I was very worried about adding it into the dressing. In the end, I was surprised that the smell of sesame was so strong, but the taste was just right!

This dish came together so quickly, yet was satisfying and light–there will definitely be a “next time” for this.

Noodles with Clear Dressing & Garnishes

• chilled, hydrated noodles (dried ramen) according to package directions
• 1/3 cup rice vinegar
• 1 heaping tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• scant 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• thinly sliced garnishes

Combine sugar and vinegar in a saucepan over low heat until dissolved. Remove pan from heat and stir in soy sauce and oil. Place in fridge to cool. Garnish noodles with toppings, drizzle dressing over. Toss to combine and enjoy!

One note on the name, as it is misleading. Originally I thought that “noodle salad” meant salad greens with a few noodles mixed in. This is a salad in the sense that it has toppings and a dressing that are then tossed together in the “style” of a salad.

Also, this blue container is actually my lunch for tomorrow! I picked up these nesting containers at Borders and this is the first journey it will make to my office. This is a great dish for bento because it’s meant to be eaten cold–straight from the fridge.

April’s Washoku Warriors challenge was Spring. We were given the option of making kajiki maguro no yuuan yaki (梶木鮪の幽庵焼き), spinach steeped in broth — hourensou no ohitashi (菠薐草のお浸し), and/or temple style chowder — unpen-jiru (雲辺汁). I wanted to try the soup, but decided on the easier fish and spinach combination.

There was an interesting story in the book about the fish — the chef chooses the different chinese characters to display on the menu, reflecting his interpretation of the dish. I chose to display the characters that are used in the wikipedia entry for this dish, but there are two other popular uses.

The fish was surprisingly very tasty, and very easy to cook. I was a little wary of this recipe since I don’t like tougher white fish like swordfish and mahi mahi (which I substituted for the swordfish in this recipe because it was less expensive). The quick marinade and high-heat cooking method made the flesh tender and it flaked apart like the fish my dad made when we were growing up. There is also very healthy because I used less than a teaspoon of oil to sear the fish in.

I really wish we had yuzu around where I live, but alas, we don’t. I also didn’t have grapefruit juice to mix with lime and lemon to mimic the flavor of yuzu, but this dish was fine with just lemon and lime. The flavors were simple and bright, but next time I’ll double the citrus amount or cut the soy sauce in half. The end result’s shoyu flavor was a bit too strong for my taste.

The fish was served with ohitashi, rice, and roasted asparagus.

The ohitashi was the least successful part of this dish–probably due to the shortcuts I took in the marinade. I didn’t have soy sauce concentrate on hand for the ohitashi, but wanted to make this dish very quickly so I estimated the ratio of salt to sugar and added some water and instant dashi granules. The result was a little too ocean-y and far too salty. I used the leftover glaze and zest from the fish and mixed it in with the spinach and it became more palatable. Unfortunately, I don’t think the ohitashi is for me, but it may just be my dislike for leafy greens. The bright green color after blanching was very attractive though.

One great positive about this meal is that I was able to make a bento out of the leftovers!

April 21st – Yuuan yaki swordfish; roasted asparagus; spinach ohitashi; kumquats; rice.
Pictured on a Wall-E notebook!

Bento Concept has started another world tour!
Stop #1 is the Central African Republic. Next stop is Russia (3/29), followed by Greece (4/26).

I had never really heard anything about the Central African Republic before this challenge. I did a lot of research and learned about the various types of cuisines, crops, and animals that they have. A lot of the types of food were either time consuming or contained ingredients hard to find or out of season here. I made some shrimp with peanuts, rice, an elephant out of rice mixed with ground sesame seeds, roasted sweet potatoes, and some egg. The green dividers are carrot leaves (thus making it my submission for hapabento’s b.o.m.b. challenge). The top tier is rice with various colors of egg sheet on it to represent the flag of the Central African Republic.

This is also a brand new bento box and hat pick that I got from Just Bento’s Menu for Hope raffle package. Thanks so much Maki for picking up bento goodies for me in Japan!

Jan 14th – Rice; Vegetables and Pork stir-fried from New Years; cabbage tsukemono; kohaku namasu

Jan 20th – Another leftovers bento. Milk tea pocky; vegetable/pork stir-fry; kohaku namasu; cabbage tsukemono; roll and leftover lobster macaroni and cheese from Jackson’s Mighty Fine Lucky Lounge. The mac and cheese went mostly uneaten.

Jan 27th – I had class after work this day, so I packed my food in a cupcake box that had come with a purchase earlier in the week. ham, spinach and cheese sandwich; gingerbread truffle; fruit salad; baked chips. This was too much food since half of the sandwich, the truffle, and the fruit salad went uneaten.

Jan 28th – kohaku namasu; homemade applesauce; milk chocolate truffle; rice with sesame seeds; lop cheung cooked in ginger-chile sauce.

Jan 29th – Rice; spinach; grilled tofu; homemade applesauce; harry and david soft caramel; thai chicken dumpling; lettuce; random “Asian chicken”. A lot of this food was from the Whole Foods prepared food bar, which I have now concluded that I do not like. The caramel was delicious!

Feb 2nd – I had a meeting off-site this day, so I wanted something that was small and I wouldn’t have to carry around all day after lunch. sandwich on challah bread; strawberries and pineapple; homemade applesauce; salt and vinegar chips. This was a lot of food, so the chips were eaten later as a snack. The pink snack box is really an onigiri container!

Feb 3rd – Another challah sandwich; pineapple slices; red velvet cupcake from the bakery in my building.

Feb 4th – Milk tea pocky, coconut cupcake; dark chocolate truffle; tamagoyaki; rice with black sesame seeds; lop cheung; pineapple chunks; homemeade apple sauce. This was so much food! I ate the sausage, two out of three of the tamagoyaki and most of the rice. Nothing else!

Bento Concept &  KaraChiwie have finished this world tour, but another one will start soon.
January’s stop was Morocco and February’s is France.

Besides the movie Ratatouille, France brings to mind desserts and picnics. For this bento I made a sort of Cordon Bleu-style chicken and packed it in a sandwich box. The inside of the chicken is filled with a little mustard, ham and provolone cheese. The bottom part is filled with chocolates I received from my sister for an early Valentine’s day present, a slice of a homemade roll cake I made (more on that later), two Nilla wafers, and the last of the pickled vegetables from New Years. This was too much food and sadly, I didn’t have enough room for all the chocolates.

I have bento from between last month’s world stop and this month’s, but I haven’t had time to post them! As it is, I’m always late for the Tour du Monde!

Bento Concept &  KaraChiwie are still traveling around the world with bento.
December was Brazil and January is Morocco. When thinking about Morocco, the first things I think about are preserved lemons, mounds of spices, and tagine. While many of spices are sold in stores around me, and some gourmet shops even sell tagines, I chose to make couscous, the main grain of Morocco. The couscous is lemon and spinach, with some lemon slices on top. Chicken is the most common protein in Morocco, but I chose to pair it with some leftover fish I had. To emulate the tagine’s traditional triangle shape, I split the couscous into triangles. One is the couscous and the other triangle is tomato rice.

Join next month for France (Feb 1)!

Jan 7th – My dad got me a Wall-E bento for Christmas/New Years from Japan!! This was my first time using it.
Pocky; pickled cabbage; stuffing; vegetables; rice (all leftovers from our New Years dinner)

Jan 8th – More New Years food! This salad was part of the Washoku Warriors New Years Challenge.
Spicy Duck; kohaku namasu; rice; milk chocolate yoku moku cookie.