#twitterfoodparty #twitterpancakeparty

Last monday of the month, it's time for #twitterfoodparty. This month's theme is pancakes.
I love pancakes. I usually make them like my grandma used to. Just egg, milk, flour and sugar. Add sugar, nutella or cowberries/lingonberries, roll up and enjoy.
But for today, I wanted to make something different. I have a lot of squash left so I looked for a recipe for squash pancakes. I found an african one which was pretty easy to make. Although I wrote it down with the exact amounts, but in the morning I didn't bother and just added the ingredients intuitively. I cooked a big piece of squash, mushed it, added a bit of milk and an add and enough spelt flour to thicken the batter. The original recipe probably used normal flour, but I wanted to try it with spelt flour.
I made 2 pancakes for my bento, added a bit of sugar and made another 3 for breakfast. Both versions were really really good.
I filled the rest of the bento box with lettuce, brussel sprouts, parsley root, swede and carrot.
Lunch time was late today, because we our boss talked with a customer and our 'conference room' is the kitchen. Usually I become hungry around 11am, but today I didn't even feel hungry at 1:30pm. The magic of spelt, which has a lot of fibre :)


A picture of the first breakfast pancake. The light in my kitchen isn't good for photos, so it is a bit dark ^^;

Oops, where's the rice?

I was in a hurry this morning. Maybe I should set my alarm clock to a different time. The just-5-more-minutes always turn into half an hour ^^;
I cooked some vegetables and made scrambled eggs with my last 3 mushrooms. I also put a frozen batch of rice into the microwave.
While the vegetables cooled down, I ate breakfast, changed my clothes and got ready for work. The last thing I do in the morning is usually packing my bento, taking a photo and then I'm off. This morning was the same. I noticed I don't have anything white in my bento, but there was no time to look for something and the box was full anyway.
As I opened the box at lunch, the first thing I thought was "oh no, the rice is still lying in the microwave". So this was a low carb bento. But it was tasty.

The top tier contains green beans, carrot and brussel sprouts. The bottom tier contains lettuce, swede/rutabaga, scrambled eggs and mushrooms.

Pink cat bento

Yesterday's bento wasn't anything special. The only 'decoration' was a piece of carrot in the middle of the rice. My colleague tried to interpret the japanese flag into it, but no, not really XD They seemed kind of disappointed. So today, I made a charaben.
I wanted to make a Jigglypuff, but the ears, arms and feet were too big and it didn't look good. So I just left the ears and made a cat face.
The rice is coloured with beetroot. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, but in the end it turned out ok. The face is made of parsley root and nori. The rest of the box contains lettuce, carrot, beetroot, squash, parsley root and spinach, hidden under tamagoyaki filled with nori.
Lunch was somehow disappointing. My colleagues didn't look T_T And I was too shy to ask them to.

Bento, birds and garden pictures

Nothing special today. Lettuce, parsnip, rice and nori in one tier, hokkaido squash, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, green beans, zucchini and prawns in the other.

I tidied up the balcony room this weekend, so I can store my plants in it when it gets too cold. It wasn't too early. On sunday evening the temperature sank under 0°C (32°F). Freezing. Not that much yet, the plants still are ok. The next nights will be over freezing temperature, so no need to take them in yet. But maybe I'll have to soon.

One of my evening primroses has buds which are almost blossoming. I hope the frost didn't damage them.


I also tried to take photos of 'my' birds. They aren't that shy. Sitting in the trees, maybe 5m away from me, watching me or looking for food. But they are to far away for my camera. The pictures aren't sharp enough.


And at last, a picture from my garden. Well, actually not much of the garden, but one of the borders. There's a stream called Hardau. Usually there isn't as much water as now, but it rained a lot in the last weeks.

Bentos from thursday and friday

Usually I stay in bed until 6 am, but on thursday I managed to get up a little earlier. I didn't go to work earlier thoug, because I spent too much time on my bento. I sautéd squash, a little more squahs with soy sauce and parsley root and fried a potatoe dumpling. The zucchini and carrot were steamed as usual. The lettuce is homegrown. I seeded it early in august, so it didn't grow much. And this are the last leaves. It is already too cold and rainy.



On friday I wanted to eat mushrooms, but I found a little mould on some of them, so I had to throw them away :(
The bento contains gyoza. They contain glutamate, so I don't like them that much. But I wanted to try gyoza, so I bought them nonetheless. They taste better cold, so I'll use the rest in my nex bentos.
I also made tamagoyaki. The pan was too hot so the last layer didn't stick. I have to make them more often. The first ones I made looked a lot better ^^; These are filled with black and white sesame.
The rest of the box is filled with broccoli, carrots, squash and parsley root and decorated with a parsley root cloud and squash leaves.