It’s been sort of a week of revelations, not the biblical kind but the revelation of how much I still don’t know about cooking, dieting, food etc. For instance, I use my automatic rice cooker all the time and every once in a while I actually use it for rice. I found I’ve been cooking my Japanese rice wrong and probably all rice wrong as well. I would just take my rice, rinse it until it is clear, put it in the rice cooker with the appropriate amount of water and hit the button when it’s done, open the lid and serve. Right? Wrong! The correct way according to several sights I visited because my rice wasn’t coming out the way I needed it to for my bento box recipes (we’ll talk about this later) is to first wash the rice as I had done until the water runs clear. Then put the rice in the rice cooker along with the water and let it sit for 30-60 min. THEN you close the lid and hit the cook button. When it changes to ready you leave it closed for another 30 min to allow the rice to steam. I tried it and guess what it came out just fine. Better than when I just opened it up when the rice cooker said it was ready.
The reason I wanted good Japanese rice is because as part of my New Year’s Resolutions was to eat better. You see I go to work at 7 AM, My class starts at 9 and finishes between 12:30 and 1PM. I hop in the car and go home for lunch. Take a nap or go to the gym (usually the nap). Go back to work at 4, class starts at 6PM and lasts until 9:30-10PM. I come home and eat dinner. Then go to bed about midnight. Not a real healthy way to live. And doing that has put about 100 lbs on me over the last 3 years.
After the first of the year I discovered (actually my wife told me about it) bento box lunches. She’s been trying to get my daughter to use this with my granddaughter. It’s simply creative, attractive, quick, nutritional lunches in reusable containers. The reusable containers is what caught my wife’s attention she hates throwing away things that can’t be recycled. ANYWAY I digress. I started looking at the book that came with the bento box she got for Samantha. The recipes didn’t look bad at all. Lots of Japanese influence and with a good planner, well balanced. She used the book “Lunch in a Box” you can find this at http://lunchinabox.net/ website.
Searching for a short time on the internet produced a wealth of information and I found it’s not just for kids, but most of the bento boxes are. I just couldn’t see myself going to teach adult students with a Hello Kitty bento box under my arm. So I looked for adult versions and found everything from beautifully crafted, lacquered and hand painted bento boxes for adult to some more modern thermos style. So I got a Mr. Bento from Amazon. This way I could because I get to work around 5 had some time to eat before class. And wouldn’t have to eat a full dinner at 10PM or later after I got home.
As I said earlier Bento Box lunches or meals are strongly influenced by Japanese cooking so things like Onigiri, Kombu, Dashi, and Katsuobushi have taken over my kitchen and my cooking. Learning new ingredients and some new styles of cooking beyond roasting, braising, sautéing and other traditional western techniques of beef and chicken etc has been fun and I’m finding ways to use many of the new ingredients and techniques with some of the western.
As I said I needed to change the way I cook rice. My old technique did not produce the proper texture or consistency needed to create Onigiri or for that matter Nori rolls and other rice dishes. I can highly recommend the technique I found on http://japanesefood.about.com/ their other cooking lessons are excellent as well.
If you want to know more about Bento Boxes here are a few links you may find useful:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Bento_Box_Recipes
http://www.cookingcute.com/recipes.htm
There are MANY others out there. You can go to Flickr and find a whole group of folks who share their recipes and photo’s of their creations. I never thought I would be using a paper punch on nori to create decorations for a rice cake or fancy bladed scissors to cut seaweed to wrap onigiri.
The result has been healthier meals at the right time to eat and not being hungry after 10PM when I get home. Do I still have a snack at that time. I’d be lying if I said no. but I’m also not eating a full serving of lasagna with sides and garlic bread an hour before I go to bed too early to tell the results other than feeling better and sleeping better and I guess that alone is worth the time and effort.
Check out Bento Boxes, use them, you might just see fewer disposable containers going to the land fill, you’ll have more interesting, decorative, tasty and healthy lunch or dinner than stopping by the fast food places. The only thing that limits what you can put into the Bento Box is your imagination.
Have a great day and remember Life is too short to eat bad food.
Chris
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