Weeknote 5/11/11

This week I have been mostly....

Knitting:
Very little! I took my Christmas socks to Austria but then broke my Kindle at the airport (boo*) so had no pattern to follow. I am currently knitting The Louzle - balaclava #3 - but it is cow print which I am knitting freeform and I am not enjoying it very much. To demonstrate, today at knitting group I spent 15 minutes weaving in all the ends rather than continue knitting it. It's going to take some manning up.
Today I bought the yarn to knit some Yule Trees from Interweave Holiday Gifts, so I might sneakily start those. At least I can take them to work.

Going to:
Dinner with my now very-pregnant friend, Parpy Jo. She has a month to go, but I am struggling to see how she can get any bigger! She is insistent on going out as often as possible before the baby appears. I am enjoying calling her Fatty, while I still can.

Eating:
Hoummus-themed Bento lunches. I wanted to put a picture in here, but close inspection of my camera revealed I didn't have any, so a description will have to do.
Top layer: Breakfast - Overnight Oats. Now almost always chocolate soy milk and pears.
Middle layer: Silicone cupcake cup of hoummus. Olives. Mini breadsticks. Cherry tomatoes.
Bottom layer: Dried figs, almonds and segments of satsuma. Very Christmas-come-early but having spent two weekends out of the country, supplies were low.
This little combo was surprisingly filling, and made a tub of hoummus last 3-4 days.

Excellent pumpkin soup, home-made by Mr Z. It is heavy on the thyme, and surprisingly filling. Mr Z says this is due to the sock he blended in with it, but I suspect he is having me on.

A new slow cooker dish we are loving. It's very simple. Slice an onion and layer over the bottom of the slow cooker; put two pork chops on top and pour over some chutney. Add a splash of water and cook all day. Delicious, and a good way of using up last year's leftover chutney.

Learning:
More about American Foreign Policy. I am finding it really very interesting, so much so that I want to read about it all the time, and I don't really have the time. It helps that one of my upper 6th groups is almost exclusively gifted pupils, so they are really pushing me to be better read, so I can continue to challenge them.

Obsessed with:
Words With Friends. It may not be Scrabble, but it'll do.

Entertained by:
Educating Essex. I have really enjoyed this series because the main staff in it seem to espouse the same views on education as me; and it reminds me why I love my job, and why I do it; and it gives me ideas on how to be better!

Feeling:
Frustrated that this stupid tickly cough won't abate!


* Tom commiserated, and then pointed out Dixon's were selling them and they would be VAT free, so I replaced it immediately, before I could talk myself out of it. And bought a warranty.

Bento: week 2/3

I didn't post about my Bento adventures last week, and this week I sort of lost it a little bit: things like late governors' meetings and birthday meals out rather got in the way. But rest assured, I am still experimenting.

Some highlights:

• Risotto onigiri with a little piece of goat cheese in the centre
• Bubble and squeak with a side of home made chutney
• Onirigi made with rice cooked with vegetables - Mr Z's latest experiment
• A silicone cupcake holder filled with yogurt - the perfect amount, and a positive because I worry about not getting enough calcium (I don't drink milk or take it in hot drinks)
• Sachets of miso soup
• Sliced figs - taste much better when they are not served chilled
• In the sauce pots: a Rolo, and 4 jelly snakes. Perfect.

The whole thing is still really making me think about portion control, which is definitely what I need to work on. I would never have thought a cupcake caseful of yogurt was a reasonable amount, for example, or been able to make a packet of Rolos last 2 weeks. I've made an effort to buy more fruit and vegetables, too.

I have also found out a few things about ONOs: namely, that my favourite combination is tinned pears in fruit juice and chocolate soy milk. The green grocer is still geting British strawberries, so I've been mostly relying on those in combination with other fruit like kiwi or banana. I'm going to start looking at tinned and frozen fruit more as it gets colder, I think.

Bento: week 1

Who said don't play with your food? Don't listen to them.

Arranging bento boxes for lunch this week has been huge amounts of fun. They take somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes to prepare, so a little longer than a normal work lunch, but they give me such pleasure at lunchtime, it's totally worth it. Even a rather drab lunch of hard boiled eggs, rice and sugar snap peas was something to be cooed over.

Monday: Top left. Raspberry and chocolate soy milk ONOs with banana and raspberries, for breakfast. Two hard boiled eggs, two onigiri, cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, watermelon, a couple of chocolates and a prune for lunch, with soy sauce and sweet chilli in the bottles and mayo in the little yellow container.
This was my first try and I was STUFFED. It's funny, because I feel like I'd usually have a bigger lunch, but it took longer to eat it, so I think I got fuller quicker. Bringing the ceremony back to the meal has made it more fulfilling. Now I have typed that, it seems obvious, but really - who knew?

Don't say the Japanese.

