My First Bento!

On impulse, I went to Daiso (the Japanese version of a dollar store) and bought 2 bento boxes. This is the one I used today for lunch.

Pretty! :-)




So... According to LunchInABox.net, my bento size should be about 500mL of food. This box in total is 490mL. And it didn't seem like enough food to get full off of. Even my coworkers said it looked like a snack bento, not lunch. Lol. Not sure what that says about the size of the bento or perhaps the size of normal American portions.

Anyways... I had fun putting together this lunch box this morning and will probably do more in thee future. :-)

For your knowledge:
Tier 1: Mixed-grain Rice
Tier 2: Mushrooms, Asparagus, and Baked Yam "home fries"
Tier 3: Taiwanese fried chicken (from the bubble tea shop!) Taiwanese spinach, and some pickled carrots dividing the two.

Cookind Day: Stuffed Hamburger

Watching cooking shows always makes me want to cook something myself. This time it was Master Chef, where I watched the entire 1st season in 24 hrs. The dishes weren't all very complex (some were) and some of the challenges were outright easy (I think I could have won the "name all 25 ingredients" contest hands down...), but the dishes looked absolutely delicious. The challenge that drove my latest craving: the hamburger.

While I have a high appreciation for good restaurants, sometimes the best version of a food can be found at home. I haven't found a worthy burger around town yet (although Jack's Prime has an amazing Wine Country Burger that I love) so I decided this would be the dish to make at home. :-)

I've never made one in the house before, but thought I'd give it a go. Hamburgers for me are generally an outdoor drill ordeal, but since I live in a balcony-less studio apartment, I guess I'll have to live with the grease splatters and hamburger smells for awhile.

I made the burger the way my mom loves it: pure ground beef patty stuffed with cheese and mushrooms. My mom would put bacon in there are times too, but I chose to opt out because I thought it would be too much.

The appeal of stuffing a burger instead of putting the toppings on top:

The cheese, mushrooms, (and bacon) add moisture-rich foods to the center of the burger. This helps to avoid drying the burger out from overcooking. As the burger cooks, the cheese melts, the mushrooms steam, and the bacon starts sheddings its greasy fat. Unless you completely burn the patty, you will have a juicy burger almost always.

As indulgence, with the greasy run-off from the burger, I used it to toast the bun. Add salad and tomatoes and there is the yummy burger!



For the side, I steamed asparagus and mushrooms with Italian seasoning, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a dash of white truffle oil.

I go lay down and have a food coma now.

-^_^

Davidson's White Tea

I never did write about my disheartening trip to my favorite tea store in Chinatown a few weeks back. In a nutshell though, I went to Red Blossom Tea Company with the specific statement and intent of buying a white tea, but they wouldn't let me try their samples and tried to push the most expensive one on me. Basically they were dismissive and seemingly uninterested in helping me select a tea to purchase. I did write a disappointed review on Yelp.com and the store owner did apologize, so they get some credit back, but that was rude, even for a Chinese store.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because this eventually led me to purchase the white tea that I wanted to talk about.

I bought 1 lb of organic silver needle white tea from Davidson Tea Co. at, believe it or not, Amazon.com. It came in a brown paperbag sealed with one of those fold-in twisties. Like the way coffee is sealed. I just tried some today and it was light, sweet and of great quality white.

The price was the coolest part: $45. ^_^

It actually baffles me a bit why their white tea would be so cheap, but then again, I did believe we pay too much here in the US for tea. It could be the other stores are overcharging.... (after all, if this tea is organic, the price should be even higher, right?).

Who would have guessed? For all the high-end tea stores out there, the best deal for great quality is at Amazon.com.

Mom's Famous Steak ^_^

Wow. Being home is a non-stop eating fest. Mom's cooking is the best. I'll show.