I awoke this morning to find a picture my friend Teman had sent me, one of him and along with a poor individual stuffed inside a life sized Tarako Kewpie mascot outfit, and knew today was the day….

After squishing out the cod roe goop I have to say I was pretty turned off – this coming from someone who has tried natto (and found they like it). It wasn’t as strong as I thought it was going to be though, reminded me somewhat of tuna noodle casserole or something. Except with seaweed. And bits of cod roe. Too bad I don’t actually care for tuna casserole.

A couple of weeks back I stumbled across what I found to be the most mesmerizing series of japanese commercials…
TV In Japan page
YouTube Commercial 1
YouTube Commercial 2
Kewpie Homepage
I found myself powerless to resist Kewpie’s amazing marketing skills – so great are they I ended up picking up a package even though cognitively I know that cod roe spaghetti is highly unlikely to be favorable to my american palate.

Since then the package has sat on my counter, mocking my consumeristic weakness. I’m currently firming up my resolve to try it this week and see how it turns out…

Went back to Uwajimaya and found the 3 compartment containers I was looking for. They are little more expensive but the main section is the perfect size for doing lunch-sized donburi. For their inaugural use I tried to recreate one of my favorite meals from when I was in Japan – unagi, train station bento style with scrambled egg.

I’ve been really enjoying doing the little bit of extra cooking required to put these lunches together. I’ve been uploading pictures of what I make to flickr and tagging them – if you want to see what I’ve been making you can always see pictures of my latest lunches here.

I stumbled across some containers I just love at Uwajimaya’s this week – they are 870ml with 4 removable inserts and and locking lid mechanism that works really good for ~ $4.50 a pop.

I try and be good by making my own lunches each week. I usually just do a big batch of stir fry, pasta, or what have you on the weekend and portion it up into tupperware so I can just grab-n-go in the morning. For the longest time I’ve wanted a bit more variety but that usually includes multiple containers that end up too big for the quantity of food I want to bring. This 4 insert system works great, although I have to definitely think smaller portion sizes since its really easy to end up with more food than space. Here’s what my lunches for this week look like…

I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get as fancy as some people get with doing the multiple course thing, but I am digging my newly diversified lunches. Now if I can only find some of the other combinations they make for when 4 courses is too many…

Sunday’s I usually cook up a batch of something I can portion up into a bunch of lunches for the week. This week I made another attempt at one of my favorite Indian foods – saag. A while back I found an excellent recipe that I’ve been using as a base to improvise over.
This time around I substituted mustard greens for the spring greens (I have *no* idea where to find the spring greens the recipe calls for, it appears that they are some sort of young cabbage), then added 2 carrots cut into big pieces right after I zapped the mixture with my nifty immersion blender. Before I cooked up the onions I pan fried up two cubed russet potatoes, then mixed the onions in and rejoined the recipe. I like things a bit on the hot side so I added 3 tsp cayenne to the spice mixture. Finally, when mixing the spiced onions and potatoes back into the main pot I also added a can of garbanzo beans.
Results? Pretty damn good with the jasmine rice I cooked up, although as usual way too much food and a bit hotter than I planned.
I had a bit of leftover rice sitting in my refrigerator that I thought I’d cook up into something I could quickly heat up for breakfasts as well. I usually do a stir-fried rice with whatever I have left around when I have old white rice but this time I though I do something different. Many years ago I went to Costa Rica for a week and while I was there I was exposed this addicting black bean & rice dish that they eat for breakfast over there. I found a recipe online and proceeded to cook up a batch that I zap up for breakfast. Results were ok but not quite like what I remembered, maybe because I had to use chicken stock instead of bean stock.
I’d put some pictures up online but I sans camera for the time being – I destroyed my trusty canon S400 this last summer when I took it on an ocean hike with my brothers and ended up getting sand in it . Now the lens is stuck halfway out and no amount of compressed air will remedy the situation… <big sigh>.