That said, potatoes are on sale here: .99 for a 10 pound bag!  Haven’t seen them that low in …. maybe ever?    And I just made the most awesome roast potatoes, along with carrots, parsnips and butternut squash. I tried a new technique, essentially par boiling the veggies (other than the squash) for a bit before roasting. They came out fantastic!  Youngest took some for lunch along with some leftover roast chicken and said she wants that again tomorrow for lunch. You can just do potatoes, pictured here. Or combine them with other vegetables, like butternut squash, parsnips and carrots.

• potatoes, peeled and cut in 2-3″ chunks, or just in half
• carrots, scrubbed and ends trimmed off
• parsnips, peeled and cut into wedges at least 1″ thick
• butternut squash, halved, seeded, and cut in wedges

Roasting Vegetables

Bring a pot of water to boil while you preheat the oven to 400 F.  Simmer the potatoes and carrots for 5 minutes, then add the parsnips and cook another 4-5 minutes.

The squash doesn’t need to be parboiled.

Drain in a colander and let sit for a few minutes. Take everything but the potatoes out of the colander then shake the colander around a bit to shake up the potatoes.

Put the vegetables in a shallow pan, along with a few cloves of garlic and some sprigs of fresh parsley if you have some. (Grow some! )  Drizzle some olive oil and add salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle some paprika on the squash if you’d like.

Roast at 400 for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the vegetables.

This packs well for a school lunch the next day. My daughter took some vegetables, leftover roast chicken, some ketchup in a small container, and some sliced apples and pears and declared it one of the best lunches ever.

Ginger Chicken with Cornn and Peas

I promised my daughter I’d only do one new Asian dish this week and since I have more time to explore new things on weekends, tonight was it! I made this gingery spiced chicken from Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen. Of course, she LOVED it! I made this then served it over rice for a Three-Colored Dish, but tried to expand it a little. The recipe I saw called for peas and corn but my youngest doesn’t like corn, so I made up some simple carrots for her. (I just steamed them, then put a dash of mirin, sake, and soy sauce plus sprinkled some seasame seeds. Idea from Easy Japanese Cooking: Bento Love, a fun book with lightly detailed recipes aimed at Bento lunches.)

Leftovers would definitely be great in a Bento lunch!

So start the rice in the rice cooker. I put the carrot slices in to steam once it hit the Warm stage and that seemed to work out well and let me get away with one less dirty dish.

Ginger Chicken with Carrots

The original recipe called for 12 ounces of ground chicken but my store only sells it in 1 pound packages so I just increased the seasonings by 1/3 roughly.   This should make about 4 servings.

• 1 pound ground chicken
• 2 Tbs sake
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 1 + tsp ginger juice

(For ginger juice, grate the fresh ginger and then squeeze the pulp to make the juice.)

Put the ground chicken in the frying pan and then add the sake and sugar. Stir and break up the clumps and then cook over medium heat, stirring and breaking up the meat, for a few minutes, until the meat turns white.  Add the soy sauce and simmer a few more minutes, stirring, another 2-3 minutes, then add the ginger jiuce and cook, stirring, another minute or so.

This freezes well, apparently, although I’ve not tried it yet. And you can use it to top rice or to stuff in a rice ball / omusubi, although I’ve not done that either.  I just served it over fresh steamed rice, with about half the rice covered with the ginger spiced chicken and 1/4 with peas and 1/4 with corn or carrots.   I added a few halved grape tomatoes and some nori (seasoned seaweed).

This was really good and a very mild way to introduce some Japanese flavors I think, if your kids are resistant.

New discovery tonight: Apparently the dogs love nori!

Molly with Nori

Kayden with Nori

I’ve made several dishes from it, in my new Japanese cooking focus. I’ve also learned a lot. I do wish there were more pictures of the finished dishes, but the photos of the basic ingredients are very well done and useful. The recipes are clear and if I could just find everything locally, I’d be trying even more of them!

There used to be spinach here

I meant to take a picture of the dish, as it was very pretty. I like these new plain white serving dishes I picked up at Cost Plus Markets a few weeks ago. Much better for food photography!  But I forgot to take a picture as we were sitting down, since we had company, and suddenly the dish was empty.

The recipe is pretty simple. I didn’t have any of the exact toppings she recommended so I used some furikake with bonito and think it worked well!

• 1/2 cup dashi (I used a packet you simmer for 10 minutes)
• 2 Tbs soy sauce (She called for a seasoned soy concentrate I didn’t have the ingredients for)
• 1 bunch spinach or other leafy greens (about 12 ounces)

Blanch the spinach for a few minutes in boiling water, leaving it tied together, then plunge into ice water to stop it cooking. Drain.

In a shallow dish, combine the dashi and soy sauce.

Squeeze the extra water from the spinach, then remove the strings holding them together and place them in the dashi marinade. Let them sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. (She says you can also refrigerate for 2 days, covered.)

Cut into small bundles of 1″ length and top with something… I used the furikake. She suggests roasted white sesame seeds or a few other things.

I see this post on Just Bento with more ideas as well.

I’m fascinated by the bento box blogs and have several favorites I’ve been following including:

• Just Bento
• Adventures in Bento Making
• All My Bento are Belong to Me
• Lunch in a Box

If you’re looking for fun lunchbox items, go check out these Amazon lunchbox containers.

Just to play a bit tonight I thought I’d cook something I might pack up the leftovers for in a bento lunch. I’m thinking we’ll both pack lunches because even though I work from home I hate break away from work and then “fixing” lunch. So I ‘m thinking we’ll each pack our lunches in the morning so I don’t have to think about mine either.

heart and snowflake shaped onigiri rice balls

So first I played with some onigiri (rice balls), using some cookie cutters I had around. I froze the extras, figuring we could pull them out later.

I made the rice in my new rice cooker. When it was done, I mixed in just a tad of rice vinegar, then shaped them, wetting my hands first in cold water and then pressing them into the cookie cutters.

I also used some tiny heart cookie cutters I had with some sliced cucumbers. I sliced up some red bell peppers just in slices.

The chicken was this fantastic sesame chicken from this blog I found.  The only change I made was to use sherry instead of raspberry wine recommended. Yum!

Just for fun I served it in these Rubbermaid divided containers since we don’t have “real” bento box containers.