Sushi Feast

Lunch today has been a veritable sushi feast, and very delicious! I'm spending the whole day cooking, making stews and the like that i can freeze for teatimes through the week. I've made picadillo, a south american beef stew, and i'm about to go and make a truly delicious pork and parsnip spicy stew this afternoon. I made a variety of sushi for our lunch- egg and crabstick nigiri, tuna mayo and spring onion maki, and lemon salmon, cucumber and egg maki. Because i don't have any dainty little sushi bowls we made do with these denby teacups, which were the perfect size for dipping into soy sauce and wasabi. 

I probably should get round to buying a proper sushi making kit but i find it really easy to make sushi anyway, without any specialist equipment.  

Sushi wants:

Cream tea cupcakes

There was an end of summer barbecue at a friend's house yesterday. We brought some delicious Syn free sausages (garlic and pepper), and i made a batch of these strawberry and cream cupcakes. They're like a cream tea in cupcake form, with jam inside, cream on top and half a strawberry. They went down very well as per usual. strawberry cakes were particularly appropriate for this party as the friend whose house it was famously had a strawberry fight (mainly with himself), then woke up the next morning a bit miffed that there were red patches on his walls and in his carpet, until someone then reminded him it was actually him throwing them in the first place.
I do love our work social evenings... this one last night involved tequila, cream soda, rum, frogs, the time warp, and wet wet wet. Needless to say today has been a write off, involving very little movement, lots of carbohydrates, and lots of Farmville.

Sushi Fresh

Oooooh what a great idea... Someone in my area has just started a new sushi delivery service, called Sushi Fresh. Their prices are fantastic and their sushi looks delicious. They also do noodles and set meals. It seems to be a service delivered straight from their house. We're going to try it on Friday, so fingers crossed that its as delicious as it sounds. Wish I'd thought of that idea!

Mini burger bento

a last minute bento idea tonight, although it seems to have worked out alright. I've used left over risotto (see the previous recipe) with ham and carrot decorations, then I defrosted some hamburgers I'd made for a bento a while back. I reshaped them into smaller mini burgers, then grilled them, and made mini cheese burger bentos using salad and mini babybel cheese. They are held together with skewers and a piece of gherkin, then I have a gherkin and pickled onion skewer and a tomato and ham skewer.

risotto rules!

My friend Haymond told me today that he wants to try the pork vindaloo recipe I posted, so I thought that if he found it useful, I'd post a few more recipes. What do you reckon? Let me know by leaving a comment.

A cheesy bacon risotto? on a diet? well yes. And its very easy to do and only takes 20 minutes or so to make.

1. Chop some spring onions and four cloves of garlic. Spray a large frying pan with Fry Light (or use a dash of olive oil), and sweat the onions and garlic over a medium heat for a few minutes.

2. Slice approx four slices of turkey bacon or lean bacon rashers into strips. Pop them into the pan with the spring onions and garlic.

3. Add just over 300g of arborio rice to the pan and leave for about a minute or until the rice turns translucent.

4. Add about a litre of chicken stock to the rice. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the stock has absorbed into the rice. keep an eye out so the rice doesn't burn or stick to the pan- it can be a nightmare to clean. 

5. stir in a tablespoon of parmesan cheese and sprinkle with fresh chives and pepper. 

6. Serve and enjoy!

I'm keeping the leftovers to put into lunches tomorrow- yum!

Noodle Soup

A pretty boring  lunch  today from a kawaii or exciting perspective but it was rather yummy! lovely spicy miso prawn noodle soup.

Piggle Sammie

Cute piggy prawn sammie lunch for him...

(two piggies= Man size portion)

...and for her:

Dainty slimming sized portion for moi! These boxes contain low fat prawn cocktail sandwiches (1 healthy extra and syn free filling) with some salad (free), Low fat cheese triangles (healthy extras), a quorn sausage roll (2.5 Syns), tomato and grapes (free). See I'm getting used to this complicated Slimming World malarkey now!

