new recipe

Today I used a recipe from our bento book and I was very happy with the way it turned out. It was delicious!

The recipe was for meatballs, which I have fond memories of making with my grandmother. Of course these are a bit different from my grandma's meatballs, but making them still brought back memories.

The recipe called for breadcrumbs, so I decided to experiment and used potato flakes. Being a processed food, I'm not sure how completely healthy these are. Maybe I'll try and figure out a homemade alternative. But regardless, the potato flakes worked well as a substitute for breadcrumbs in this recipe.

I fried the meatballs in a little bit of peanut oil, as per the directions. I'm not really used to "deep-frying" foods so it was a bit of an experiment for me. I think it worked pretty well, even though I didn't completely submerge the meatballs in oil.

Anyways, the meatballs have onions, ground beef, salt, pepper, eggs, and potato flakes in them, and they're fried in peanut oil. I let them drain after I took them out of the oil. They were really good.

This bento also featured mashed potatoes (made from the aforementioned potato flakes), which I made using just water and a little bit of the oil (about 2 tbsp) from cooking the meatballs. The oil gave the potatoes a light flavoring that was pleasing. They were not quite as creamy as potatoes made with milk. I will have to keep experimenting.

I also had apple and broccoli in the bento. We had a special treat on the side of our bento today. Curtis made egg drop soup to go with lunch today. It turned out well. It wasn't as bright yellow as what comes from restaurants and we decided they probably use food dye, which we don't want Asher (or Cassy or Brennan, or us) to have anyways.

The lunch was delightful. The soup was a nice addition and we'll definitely add that winter bentos when the weather turns =P Now I need to search for some thermos containers!