Gluten Free Living and Bento Lunches

This will be a bit long but contains many pictures so hopefully it isn’t too wordy.

A while back, I realized that just ‘working out’ or thinking about working out, wasn’t going to cut it, I had to change my eating habits as well. Like many Americans, I don’t pay all that much attention when I cram food in m’gob. I may have a brief moment where I realize that what I’m eating is tasty, but I’m more likely going to realize when it isn’t. I can’t always guarantee that it’s nice and balanced in both items and colors (because color is important beyond just looking good). The first step was going gluten free just over a year ago. I was always getting sick with sinus issues, feeling worn out despite sleeping enough, not to mention the odd digestive issue here and there – ahem. Doing a little reading I started to realize that many of my symptoms matched those of someone with a slight allergy to gluten. I decided to slowly start to remove the gluten from my diet as a test. The more I removed, the better I felt. I’d partially done a gluten free diet several years back but not with any effort. It was too tough back then, there weren’t nearly as many gluten free products on the market as there are now. I’d like to note that I never had any testing done and don’t think that simply eliminating gluten from my diet was a ‘cure’, I just know it helps. At the same time I started to look at what I was putting in my body. I began to buy more organic foods and also started looking into what vitamin/mineral supplements I may want to take.

Things were going well, I was feeling better, but I still felt I could do more. Along came bentos. Just in case you don’t click on the link (but I think you should).. bento simply means ‘boxed lunch’ or ‘boxed meal’ in Japan. You can get them at the convenience store (much like ours have evil gas station hot dogs or burritos – only this is better for you), train stations, etc, or you can make your own. Since I really only have the ‘make your own’ option, I began to look into how that would work. My first efforts were… interesting to say the least, and I quickly realized that my idea of portions was off when I was actually consciously eating. So, what all’s there… I figured I would snack on this throughout the day as I brought it to a class but that didn’t happen. At lunch I was faced with a cut up sausage, rice, carrots, strawberries, grapes, and a tomato/motz salad. Ack! Talk about food overload. I would have been fine with just the sausage and grapes to be honest. I kind of remember eating as much as I could and then snacking in the afternoon. I did the same thing (minus the side salad) the next day of the two day class. It was still too much food. But it was full of color, fruit, and veg so I felt good about that at least. And the strawberries were so pretty!  The only ‘Asian’ thing is the rice in this case…

 

Next, I thought I’d try falafel and salad.. with strawberries and carrots again lol…

This also wound up being too much food and I had the leftover falafel for my afternoon snack.. but it was closer!

 

Ok, so then I was home sick one day and thought I should try and make carrot flowers… turns out, easier than I expected. I just took the sharp point of a bottle/can opener and ran it down the length of the carrot, turned the carrot, and repeated. After all that, I just cut the carrot into slices. Worked a treat! I also used some mini leaf dough cutters to cut the cheese into shapes. With that, I had a lovely spring salad. This actually turned out to be just the right amount of food and was quite satisfying.

    

 

 

 

 

It was time for class again…and I figured I would plan better this time. Here’s what I had for those two days.. rice with miso and carrot flowers, roasted chicken, grapes, and a veg or two. Was just the right amount of food.. I was starting to get it!

 

Next up was sesame carrot shreds on rice with chicken salad, Asian style veggies, and some yellow tomatoes. The tomatoes became the afternoon snack this time around.

Recently I wanted to try making a tamagoyaki or a Japanese sweet omelet… they’re tricky and involve a little bit of patience.. not something one usually has in the morning while making lunch. However.. I somehow managed! See? Didn’t it come out oh so nicely? I had it with a chicken/veggie stir fry of sorts, grapes, and cashews and the whole thing was yummy.

Since then I’ve just done a basic fried rice bento… all of my baking cups were in use after I made muffins. Those things are really amazing by the way, highly recommend them!

As you can see, I’ve come quite a way from my first attempts. It’s really not as tough as I thought it was going to be. A lot of the prep work can be done in advance, rice can be frozen in portions, etc. Hopefully some of you kept going if only to look at the pictures of this very long entry. The idea was to blog about each bento on its own but I got way behind and wound up with this. So, now, I’m caught up and can start fresh come Monday morning with new pictures. Maybe I’ll marinate some white fish in miso/wine/soy sauce again… it’s quite good!