After a lot of thinking and hard decision making, I need to start a new blog. If you head over there, you’ll understand. You can find the bento love continuing on at: http://gfreebentolove.wordpress.com/
Don’t worry, Cupcake Friday! will live on in its new home 🙂
GF vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean icing. These cupcakes were for my best friend and cupcake cult founder’s housewarming, so what else would I possibly even think about bringing?
You know you’ve nailed gf baking when a cuppie appreciator didn’t know they’re gf and says it’s one of the best cupcakes she’s ever had. Then I revealed the deep dark secret, and she was very surprised.
Cupcake on!
I haven’t posted this week since the lentil soup bento, because I took that to work with me each day until today. I was getting a bit bored with it, so I made a Havarti, tomato, mustard, and sprout sandwich on gf millet chia bread, some carrot and celery crudités, and an orange. The only problem was that there was so much food I had a hard time finishing it on my lunch break.
Sneaky awesome thing about being gf: the bread is generally so tiny it fits really well in bento boxes! I left the top off the sandwich for the photo before popping it on the sandwich, but didn’t need to play lunchbox tetris, as it’s the perfect size.
My morning snack was a berry and kale smoothie, and my afternoon snack was an apple. Deelish!
There are some things that are great about the weather getting cooler… you get to make soup and want to reheat it for lunch. On the other hand, by the time you get around to making the soup and putting it in a bento it’s now dark and hard to get an appetizing photo of the food. If I got up in the morning to pack the bento, it wouldn’t make much of a difference, as I’m at the time of year where it’s dark when I leave the house, and getting dark when I start to come home (some days, depending on how much prep or paperwork I need to get done).
I have some lentil soup, greatly adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s Healthy Appetite cookbook, although you can go ahead and make the recipe as is and be quite happy with it. Hubs bought me a box of frozen spinach (I’d asked for fresh… lol?) a couple of weeks ago, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to use it up, so I threw that in the soup with a carrot and some celery, which aren’t in the original recipe. I have some goat feta cheese to add to the soup prior to eating tomorrow, and an egg and frozen berries for sides. They’re not my faves, but my son ate all the fruit when I was away this weekend and didn’t tell me we needed more!
I have raw pumpkin seeds and raw cashews for snacks. Deelish!
I’m taking this and 11 other cuppies just like it to share at a conference tomorrow. Nom! I have pumpkin cupcakes topped with salted caramel icing and more salted caramel drizzle. The recipe comes from: http://www.seebrookecook.com/2013/10/brown-butter-pumpkin-cupcakes-with.html and the only adaptation I made was to reduce the butter to 1/2 cup and to use a gf flour blend (but I’m not telling the cuppie-appreciating masses that they are gf – bad me!).
Cupcake on!
For a change, I actually have a Japanese-inspired bento. I was planning on making a tamagoyaki/rolled omelette, but found that I used the last of the eggs in cupcakes this week. It’s okay, because it’s good to focus on plant-based lunches, and I often have edamame in the freezer.
I have brown rice and broccoli left over from tonight’s dinner, and I prepared the carrot kinpira and steamed edamame for the bento. The carrot kinpira is pretty easy (adapted from the Just Bento cookbook in that I didn’t actually measure anything but I followed the ingredient list and procedure):
~heat oil over medium-high heat
~add very thinly sliced veggies, and sauté briefly
~add some veggie stock and a dash of soy sauce/tamari to cover the veggies
~simmer, uncovered, until the liquid has gone
~cool, and place into bento
Chickie holds a good pinch of Thai ginger lemongrass salt to sprinkle over the edamame just prior to eating.
I included all three bentos in this post, as it shows me making variations on a theme to adjust for everyone’s dietary/sensory preferences.
On the left is my lunch for tomorrow. I have brie and tomato on gf sprouted grain bread, and a green salad. The matchstick carrots came in a bag, and I’ll use them for a kinpira-style dish tomorrow, but for now putting them on salad does the trick.
The hubs has some sort of deli meat and tomato on a whole wheat bread my son won’t eat as it has some seeds in it and I’m trying to use up, and a green salad.
My son has pbj on sprouted grain bread, and he says he’ll do his best with the oat flakes on the crust (as long as I promised to buy non-seedy bread tomorrow on the way home), carrot matchsticks (although he asked for a whole carrot, so let’s see if they actually get eaten), and some apple quarters as he can’t eat salad. I put some semi-sweet chocolate chips in the cupcake cup for him.
And the winner of the most recent giveaway is:
Osomaddie! I’ve sent you an email 🙂 Congrats!
You know you make too many cupcakes when you forget to post about them for a couple of months. Our school colours are blue, black, and white. For the first day back to our school for teachers, I made three dozen vanilla cupcakes, topped them with blue icing, and some black and white sugar paper hearts (colour distorted due to late-night icing escapades and not getting a shot in natural light). They were enjoyed that day, but I forgot about posting pictures! Until now. Cupcake on, and for those of you who are also lucky enough to be able to call yourselves Canadian, Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m back in the classroom teaching Grade 9 English, in addition to case management and functional academics for students with special needs. As I distributed worksheets for students with examples to work on, I mentioned we’d have some grammar fun time to start the block. One of my students said, “Ms. M, you always try and make it sound more fun that it’s going to be. I never know if it is actually going to be fun or not”. Oops – they’re on to me!
So I’m tricking myself into using up leftovers and calling it fun time. We Canadians have Thanksgiving this weekend, and I’m hosting I-don’t-quite-know-how-many people for a foodfest (I think 10 total, not sure, could be up to 16?). Fridge space will be at a premium once I’ve done the grocery shop for it, so I’m trying to eat what we have, whether or not it’s calling my name.
I have a layer of brown rice and black beans, under roasted sweet potato fries that I diced, steamed cauliflower florets, and oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes. I have safflower oil and balsamic reduction in the container for dressing. I’ll likely toss everything together before pouring over the dressing, but I like seeing the different foods on top of the rice layer here.
Don’t forget to enter the giveaway! You know you want a chocolate snackbox – one commenter mentioned how she’d like to trick her hubs into eating carrot sticks in the chocolate box – genius!
It’s about time I did another giveaway to get someone else going with bento. I have a box, complete with a food cup inside, a silicon flower cup, and a snack box that looks like a chocolate bar. All the items are brand new, but the small box and cup aren’t wrapped because they came in multipacks of goodies.
To enter, tell me what you want to see more of on veggie bento love. Feedback is good 🙂 The giveaway is open worldwide as long as you have an address that Canada Post can deliver to! One entry per person. I’ll close the giveaway on Monday, October 14th at 1800 MST, and will choose one lucky peep at random (using gaming dice if the numbers work out, or random.org if I can’t make that happen).
veggie bento love 