Monday's bento box

C

Tomorrow's bento contains mini quiches (these arre very clever, using ham as the case... I'll do a post dedicated to them later I think), heart shaped egg, salad, onigiri, strawberries, and my favourite bit, an egg chick:

Its all syn free on Slimming World as well.

Slimming World Vindaloo

I thought I'd share this delicious recipe with you guys. Its a healthy pork vindaloo and is absolutely scrummilicious. 

1. Place 500g lean pork chunks into a bowl with 2 chopped onions.

2.  Using a pestle and mortar, combine 8 garlic cloves, 2 teaspoons of finely chopped ginger, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp whole mustard seeds, 2 tsp hot chilli powder, 1/2 tsp ground cloves and 1 tsp ground cinnamon. Add a little vinegar to make into a paste, then add 125mls vinegar.

3. Marinade the pork for 6-8 hours or overnight in the vinegar mixture.

4. Spray some Fry light into a large saucepan, and add the pork mixture and a can of chopped tomatoes, along with 1/2 tsp of artificial sweetener. Simmer for up to an hour or until the pork is tender.

5. Serve with pilau rice, and some fresh coriander.

Simple as that and absolutely delicious!

Pastel Passion

I'm off to a friend's house to celebrate her birthday later on tonight, so I thought I'd whip up a batch of birthday cupcakes to take with me.

They're plain vanilla cupcakes (sometimes simple is best) and i made lovely pastel buttercream colours- pink and yellow, then topped with cute sprinkles. Hopefully she and the others will appreciate them!

Cute Cards

Look at this Super Kawaii card that I bought for a friend's birthday... It is just so squee. I love the multicoloured envelope as well. I bought it from gaf, a fab little shop just down the road from me. You can find their website here:
http://www.yourgaf.com/

the card is made by Pango Productions... Their website is here: http://www.pangoproductions.com/ . They're based in London and have an Etsy Shop.

stuff-a-doodle!

I recieved my copy of Yum Yum bento box the other day, and I'm really not sure how I ever lived without this book in my life. Its very beautiful, and it seems to have many useful bits of information in. I would highly recommend it.

Oh and another thing- My colleague Vince has a sweet little blog called allotment year, all about his adventures growing lovely veg in his allotment. His courgettes are absolutely fabulous. Take a look here: http://ryhopeallotmentyear.blogspot.com/

See you later alligators

The Claw is My Master!

My bento summer school homework for Week 7 'Finding inspiration':

Well I've taken some inspiration from recent movies at the cinema, and in particular, one of (if not the) best animated films of all time, and my favourite character...

oh yes, it's Clive the alien. Actually, I know they aren't called Clive, but for some random reason i can't recall, these cute little aliens all ended up being called Clive. This stuffed Clive is great- when you squeeze him his head lights up and he says either " The Claw is my master", "i have been chosen" or simply "ooooooooooooooh!". To tell the truth, years ago he used to live on my bed, and if I rolled over onto him in the night time he gave me huge fright- a big green face lighting up and saying "ooooooooh!"

So here is my bento homework:

Clive is made of coloured sushi rice and he is on a bed of couscous and carrots, and surrounded by some tomatoes and grapes. I probably could have packed him better but its been a rather long day at the office today so I was short of both time and ingredients.  Hope you like him though, let me know what you think.

Healthy Bento

Hiya Folks, sorry its been a while since my last post. I've been getting used to this slimming world malarkey, so i followed their suggested 7 day menu to start. unfortunately, most of it was very hard to make pretty or cute. (how cute can a jacket potato with cottage cheese be? so this bento contains thai fishcakes, prawns, and spicy potato salad, with leftover pork vindaloo, salad, and babybels

Tuna Pasta Bento

Well, I've been wholly unsuccessful so far in the attempts to lose weight, but with the beach holiday looming 2 months away I'm now taking it seriously... Well apart from the massive blowout over the weekend including lots of food, drink, and a small amount of sleep... So I've joined Slimming World online and these next few months we are really going to go for it and try to slim down and get fit. Lunch tomorrow is a tuna pasta salad with lots of lovely fresh veg and a fat free vinagrette... of course I gave it a little cute bento twist by using a mini flower cutter and a cute sauce bottle and pick.