The Christian Homekeeper™

The pictures for this post came from the web. I searched til I came up with something that looks almost exactly like what I prepare.

There was a time when an easy lunch meant to me, beans, corn, fried squash all from the garden, cornbread and sliced tomato.  That was when I had five children still at home and a big garden to eat out of.  These days I don’t have such a big garden, due to lack of space and I only have three children at home.  Sometimes one of my grown children drops in for lunch and sometimes hubby comes home for lunch but most of the time its just me and the three.

So lunches are still easy but in a different way.  Oh and let me mention I am much older now and I really don’t have the energy all the time like I did years ago!  LOL!  Anyway, here are some easy lunch ideas that I am compiling.

Onigiri. Oh yes, you heard right. A new word for us, to be sure.  This is a Japanese word. Onigiri are basically rice balls and sometimes they are filled with meat or veggies.  I like to find fresh salmon that is a good price and make salted salmon to fill onigiri. I also fill them with stir fried veggies, usually left over from the night before.  I use short grained rice to make onigiri. Short grained rice is usually sold as sushi rice. I cook it with a little rice wine vinegar and agave nectar. Then when it is cooled, I make it into balls and fill it.  I learned a smashing way of making the balls of rice from justbento.com.  You use the corner of a plastic bag to mold it. You can even press a hole in the ball to fill using the bag. Just be sure to wet theinside of the bag before adding the rice.

I sometimes flavor the rice before making it into balls.  I learned that a powdered flavoring that I have been using is considered low-class in Japan. Figures I am way down on the social totem pole in Japan as well as here.  LOL!  But these flavorings are realy tasty.  I buy them at a local oriental market. They have dried seaweed, deired salmon or pickled beets. No MSG just plain ingredients.  My favorite is the pickled beet.

Onigiri is traditionally made into small triagle shapes but we make it into whatever we feel like at the moment, balls, triangles, or that strange shape you get when you use the corner of a plastic bag. Sometimes onigiri is wrapped in seaweed andsometimes there is just a slice of seaweed served with it.  We prefer it without seaweed.

Onigiri probably wouldn’t be enough by itself so I make an egg concoction sometimes to go with it.  I don’t know the Japanese name right off hand…. Oh, I remember it is a tamagoyaki .

You need a smallish skillet for this, one that is used for cooking one egg at a time.  You heat oil in the skillet. In a bowl you beat two eggs, 2 tablespoons water, a teaspoon of light soy sauce, some chopped green onion, a drop or two of agave nectar and if you need the flavor, some benito flakes which is basically fish flavor.  Then you pour the egg mixture into the hot oil and cook like an omelet. You flip the eggs over and then over again, pressing as you flip and cook. You build a little multi-layered omelet. then you cut it in half to serve.  A two egg  tamagoyaki will usually serve 2 people.