More Kitchen Chronicles

And I just keep cooking and making lunches!! Whew. It's a tough adjustment for me. I don't think I've spent as much time in the kitchen in my entire LIFE as I have in the past few weeks. I'm starting to not hate it. :)

Yesterday I made a version of Shelley's Ricotta Bake Cups - I used salami and a regular size muffin tin. My hubby liked these a LOT. I ate one as an appetizer to dinner, Ian ate 2 and I put the rest in a bento for him for the next day.

Also in the bento - blueberries, leftover crazy corn casserole (that was the last of it, finally!)

Dinner last night were these Potato Sausage Foil Packs which were VERY easy to prepare. Dad grilled them up which is super easy in the packets. Very tasty but in the future I'd double the sausage and halve the amount of potato.

Groceries were down to hardly anything last night so I was only able to pack myself this one little bento:

Some flatbread italian herb crackers, laughing cow cheese, carrots, cucumbers and garlic hummus.

Today I got to the store and restocked on everything!

Today in the mail came the big box of goodies I ordered from All Things For Sale. I am SO excited. I ripped into the box.

(Except the clear boxes... those are just sitting there bc I washed them LOL).

Firstly I got quite a few panda items from there. I went on a bit of a panda frenzy. I had to have the pandas!!!

When you have nothing to compare this to, it's hard to know how small these items are. If you put your hands together to form a circle, that's about the size of the panda. All these items are pretty small. Works for me and the amount I eat. May not work for other adults. GREAT for kids.

Shown with the other small panda items - decorative picks and mini sauce bottles.

I packed myself a lunch in the panda bento tonight. it fits enough for me. :)

The one in back is the bottom tier. It has a small fajita size whole wheat tortilla with PB&J. The green thing is a silicone food separator (also in this box of goodies but I haven't shown the photo yet). Behind that is a turkey & provole rollup. In the front box which is the upper tier, the rest of the turkey & provolone rollup with some baby carrots.

Now I'll share the other goodies I got in this order of stuff.

The green & orange items are all silicone - the long ones are food separators (like I used in the panda box above). The round green are silicone cups and so are the little orange ones, but the orange ones are so small I'm not sure WHAT I'll use them for. I'm sure I'll find something. Then we have the other little animal sauce bottles (it came with the panda which I set aside with the panda photo) and the little white thing in the back is used to fill them. The 4 small lidded containers can be for sauces or who knows what else (I'm even thinking doses of medication that I need to take with meals).

I also got a pink slim bento box. It comes with a lunch bag but it isn't insulated so I'm not sure i would use it.

I like that the box is a locking one. It comes with collapsible chopsticks although I'm not a chopsticks user, but it's pretty neat how they are packed in there. Two tiers and actually seems like it will hold a good amount (a little more than the black & white polka dot one with my panda items).

There's a kitchen drawer right where I pack all the lunches, so I have taken to storing all the little dividers and accessories in there to easily access as I'm packing:

The multicolor round containers towards the top are another new addition that arrived today - Tupperware Smidgets. They hold 1oz and are great for liquids/sauces.

I just wanted to stay home and play with all this stuff, but we had no food so I had to go get groceries. :)

After shopping it was time to make dinner. I tried this recipe tonight: Broccoli Chicken Skillet

I was a little skeptical about the ingredients (stuffing? raisins?) but it was really good.

 

All 3 of us gave this one 5 stars. Tasty, different, yummy comfort food.

AND after dinner I decided to try making muffin tin pizzas. Super easy. You start with some whole wheat tortillas (or whatever kind you want to use) and cut circles out of them. I used my 1 cup metal measuring cup to cut the circles out.

Then you spray a muffin tin with Pam and press one circle into each muffin cup. Fill with pizza sauce with a little parmesan and italian seasoning added. Top with mozzarella and mini pepperonis or whatever toppings you like and bake at 425 for 15-20 mins.

I did 15 mins and they looked great but when I took them out, the tortillas weren't crispy, so they probably needed the extra 15 mins. Anyway these went into some bentos for us for tomorrow!

I also made Ian a salad bento:

Lettuce on the bottom, provolone cheese, shredded carrots, turkey and cherry tomatoes. I tried to arrange it all pretty but once I put the turkey in there it pretty much took over lol.

I made quite a few bentos tonight. A few of them were the leftovers from the casserole tonight with some side dishes and one was 1/2 a sandwich for my dad, nothing too exciting. But I ended up with quite a stack of boxes in the fridge:

The front right is my dad's two boxes for tomorrow (he gets bigger portions and eats 3-4 times per day). The front left are for Ian - two of them involve leftovers from tonights dinner, one is the salad and one is the muffin pizzas.  In the back are mine although they are hard to see. One has dinner leftovers, one is my mini pizzas and one is my panda box. :)

WHEW can I go to bed now? Zzzz