Tuesday: Top right. I had ONOs with mango, guava juice and a little coconut yogurt (this was a bit too sweet), and a banana. Lunch was Meatballs (as detailed in last Sunday's post), two onigiri, cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas and wasabi in the little tub, with a bottom layer the same as Monday's. This arrangmenet drew a comment from the head of English about my rice "nests".

Wednesday: Bottom left. Same breakfast. Lunch was a wholemeal chapati thinly spread with goat cheese and topped with a slice of turkey, then rolled and sliced, with veggies and chutney in a little blue tub which replaced the centre tomato. To begin with I just bunged the slices in but then felt I should try to get in the spirit of it, so they went flowery. If I'd been eating this as a wrap, I'd have made two, with double the amount of turkey. One was definitely enough.

The bottom layer was a fruit salad of watermelon, melon, passion fruit and pomegranate seeds. I am quite proud of the two melons, because I bought them before I went away to Australia and they were still good to eat. Fruit from the green grocer's has a much better shelf life, I find.

Thursday and Friday: Both the same, so only one picture. Breakfast oats were chocolate soy milk and sliced, tinned pears, which was a total win, and a sliced banana. Lunch was onigiri and veggies, with Mr Z's home made crispy chilli beef. Definitely not the healthiest option but oh, so good! And I made it last two lunches when I know I would have scoffed it all for one, given the option.
Friday was the day I worked out I could squeeze four gummy worms into one of the little sauce tubs. The lunch table watched, captivated, as I opened the box to retrieve them, and my friend Lou said, "I want your lunch! It's so much fun!"

This has definitely been a lesson in portion control and eating until full. I feel like it's made a difference this week and it's so enjoyable! I am actively looking for little sweet things that will fit into sauce cups for the end of lunch treat, and also trying to think how I can squeeze a few more veggies in there. I think I need to stop having fruit at lunch and have veggies instead. This seems to be the advice from the new Bento cook book I bought, anyway.

Sunday bak...um, cooking

I didn't bake today. Shocking! There were still some cakes leftover from last Sunday, however, and I wanted to play with my new toys.

Long-term readers of this blog may have deduced that I am a long-term chobber, battling with my weight. I have for several years been an online member of a slimming group, but when my card expired over the summer and I couldn't input new details, they told me they'd freeze my account until I returned - and then deleted it. They are no longer returning my emails. I wonder if it's because I've failed to maintain a steady weight loss for the past couple of years.

I momentarily panicked, as though the pounds were insidiously creeping back onto my thighs just because I was no longer paying a monthly subscription; but then I gave myself a good talking to, had some thoughts about portion control and healthy eating, and bought myself this.

I'd like to claim this was all I bought from the fantastic Monbento site, but since they were shipping it to me all the way from France I really felt I had to get my money's worth, and the kitchen is now filled with a variety of cute Japanese lunchbox paraphernalia. While I waited for said items to arrive, I scoured the web in an attempt to absorb as much bento advice as I possibly could, and I have successfully planned a week's worth of bento lunches for my first week back, and even cooked some of it too.

My favourite thing so far is the eggs. I'm instituting Meatfree Mondays at Bunny Towers (Mr Z is not on board and will be wildly gnawing leftover Sunday roast and adding salami to his omelette tomorrow; not quite sure how the cat's going to cope) so I hard boiled a couple of eggs for lunch and then popped them, dubiously, into my new egg moulds. They squelched. Little bits of white popped out of the sides. I started to mentally plan what I might do with two squashed eggs. However, when I popped them out they were perfect little star and heart shapes. I can't remember the last time I was so pleased with the shape of a foodstuff.

(There may be a picture tomorrow, if you're lucky).

To try and maintain this high-maintenance lunch strategy I prepared some food in advance and put it in the freezer. Here is the recipe for some meatballs I made today, because I've gotten so used to posting a Sunday recipe now it will feel weird if I don't.

500g pork mince (turkey mince would also work well)
1 tsp galangal paste
1 tsp tamarind paste (hey...they were in the cupboard and I'd never used them)
1 heaped tsp grated root ginger (I used Very Lazy Ginger: I made mango chutney on Wednesday and have grated enough ginger for one week, thanks)
Good splash soy sauce
Generous tbsp finely chopped coriander

Mix everything in a bowl. Shape the mixture into small meatballs - I got 24 out of this mixture. Bake at 180 degrees C for about half an hour, until browned. Cool, bag and freeze until needed (I froze mine in portions of five).

These taste good with a dab of wasabi but I wish I had had some lemongrass, which is all they are missing in my opinion. I was a little bit gutted when I realised we didn't have any in the fridge. Oh well - next time.

I will blog about my bento lunches. I predict they will last until I have a busy weekend and can't do any prep for them, whereupon I may revert back to my old staples of Alphabetti Spaghetti on Ryvita, or Supernoodles with tomatoes and cheese.