Monday lunches

I ended up not making bento for Friday's lunch because I felt sick Thursday night. It's a good thing I didn't, because Nick ended up eating out with coworkers and all that work would have been wasted. And I would have been mad about that. So he's happy, I'm happy, and life is good.

We both put in some work this weekend toward bentos, with me partitioning out leftovers to freeze in muffin cups and making little sausage patties (that you'll see in future bentos) and Nick making some of his fresh from-scratch chocolate chip cookies in a smaller size.

Monday's lunch is a bit unusual because this time, we actually have separate main dishes for lunch.


Nick has leftover original recipe fried chicken from KFC, with mash potatoes and gravy. I put that in his new spiffy glass bento lock box that he can microwave to his heart's content. In his side bento we have KFC coleslaw, a biscuit with fake honey (which he loves and is the perfect size for bento), a babybel cheese, carrots with ranch, and a small homemade chocolate chip cookie. In addition, he has a small container of a lentil soup that he also made from scratch today. Boy were we ambitious in our Sunday cooking!


For my main dish, we have miso-soy glazed salmon that I kind of burned (but it's still delicious) with rice and roasted vegetables (zucchini, broccoli, and yellow bell pepper) that I made so we could empty our vegetable drawer. In my side bento, the top tier has a homemade chocolate chip cookie split in half so it would fit, ranch dressing, a babybel cheese, and some pistachios. The bottom tier has carrot sticks, cheese-its in a silicone pig, a small matcha chocolate, and a tiny container of nori furikake.

Now it is 12:30am and I am not going to be a happy camper tomorrow morning. At least our lunches will be good! Plus I am looking forward to my mini bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. And as soon as that cream cheese is finished, I'm buying the fromage blanc at Nugget that I've been eyeing. =) What can I say...food makes me happy!

Thursday bento

I have a confession: I started to get bento block last night. Thus, today's side bento was not very inspired. I feel sad looking at these, but they served their purpose and got mostly eaten.


Nick's bento has soy-marinated roasted asparagus, an edam cheese cake, some broccoli, string cheese, some bean salad, and containers of nori furikake and tonkatsu sauce for his tonkatsu and rice lunch. I added a small Reese's as a treat.

My bento has the same asparagus, broccoli, the cheese cake, a babybel cheese, some cheese-its, and a small container of parmesan cheese for my lunch, which was the leftover pasta. My treat was a ferrero rocher chocolate.

Tomorrow, since it's Friday, I think I'm going to give my brain a break and do only a half bento for each of us. Nick got pound cake at Nugget and so I'm going to shape slices of with my mini cookie cutters. He's excited because this means he gets to eat the excess. We'll also probably have some bean salad because we need to finish that. What else will go in there...who knows. Until tomorrow, then!

More side bento!

I took pictures of today's bento this morning because that's when I assembled it, so the lighting is a bit off. Dang natual light! I think I prefer assembling them at night because then my morning isn't as rushed. For lunch our main dish was this shell pasta with zucchini, roasted red peppers, chicken, and onions in a cream cheese chicken broth sauce. I also decided to follow my whim and make a four-bean salad. The four beans I chose were garbanzo, kidney, wax beans, and kidney beans. I also added red onion and celery for crunch. The dressing has both red wine and balsamic vinegars in it, and is a tad sweet, but we like it.

So, Nick's bento has the four bean salad in the bottom tier. In the top tier we have a string cheese, some cheese-its, a few grapes, a container full of parmesan cheese for the pasta, and half a hardboiled egg.


My bento has the same bean salad in the bottom tier, and pretty much the same elements in my top tier. The only difference is that I have a mini babybel cheese because I think string cheese is gross.


When Nick came home he told me his coworkers were excited about his bento. They especially liked the sushi grass. I guess they caught on fast after yesterday's bento. Now he knows to remember details because I don't get that kind of reaction at work, like who admired which part and what things they caught their eyes. He said one of them even asked if I could make her lunch sometime. Now I know all this work I put into Nick's bento is worth it! Haha. But it means I have to keep coming up with something every day...which is good motivation, I guess. All the better for this blog, right?

On a side note, we also went to Chuy's for some tacos last night, and we both had stomach aches this morning. Nick thinks it was the cheese or lettuce. However, their adobada tacos are so good I think we'll still go there.

