meal and drink

to me

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The problem with online recipes

I can't be the only one to have tried recipes found online and found them bland or unsuitable for my tastebuds. This seems especially common with American recipes. When they have been converted to weights (the preferred method of cooking in the UK) and ingredients confirmed (baking soda for bicarbonate of soda, cilantro for coriander etc) they are often rather flavourless for the nation whose obsession with biscuits is well known.

This was brought home to me this month. I spent several hours cooking recipes such as Salted Chocolate Nutella Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Lemon and Coconut Muffins. All of these were bland and featured no spice other than vanilla.

As a result I intend on working through the recipes I have within my collection and working out their suitability for freezing.

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Chicken karage (plain), sesame spinach, bean sprout and pepper stir fry, braised new potatoes, noodles and garlic mayo. Recipes from just bento

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rice onigiri with hotdog tulips, prawn and mushroom stir-fry and broccoli

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Tomato pasta, sesame spinach, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and mayo.

cauliflower, meatballs, tamagoyaki and sprouted mung beans

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Starting at the top clockwise:

Mixed fruit, cauliflower, meatballs, green tea mochi, quail egg with two green onigiri frogs in the middle

Scattered around are hotdog tulips and spinach.

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Rice, Sesame Spinach, Chicken Karage and Bean Sprout and Pepper Stir Fry.

Again, from the Just Bento cookbook

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Today's bento was pepper and bean sprout stir-fry, green beans, new potatoes and gingered pork with broccoli, sesame spinach and plain rice.

The recipes are from Just Bento.

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A quick bento made from freezer and cupboard ingredients. There is chicken and three-colour pepper stir fry (from just bento cook book), noodles and steamed broccoli.

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Nice grammar, O2

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baby, it's cold outside...

The cold temperatures we've suddenly been hit with (at the late date of December) mean that I'll mostly be concentrating on warm, filling meals that have preferably come from the freezer to save time and money.

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Completely forgot my packed lunch today after over sleeping. So far not off to a good start.

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The Beginning...

Between work and university I tend to let me eating habits get out of hand and my on-off relationship with dieting over the years has finally annoyed me enough to ensure I actually do something about it.

As a result I joined Slimming World two weeks ago and so far I have lost 4.5lbs. I find managing my diet at home and weekends easy enough but I find it challanging at work, especially when I go straight from a full days work to uni for a further 3 hours meaning it is well past 9pm by the time I get home. 

So I've dug out my Mr. Bento, flask and bento boxes which I intend to use to get back in the habit of taking lunch with me.

It is my aim to take a full meal on Mondays and Wednesdays and a smaller lunch the rest of the week.