Take Two

My dad took me to go see Captain America today. Me and a kid or two. It was a little weird, being in 3D, but mainly it's your basic action movie minus explosions. Not that there weren't explosion, there was just more punching than I've grown used to. Is it just me or have most movies gone over to either swords or guns?

Anyway, the dialogue can be summed up by the cutting line "You're not going to quit?" delivered with gusto from the bad guy, and the equally fitting "nope" from our dashing hero. My favorite scene was when the grenade was thrown (waaaaaaay at the beginning of the movie), but the death of the baddie was pretty epic. And the ending was mind blowing (and tragic) to someone like me who, apparently, lives under a rock.

Further proof: I just found out today that They're doing Spiderman. Again.

Talk about popular.


In other news:

This is the remainder of the dinner I made sunday: coconut rice and curry. I had the curry again the next day with noodles and it tasted even better. I actually zapped it, and I think that made the coconut cream I put in there stand out.  Back to the bento, the green stuff in the corn is some leftover cilantro, and the white liquid in the pink cup is the coconut cream. It's some kind of sweet, and oh so good when you mix it with the rice and curry. Yes, I put it in the curry and ate it with the curry. Despite  that, we still have a little bit of it left in the fridge and I'm trying not to eat it raw. Maybe if I mix it with yogurt I can call it a "natural dessert" and thereby pass it off as healthy. Cause, you know, despite giving us the bubonic plague, yellow fever, and tuberculosis, nature is looking out for us.

I finally gave in and stood on a chair for this shot. 

This is a zucchini/squash cake. It was really good, the last one leftover after Thursday's dinner – a dinner where neither my dad nor my two older brothers were present, just to give you some perspective. My aunt made these with the veggies from my grandfather's garden. The zucchini she used was immense. I didn't recognize it at first, thought it was some strange kind of squash to be honest. Thicker than my upper arms, almost as wide as my head - that's how big it was. And probably two feet long. The rice is just normal rice, with a little bit of red pepper paste, curtesy of Korea, and leftover steak. I put some dashi (or is it bonito?) flakes in it, and some rice vinegar and mirin. Despite all that it didn't really taste asian to me. I'm finding that Korean and Thai food don't. Especially Korean.
          The rice was actually almost bland, it probably needed more dashi, however the paste provided a nice kick that went well with the surprisingly flavorful veggie burger. The salad was mainly to keep the red pepper off my cherries, but I like the color it added to the "box." I actually left my stacking boxes at work the day before I took this picture, which ended up as a blessing since it forced me to use a chinese take out container (dumplings, I'm assuming). I love the circular shape and how it impacts food arrangement, and it's fun to have that much space. Those white boxes are skinny.  My next bento buy will be a circular box, probably one of these, but it won't happen for a while. I'm still not making bentos consistently enough to classify it as a hobby, definitely not enough to call it a lifestyle. I don't think it will be long before I reach that stage, though. Unlike so many other things I'm trying to get into, bentos are instant gratification. I'm happy when I'm making them, when I'm planning them, when I'm hungry at work and thinking about lunch, and, most importantly of all, eating them is like eating satisfaction. It feeds both my desire to be able to make beauty and my need to make something useful. It's creative and crafty, pretty and practical, indulgent and industrious. But mostly, it taste good, and really, that's all I care about at lunch time.

I don't mind the warm colors so much when the box is black.