Snack bento

The bento I made for us for tomorrow's lunch is a side/snack bento rather than a lunch bento. It will accompany our usual lunch made up of leftovers, which happens to be rice with broccoflower beef (broccoflower is a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower that just tastes like cauliflower). After last week, I realized I needed to ease us into this bento thing so that we could get used to the smaller portions and the aesthetics of a lunch meant to please the eye.

I only took a picture of Nick's bento, because mine looks exactly the same. The only difference is that I have grapes where he has cherry tomatoes. Here it is:


On the top tier I placed a cran-strawberry-grape jello, some cherry tomatoes, a little container of ranch dressing, and a tiny matcha chocolate. In the bottom tier I placed a mini crudite platter of celery, cucumber, and flower-shaped carrots. Nick said he'd try his best to hide those, but I think the cuteness adds visual interest to an otherwise boring bento tier.

I'm not as happy with the redundancy of the two round elements in the top tier, but I didn't have any other way to include the ranch dressing, as both are too big to sit in the smaller tier. All my other containers were too small. I hope I get better at this as time goes on, because the reason I got into this in the first place was being able to utilize space in an efficient way while pleasing the eye and taste buds.

Now that I think about it...I should add more ranch since Nick is one of those types that likes to slather his salad with dressing. As for time management, since I know I'm going to have a busy morning tomorrow, I sliced everything up tonight. I decided to keep the carrots and celery in cold water in a tupperware in the fridge, and covered up my cucumber slices with a wet paper towel in the smaller bento. Hopefully that will keep them crisp and avoid drying out. We'll see how it goes.

Redd

For Valentine's Day we decided to delay celebrating so that we'd avoid the rush Thursday night. I took advantage of this plan by suggesting we make a day trip out of it and eat at this place I'd been dying to eat at in the Napa Valley. Reading good food blogs can have you highly anticipating a place you've never even laid eyes on, just by the strength of the description alone.

I'd read about Redd in Yountville first on the Restaurant Whore blog (one of my absolute favorites) and had the urge to eat lunch there right away. I mean, a four-course tasting menu for only $5o? And they serve each person different dishes? I'm totally there. I just need a reason to go. And bam, Valentine's Day steps up to the plate.

We made a reservation for 1p.m. on Saturday the 16th, and I licked my lips in anticipation. Reading the menu online doesn't do the restaurant any justice. We got there at about 12:45pm, walked around a bit, then strolled past the small patio to the modern wood door at approximately 12:55pm. Didn't want to be too early, you see. Other online reviews have mentioned the starkness of the modern decor of the interior, but I loved it. I especially loved the rich wood floor...on the ceiling. The dining room was made a lot homier by the wall of windows with a wildflower garden just outside. It was just a perfect blank, white-tablecloth slate for the food.

We looked over the menu briefly, feeling silly because we knew we wanted the tasting menu. It was a new experience, telling our waiter to let the chef decide what to serve us. Nick and I did tell each other what we would have ordered, which ended up making the whole experience a lot more fun. Why? Because without knowing us at all, Redd gave us pretty much what we most wanted even when we didn't know we wanted it.

Both of our first courses were raw preparations. Nick got the sashimi of hamachi on sticky rice with edamame and a lime ginger sauce. Nick's favorite part of his dish was the lime vinaigrette, though there is a special place in his heart (and stomach) for sticky rice. I got the tuna tartare with crispy rice, avocado, and chili oil. I'm pretty sure there was also some citrus fruit in there. Redd scored on this one because they were two of the first courses Nick would have picked for himself, and out of the two, I immensely preferred the tartare. The crispy rice provided a nice contrast in texture to the rest of the dish. I even liked the citrus. The micro cilantro was also a cool touch.


Our second courses were both cooked seafood dishes. Nick received the petrale sole with jasmine rice, mussels, and chorizo in a saffron curry nage. There was also a thick layer of foam with a taste we couldn't quite place. "For the lady," our waiter said (and I had to suppress a chuckle at his seriousness), "we have caramelized scallops with a cauliflower puree and almonds." I just about gasped, and Nick and I seriously wondered how they knew us so well. These were the exact entrees we had picked for ourselves in our game at the beginning of lunch. Let me choose from a menu, and I will always pick the scallop dish.


