Bentos #62, #63, and #64...

Our little group from the Covey Center drove up to Logan the other day to see a show. We decided to stop for dinner at maddox's. When you pull into their parking lot, there is a barn in the back. That's where tomorrow's steaks are coming from.

I ordered a ground bison steak. It was pretty good. Except that by the time the steak came out I was already full from the soup and rolls. So here it is. Bison, sauteed mushrooms and such, with potatoes. Also tomatoes, radish, and celery with hummus, strawberries, orange slices, and a chunk of sharp cheddar with the maddox symbol on it.

That's leftover Coconut Chicken Curry. ...I love that I can cook. It's paired with fresh broccoli, celery, cheese, hummus, strawberries, blueberries, and mango.

This is more Coconut Curry Chicken. It's with celery, mango, orange, strawberries, blueberries, and a hunk of cheddar.

Bentos #59, #60, #61... Did you miss me?

I think spring is finally here! I'm SO happy! This means I need to get my motorcycle running, and lots of dirt for my container garden. This means I won't freeze half to death while geocaching in the middle of the night! ... It's the little things.

It's been so nice the past few days that I've been eating lunch in the back of my truck. Odd? Yes. Except that I have a bed extender, and when it's folded back into the truck it makes the perfect backrest. A friend and I have decided that one day we'll have to get my projector, set it on top of my truck and back up to a random white building to watch a movie. Just because we can.

I had a really busy work week, which is why you haven't seen me much. We had a live audio class from the local college come in do concerts as their final project. It's always fun... and interesting to see if any of them learned anything. The second group was almost a disaster...

The thing that I like is that when they come in, I get to do whatever I want to with the lighting. Last year I found some light panels and lit up the bottom of the drum riser. Pretty cool. This year they brought in a hard rock band. Hard rock is not really my thing. But. I had this brilliant idea. At least I thought so...

We pulled out all the drape so you could see the electrics and the trees and the vents and... pretty much everything. And then we hung up all the random pipe we had lying around the theatre and lit it. The effect was like... we had hung colored fluorescent bulbs. Or light sabers.

I was pretty proud of the effect...

*****

Have you seen those Philadelphia Cooking Cremes? I bought a couple of different flavors to try out. And wow. They are sooo good. And easy to use! I sauteed chicken with squash until the chicken was done, tossed in tomatoes and the creme, let it go for a couple more minutes, and ta da! Dinner! I served it over orzo pasta. It was heavenly. And I had leftovers.

Said leftovers went into the top layer of this box. I arranged some oven roasted chayote squash over the top. Chayote is kind of like zucchini, but sweeter I think. Also. When you roast it, the skin gets really tough and you can't eat it. Fair warning. I just picked up the slices and ate it like funny looking watermelon.

The other layer has sliced green peppers, a cherry tomato, sharp cheddar (upon which I drew a strawberry), mango, strawberries, blueberries, and a couple of slices of orange.

Vegetarian bento? Not likely. I had leftover chicken and sauteed onions and mushrooms from Applebee's at work. This was all to go with it.

Brown rice, green pepper strips, celery, cherry tomato, sharp cheddar, with orange slices, blueberries, and strawberries.

My cold layer is looking about the same every day. I guess it gets boring visually. So I've tried adding picks to liven it up. I recently bought a box to sort my picks into, so they'll be easier to find in the mornings when I'm in a rush...

The top layer has brown rice, asparagus, and freezer stash meatballs.

Bentos #57 and #58... When I can't sleep

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I occasionally have these bouts of insomnia that last me a month or so. And I'm 2 weeks in. I'll go to bed and stare at the ceiling for an hour or more before finally falling asleep. And then. Without fail. I'll wake up around 5:30. Or earlier. I'll toss and turn before hopefully falling asleep again an hour later. This gets old.

Yesterday morning I wasn't falling asleep again. So. I rolled out of bed. I did some dishes. I ate a real breakfast. Took a shower twice as long as I usually do... I still had more than an hour to dink around after all of that. So I decided to make something awesome for my lunch.

I made pizza using naan bread for the crust. I made the sauce with a few tomatoes I had in the fridge and topped it with another tomato, mozzarella, Parmesan, bacon, and ham. So good! I may have eaten some right then, just to make sure it was worthy of becoming a bento.

By this time I was running late. So.

I love this strawberry box. I feel like it's huge. And perfect for bulky things. Like pizza. The bottom has pineapple, strawberries, mango, green pepper strips, and a grape.

This looks oddly like yesterday's snack... hmmm. Yeah. We only ended up eating about half of it. So I topped it off this morning. Pineapple, mango, strawberries, grapes, and a cutie orange. Hummus in the sidecar for the Club crackers. And a string cheese. Because I love string cheese.

