Scallops in pain!

The above is only amusing when you mistype a filename url AND your head is still fuzzy from being sick for 2.5 days. --;

Ahem.

So today I decided to go ahead and do teriyaki scallops for my bento, since, as I said, the last couple of days i've been home sick from work. I did a test run yesterday, and those buggers do cook up awfully fast, making them a really good item to add when pressed for time (I get up around 10am, because I work 2-midnight, so I sit around being zombie-ish for a good while before I can cook anything and usually run late).



Teriyaki scallops, snow peas, the rest of the pickled cucumber for the week (more than usual cuz I only made 2 bentos this week), and rice with sesame seeds. There was supposed to be spinach omelet in here, but I had an adventure today and discovered that you can't cook egg in the same pan after scallops, at least not well. The pan I was using is all but devoid of its original teflon coating, also, so that did not help me at all. -- It's just as well, though, because I needed to eat up the snow peas.

You also get to see that I own more than one bento box. I need more. >D Right now, it's more about accessories; I got my heart-shaped onigiri mold and my bento okazu cups (little separator cups for holding various food items within a bento box; they're reuseable and not as wasteful as cute paper cupcake wrappers) today, and now have a nice little arsenal of items to use. Soon I should take pics of all my stuff and just throw that up here.

Thought I might include some extra photos this time around. If you ever wondered what my kitchen looks like when i'm in the midst of prepping bento, it's something like this:



Ingredients all over the counter, and the box for the day sits in the midst of it all, ready to recieve the food once it's done. For sticky rice, I usually make a batch on Tuesday and stick it in the fridge. When I put more rice into a bento, I heat it up first, and then it cools to room temp in the (unlidded) bento box. It stays decently edible that way, rather than be all cold and hard as it is when refrigerated. If I lived in a perfect world I could make rice each day and have it fresh, but it won't work that way until I live with people who will eat rice that often. That, and I need a nicer rice cooker.



Cooking the scallops. I used a recipe from the Bento Box cookbook John got me for Christmas. It's a fabulous book and already bears post-its with my notes on various recipes. >) The recipe I used includes soy sauce, water, sugar, and calls for sake, but in its place I used a little bit of Mirin (sweet rice wine). Not bad, even for someone who isn't really big on scallops. I hope I don't get food poisoning. ^^;;

Next week's menu must include (HEART-SHAPED!) onigiri at some point. >D As for the rest, I need to plot that out.