Today is not a working from home day, but I gave kimbap another try. Above, my beautiful bento box! In the box in the middle are six pieces of kimbap filled with salmon furikake. As per Tari’s advice, I put much more rice on the seaweed, using 1/2 c of rice (1/2 c uncooked rice; not sure how much it was after cooking) instead of 1/3 c. The additional rice made it easier to firmly roll the kimbap so that it was densely packed instead of spotty and pocked with holes. These are somewhat triangular rather than circular, but the filling is closer to being centered than it was the last time around.

In the box on the right are beautiful asparagus spears, roasted at 400*F with olive oil and salt. I bypassed the garlic and didn’t zest or drizzle lemon over the spears, but they were still delicious. When I opened the bento at work today, the spears were gorgeous, bright green and a bit wrinkled and packed neatly in the box.

Overall, I’m happy with how lunch turned out and will keep trying kimbap. I have a tupperware of egg whites in the fridge from making creme patisserie a couple weeks ago, and I think I’ll fry some up very thinly tomorrow and use them as kimbap filling.

I need to figure out a way to eat more vegetables. At least the stone fruit are finally coming in, thank god. I’ve been anticipating apricots for weeks, and I want to brandy some cherries. At Absinthe’s class on house-made ingredients last week, Jeff (Absinthe) and Neyah (Nopa) talked about all kinds of homemade cocktail ingredients: shrubs, coffee liqueur, grenadine, garnishes, tinctures, and bitters. Now I’m eager to try them all – not that I have a home bar or even any drinking alcohol aside from a bottle of wine and two beers, but I like making things. Only I need another expensive hobby like I need another hole in my head, which is to say, not at all. D: Some friends also went to the class and today, Bob IMed to say that he was making a strawberry and rosemary shrub. I’m making grenadine over at Sahiya’s place tonight; glad that we’re both getting our money’s worth out of the class!