Leaning Vegetarian

Posts Tagged ‘miso’

Ever since I saw the Breakfast Club I’ve wanted a Bento box like the one Molly Ringwald had. More often than not I’ve had the ANSI-standard brown bag, give or take a half-dozen fractured thermoses (thermi?) from grade school. Or just the OMG-I’ve-overslept three-can-grab: can of tuna, can of fruit, can of pop. If I was particularly together in my mad dash out the door, I’d remember the can opener and possibly even the fork that I’d need to actually eat said lunch.

I move pretty slowly in the morning, so if lunch requires lots of thought or extensive preparation, well, not gonna happen, so my lunch will have to be something that I can assemble the night before.

I love some of the ideas over at Just Bento – Kaela is fond of onigiri and it’s not complex to make. Cook rice (sticky if you have it, otherwise stir regular rice to make it a bit stickier) and cool it enough to handle. If you’ve got some biscuit cutters or other open-topped cookie cutter molds you can use those as a rice mold; we take a plastic sandwich bag and press rice into the corner, tucking a bit of plum sauce or pickled ginger or sesame seeds with finely chopped nori inside. Turn it out of the bag and wrap a strip of nori around one side.

I love soups too, and I’m lucky enough to have a fridge and a microwave in my office.  The miso soup at the top of this page is just a tablespoon of brown miso, a chopped green onion, and hot water. Normally I’d add some small cubes of tofu, too. The components fit nicely in a plastic bag, and then I can add them to my mug of hot water at work.

So far this week’s selections also include a dollop of the quinoa and chickpea pilaf from last week’s leftovers, plus some of the southern peaches that are out now.

This week I’ve checked Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian out of the library and I’m going to be bringing some of the basic lentil dishes for lunch this week. Check back in in a couple of days and we’ll have our attempts written up.