My scallops were perfectly cooked, with one side browned, sitting atop of little cauliflower florets, almonds, and golden raisins, which were themselves on top of a super creamy cauliflower puree. There was also a balsamic vinegar reduction that went excellently with my scallops. Everything was well-seasoned and matched the other parts of the dish, except for the raisins. I don't care for raisins.


Nick liked his dish because of three things: the mussels, the chorizo, and the rice. It was presented beautifully, with the foam obscuring everything but the mussels. The petrale sole was mild in flavor, but accompanied by such strong flavors as chorizo, saffron, and curry, I think the chefs at Redd made an excellent choice.

As for our third courses, Nick and I didn't get a chance to surmise this far, so we were just preparing to be surprised. Our waiter had caught on to the fact that they had done well so far, so as they placed our third plates in front of us, said they hoped they had furthered their record with this one. I received the short ribs with a horseradish crust, potato puree, and root vegetables. Nick got the quail with lentils, a poached egg, bacon bits, some frisee, and garlic cream. Man was I jealous when I saw those lentils.

My short rib was pull-apart-with-fork tender, and came with the best potato puree I've had in a long time. The crust was interesting, but I didn't taste any horseradish. It was a heavier offering, and at this point I started to feel like I was going to have to take a nap after we ate. Nick's quail was delicious with its salty skin, but the best thing on that plate was the lentils. We both agreed we'd have to learn how to cook lentils because, damn, this was good. I also don't know how they poached the egg so that the egg whites looked like a dollop of cream.


When they cleared our third course plates, our waiter remarked that we both looked ready for dessert. Since Nick and I hadn't even laid eyes on the dessert menu (even online), we didn't know what would be coming. And yet, Redd surprised us again by giving us exactly what we would have ordered.

Nick got the citrus tasting dessert, which included a lemon panna cotta, creme fraiche with huckleberries, and a citrus yuzu float with tapioca. The presentation was lovely, and Nick ate every bit of it.


I got the peanut butter and chocolate dessert, which consisted of a chocolate sorbet (topped with some sea salt) over honey-roasted peanuts, a peanut butter-gianduja creme tart, and a parfait with honey whipped cream, honey brittle, peanuts, and chocolate syrup. Everything was rich and delicious. There was so much on the plate that I felt like I was getting three desserts instead of just one.


At the end, we just marveled at how they selected perfectly for us without so much as a word of preference from either of us. I thought they must have some secret microphone at the table to record if we said we preferred things over others, but Nick countered that reasoning by reminding me we hadn't even seen the dessert menu. Then again, he considered, maybe they just give women the chocolate dessert by default. Hey, I responded, I don't mind that line of thought one bit.


Two hours of a lunch that we didn't have any say in, and it was still a fabulous experience. Cheap, too, considering a four-course menu at other places would have cost at least $25 more each person. I highly recommend Redd for an experience you won't soon forget.


Redd
6480 Washington Street
Yountville CA 94599
(707) 944-2222

Lunch	11.30am to 2.30pm Monday to Saturday
Dinner	5.30pm to 10pm Nightly
Brunch	11am to 2.30pm Sundays

New lunch adventures: bento

So I haven't written here in a while. So much has been going on in the holiday season that I haven't had time to update! I promise I will include some of our adventures in Hawaii (best food we've ever had in our life) but for now, I'll start with my bento food obsession. Bento is a tradition Japanese meal in a box. That's it. Of course, you want to fill each box with nutritious, non-junk food things and have a lot of variety in them to appeal to the senses.

I got into it by reading lots of bento food blogs and really liking the presentation factor. Apparently it's a competition between moms in Japan to see who can pack their kids the cutest lunch. I'd be totally down for that if I was a stay-at-home mom. =) For now, Nick will have to suffice as my guinea pig. He agreed to it, but put his foot down on the cutesy stuff. Here is what I made for lunch today:

Nick's bento is big according to bento size guidelines at about 1200ml (but he still thinks it's tiny) and is filled with banh chung, nuoc mam, an eggroll, jello, grapes, tomatoes, edamame, and steamed asapragus. It would be more if I didn't have as much empty space as I do. I chalk that up to being a first-timer.

My lunch is smaller (about 600ml) and is filled with the same stuff as Nick's, minus the banh chung. I also have two small nori furikake onigiri that are not pictured.

I wrote out a bento planner for this week, so I hope I stick to it and have more to post here in the future. =)