The dinner
Jac panfried Nile perch fillets and served them with salad.
She bought the fish fillets frozen; they turned out lovely. This is another one of the meaty, white-fleshed fish I enjoy so much.
The bento
I woke on Monday morning to rumbling thunder and flashing lightning. I think a loud thunder crash woke Pixel and I at the same time; I sat up in bed, and we just looked at each other. Jac was sleeping soundly, and Billy Lee watched us through the open door, from her favourite spot on the carpet, across the hallway.
The Nile perch filets were actually quite large, and Jac had cut them in half, cooking two pieces simply seasoned with lemon pepper for our dinner, and the other two pieces rubbed with all seasoning for our bento. I packed us fish, salad and fruit for lunch.
The salad consisted of baby carrots, sugar snap peas, yellow capsicum, mushrooms aand cherry tomatoes. I placed the fish on a bed of lettuce. The dark red grapes were seedless, of course. the strawberries turned out to be too sour for my liking. I couldn’t help but make a sour face when I ate them. In the little birdy container there was lemon myrtle dressing to go with the fish.
Jac’s lemon myrtle dressing was in the orange tulip container. It has a ladybird on it, which I actually felt a little icky about, as it’s like putting a bug in your lunch. :)
The little bird and tulip containers come from a set of four sauce containers I bought from JBox.
They’re Ciao! Colorful Animal & Fruit Mayonnaise Cups.
This is the note I placed in Jac’s lunch box, enclosed in a little greaseproof paper. Funny thing is, she said she had no idea of the thunder and lightning until she read the note – she’d slept through the whole storm – by the time she woke up, it was over!
As I munched on my fish and salad, my workmate J dug into a box of creamy bacon and mushroom bow-shaped pasta she’d bought from 88 Royal lunch bar. It smelled very good to me. She said it was very tasty, but much too oniony.
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I rarely eat fish even though I love it just because I don’t know how to cook it! Does Jac defrost the fish before cooking? (Sometimes I feel so stupid asking cooking questions.)
As usual, love the post!
Steph,
No prob – yes, she defrosts it before cooking.
That pasta salad looks so yummy – I’m a sucker for anything creamy. Lots of onion isn’t good though – raw onion always gives me the worst indigestion!
TFP – aren’t you a little wary of buying imported fish due to differnt country’s food safety regulations (or lack of them)? I always avoid it and try to get Australian or NZ fish. (I may have been watching too much Today Tonight… but am interested in your opinion.)
Holly,
We eat a mix of imported and local fish. If I’m perfectly honest, though, I must admit I don’t think much about the bad things in overseas fish. I figure as long as I eat a bit of everything rather than too much of anything, I’ll be ok. BTW, it’s not actually a pasta salad – it was a hot pasta dish, so the onion was cooked. There was a lot of it – I saw J’s pile of onion when she got to the end of her lunch. :)
i’m a sucker for those red seedless grapes too. I hate spitting out grape seeds, and anyway the seedless red grapes are more crunchy than the seed-full ones, and hence, more tasty.
your little notes included in the bento are so cute! ^^
What an awesome lunch. You’ve inspired me to do better with my leftovers. Now I’m just waiting on the bento’s to arrive.
I guess because Hubby has IBS (caused by dodgy seafood), exactly what I put into the shopping trolley (and where it’s come from) is always at the forefront of my mind.
Hi
I am just a stranger, and I dont know how i happened to come across this blog . I just want to say your photography is great really made my mouth water for all the yummy bento’s u made. And the notes that you leave and so cute and filled with love.
Just wanna say its such a sweet jesture and keep it up :D
Some of your bento’s have definately inspired me.
Cheers
Rashny
I have bento-ver backwards trying to cozy up to your lunch box posts, but they are not for me (exclusive of the imaginative illustrated notes tucked in amongst the goodies). Personal preference. I reel (and not in a good way) whenever I see Spam featured in a dish. Again, personal preference rears its ugly mug. Those minor issues aside, I can tell you I have loved your blog since I first discovered it. Can’t get enough of the family gathering (holiday/birthday/etc.) fotos and food descriptions. I grow greener and greener with envy each time I see pictures of the varied luches you have available to you. And the picture-perfect dinners, well. “Nile perch?” I feel positively deprived! Oh, I do have another complaint, after all. Too few kitty pics. More kitty pics, please! Best health and happiness in the New Year.
I think you should become a cartoonist…I love today’s note!
dea,
I don’t like having to spit out any fruit seeds, so I only like seedless watermelon too.
mina,
Cool, good that you like them.
dab,
Excellent! Having the right gear makes it easier and much more fun too.
Holly,
Ahhh. I see why you’d have to be super-careful.
Thanks, Rashny. I’m pleased to hear that!
I do plan to keep it up, so there’ll be more coming up.
Robert,
No worries, thank you for your honesty. Well, given that people have such different tastes and different ideas for how cook and serve food, I wouldn’t expect everyone to love every single post. I just eat what I want to eat, photograph it and write about it. Everyone’s free to like or dislike the posts. If there’s enough dislike I suppose they’ll find some other blog that is more to their taste(s). I don’t actually see my family that often these days, which is why there aren’t so many feasts – but you’ll be pleased to see the Chinese New Year dinner post coming up soon. I can’t make any promises about more cat photos, but if I happen to take any I think are worth posting, I will do so. :)
Thanks, Lisa. I don’t think I’d make it as a cartoonist but it’s nice that you think so.