It's been so long since I last posted a bento lunch, but things have just been CRAZY at work lately. ::sigh:: I need a vacation. A long, long vacation far away from anyone under the age of 18. LOL

To begin my crawl back to bento-ing, I decided to start with one of my simplier boxes which comes complete with separated compartments that make packing banchan a snap. Here we have a nice little lunch of barley/rice, steamed broccoli with oyster sauce, soy braised brisket and quail eggs, Korean rolled omlette, and homemade quick kimchee. For dessert, apple slices dipped in lemonade; you can just see a peek of the container at the corner of this pic.

Well, it's been forever and five days since I last posted, but so much has happened in the past couple of months. I've moved about two hours north to a small mid-Georgia town where I am now teaching 10th grade. I finally moved out of my mom's house, for which she was NOT happy. Fellow Asian children...I think you can empathize with me on this one. Having my own place and my own kitchen does have its advantages though. I've been able to experiment a bit with my recipes and have found some really fantastic new Korean food sites as well. My favorite so far is Maangchi's Cooking Show. It's a fairly new webpage that features tutorial videos on several Korean recipes. I love the step-by-step instructions and have already made two successful dinners using her recipes for Korean BBQ and beanpaste stew. And after some trepidation, I've even attempted the Kimchee recipe she has posted. It turned out pretty good, but only time will tell if it's truly fridge worthy kimchee. It's always the fermentation process that has eluded me in the past. Here's a pic of the finished product.


And here's a pic of my poor kitchen after all of today's work. Which, let me clarify, involved making kimchee, stirfrying pork w/bitter melon, Korean spicy eggplant saute, and Chinese broccoli w/oyster sauce. Why so much food you ask? Because I absolutely hate cooking during the week. Whenever I come home, the last thing I want to do is stand on my feet chopping and stirring.

Haven't posted in a while. On spring break right now so I'm posting a lunch from the first of April. Without a job to go to, I eat most of my meals from a regular plate these days. Full image:


On the menu today: somen noodles tossed with sesame oil and topped with julienned cucumbers and a torn up egg fishie.


Toppings and dessert: kimchee with a vinegar hot bean past, white, asian sweet potatoes, and a Lindt petite dessert. I believe this one is lemon tart.

Ahhh...Atlanta. Hopefully it's where I will be living (or at least close-by) after I go job hunting this summer. While I was there picking up my mother's dog, I decided to go to the Farmer's Market and get some shopping done. I loaded up on some Pocky sticks, marshmallow flan, Ramune, and all sorts of little kimchees. Today's bento was super easy as I just loaded up the rice and filled the side containers with seasoned seaweed, anchovies, and stirfried peppers. Yum. Add a melon Ramune (which my students LOVED watching me open) and a multi-fruit Pocky stick and you have a meal fit for royalty. Of course, there are some things I just can't bring to school...the spicy chicken feet stirfry I had for dinner tonight, for example. But for the most part, everyone is polite and curious. Coming from a small Southern town, I am about as exotic as some of these kids will ever see. Which is soooo sad.