Bentos #55 and #56...

No real news for you, except my spare time is now taken up by an online experiment. Involving referrals and internet marketing and crap like that. It's not really fun. But I'm committed to giving it six months of actual effort. Just to see if anything will come of it. I think the most fun part about it is the blog I started to chronicle the effort. Maybe in six months I'll be rich. Or be able to afford to take a small vacation. Or just fed up with the whole thing and glad it's over...

*****

Dinner bento:

I packed this sucker a couple of days ago, but only got around to eating it today. I also didn't get a picture of it before I lidded it up, but considering the brownish goulash thing, I don't think it would have made much of a difference.

So. There's a rice dish made with black and brown rice, apples, onion, veggies, turkey sausage and cinnamon. I love it. It tastes like a bowl full of fall. Which is even good in the spring. Next to it I've got green beans. They were frozen. Ew. The other bit has hummus and carrots, grapes and pineapple.

This was a rather large snack bento I brought to share. A whole sliced green pepper, strawberries, grapes and pineapple. There's a sidecar full of hummus and I brought a package of Club crackers to eat it with.

Bento #54... Shooting and Gardening

I have six brothers. It would figure that at least one of them would have an interest in all things that shoot bullets. As it is... five of them do. And the last one has a good tolerance for them. I, however, have never had a huge interest. I've always seen guns as potentially useful, but not enough for me to care. They asked me to go shooting on Saturday...

They've actually asked me a few times, but I usually have to work. I actually had Saturday off. So I met up with Joe about 8:30 in the morning. We met up with Mike, James, Jeffery, my dad, and a couple of Mike's kids about 9:00 to waste some bullets. They brought the full arsenal. A couple of .22 rifles, two 12-gauge shotguns, two AK-47s, a .45 colt rifle, and about seven different handguns. These people are crazy. And I'm related to them.

Up until this point I had never shot a gun before. Joe started me off with a .22 pistol and then moved up to a .45. I think. I didn't really like any of the handguns, and I think I shot each one of them at least once. They had a kick that I felt like I couldn't control. And that feeling worries me when I'm holding something that could kill another person. Joe said he'd find one for me that didn't kick as much. We'll see.

I went through each of the long guns... The shotguns had a wicked kick, but were really fun to shoot. The .22 rifles were the easiest and most gentle of the lot. The AK-47 was probably the most fun for me. A bit of a kick with a lot of power. It actually knocked me on my butt once. I blame that on the way I was kneeling though. And for the record, that shot hit its mark. I really enjoyed the feel of the .45 colt though. It just felt right.

I don't think shooting will become any huge pastime for me. For one thing, we probably waded our way through $200 worth of ammo that morning. That's a really expensive hobby to have. Granted, I could spend my way through $200 worth of bento supplies without even trying. But I can use those again and again. Once a bullet is spent, its gone. For another thing, I don't find shooting that exciting. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to have a .22 rifle around my place just in case. My neighborhood isn't the best. But I wouldn't feel the need to go out and practice with it every single weekend.

*****

I've decided to start a container garden on my front walk. I think the garden is the thing I miss most about living at home. When I was a kid we'd take the salt shaker outside and eat tomatoes and cucumbers right off the vines. Store-bought tomatoes just aren't that tasty. Even the ones I get through Bountiful Baskets.

I don't remember exactly when I decided to do it. Probably I saw a stack of 5 gallon buckets sitting by the back door at work. I had some discussion with my dad about how well they would work as planters and got some tips from him. And I was sold. I picked up one of those little Jiffy greenhouse starters with the little peat pellets and a few different kinds of seeds. Of course, I had an eye on produce that would work well in my lunches. Most things I picked because of the color... heirloom tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, and carnival peppers. I'm hoping I get lucky with the carnival peppers and end up with the purple and white varieties. I also picked up some sugar snap peas.

I'm figuring on having two big totes for the heirlooms and peppers, and four 5 gallon buckets for the cukes, pear tomatoes, and a couple for the peas. Unless I can find two more totes. I would prefer the look of the bigger containers.

*****

This was a lunch for Thursday...

Salmon, yellow potatoes, and as much broccoli as I could squish in there... I overestimated the size of the box and ended up forcing it all in because I didn't have time to find containers to put the little bit of leftovers in. I don't know how I overestimated. It's not like I've never used this box before...

I had carrots and hummus in the the other layer, along with grapes, pineapple, and a cutie orange.

*****

Also. The BEST basket yet on Saturday morning.

Watermelon, strawberries, mangoes, apples, oranges, bananas, two bunches of asparagus, romaine lettuce, zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, and green peppers.