The Long Road to Bento-dom

I love food. I love baon. Food is L-O-V-E... so it makes a LOT of sense for me to pack food as baon for the people I love.

The past weeks, however, afforded me little to no time for myself... much less making baon. So my bentos weren't very pretty nor interesting.

But before all that... why bento (bring baon)? I have two reasons: 1) I want to be able to eat what I want and when I want it. 2) Seriously, almost three years of eating more or less the same permutation of food (will tell you about this in the next paragraph) in the office cafeteria is pretty boring.

Spoken like a true foodie... item#1, that is. The second one was spoken (written?) like a true female dawg...

Now I am one to eat almost anything (kamote is still out of the question so don't you freaking dare!) but no food is better than boring food. In the cafeteria, when you see Monday's ulam, you more or less know what's coming in the next four days. A good example:

Monday: Fried tilapia
Tuesday: Pinaputok na pla-pla

Wednesday: Fish steak (think fried tilapia in bistek sauce with onion rings)
Thursday: Fish cakes

Friday: Fish balls in SSS (sweet and sour sauce)

In one word: eeeeeewwwww! (At least they're Earth-friendly: recycle!) See my motivation?

I have a third (and not-so-secret) motivation: I LOVE food... I love going to the market, I love prep-work, I love cooking and I love eating! So there!

Without further ado, here are my baons for the week (only two... I didn't have much time this week):

This is pancit Malabon from Amber... with a stick of pork barbeque and two pieces of pichi-pichi with shredded coconut (I prefer the variant with cheese instead of the coconut) - the carb-protein-veggie proportions are skewed to say the least but this was g-o-o-d and made for good dinner. So good that RB repeatedly had to ask me "Kakainin mo ba yan? Kainin na natin!" to which I replied "Bakit mo pinakikialaman ang pagkain ko?"

The next day, I had the time to get up early to make baon for Jeni and myself. While Jeni preferred to bring sliced green mangoes and bagoong with diced ripe mangoes (the season for mangoes is upon us! EAT!!!), I packed more food for a satisfying lunch:

This is the same box I used the day before. Capacity is at around 400ml (I'll check again and get back to you on that) and is not as large as the utensils make it look. It is MUCH smaller than the 2010 Starbucks planner, which means the utensils are uber-tiny (in fact, they're for dessert. I got them at a flea market in Seoul for 3,000 KRW; around $3 per set). In it are sliced steamed okra (lady fingers), sliced local tomatoes ('tis the season for kamatis too!) and sliced salted duck eggs (itlog na maalat). Eaten with freshly steamed white rice and spicy-sweet bagoong (from a bottle - Golden Hands!), this was B-L-I-S-S!

Today, Jen made bagoong and we made two J-grocery raids (Choto Stop in Little Tokyo and Hatchin Grocery on Metropolitan Avenue) so expect those to figure in this week's baon. 

For now, ciao and stay tuned for more food... Welcome to my life of perpetual dieting! Mwahahahahaha...