That’s Bento Boxed Lunch of course.

At first I was a little weirded out by this whole idea, it seems to involve lots of plastic containers, and lots of food cut into cute shapes, but where do all those discarded edges go? What a waste.

But after reading further, I can see the appeal. I treat everyday lunches so casually. Usually, I pop something frozen into the microwave at work, and save my thought, effort, and creativity for dinner, the important meal. I could get into these adorable and appealing little lunches, that mostly seem very well-balanced.

Here’s blogs about bentos I found that I like a lot:
All My Bento Are Belong To Me
Lunch In A Box
Cooking Cute

And here’s one that’s some really wild and great food art, but I’m not really sure I’d want to eat:
Sakurako Kitsa’s Flickr

I’ve been taking a little blogging hiatus since Thanksgiving. I think I got a little overloaded with cooking, and the dark, dark nights are getting me down. I mean, what’s the point of cooking anything if there isn’t enough light to get a good picture of it? The non-blogging streak began with Thanksgiving when I missed all sorts of good photo opportunities, what with the chaos of Thanksgiving, with people around, not to mention the wine. I did remember to capture one good photo of the meal, via my friend Abby’s plate. Here it is.

We had a potluck Thanksgiving at my folks house this year, which worked beautifully. (And you know I like potlucks.) Everyone contributed something, and no one had to stress out and get up at the crack of dawn to prep a dozen dishes. I’ll post about my contributions, namely the stuffing (gluten-free), the mushroom gravy (also gluten-free), and the delicious brussels sprouts with chestnuts in brown butter sauce from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.

Since I’ve been hecka lazy about cooking for the last few days, I figured I should post about something. What with my husband participating in NaNoWriMo, and all sorts of bloggers posting away for NaBloPoMo, I’m starting to feel guilty. So here’s a topic I love to share, and hell, it’s even food-related!

Anyone who knows me has probably heard me talk about my wedding at some point or another. My husband and I were vehemently opposed to going back into the depths of credit card debt that we’d been working so hard to clamber our way out of, just to feed a bunch of our friends and family some fancy food that probably wouldn’t be nearly worth the price per head that it would cost us. We were lucky enough to have some very generous friends donate the use of their backyard for our wedding and reception, so it just seemed all-around appropriate to have a potluck wedding reception. I highly recommend this to everyone!

Here’s what the buffet table looked like:

The friends whose backyard we were using had the brilliant idea of hiring a couple of servers to collect people’s potluck contributions on their way in, and then the servers managed everything getting plated, heated, and rotated appropriately. So this is just one snapshot of the buffet table, as it evolved throughout the evening.

If you’re looking carefully, you may be wondering about the brown items in the middle of the table. Yes, that is Chocolate-Covered Bacon. With Sprinkles. You’d actually be surprised, this concoction had it’s admirers. And no, not just the family dog, they don’t even have a dog. This fabulous dish was courtesy of Jeremy’s friend Matthew, and it served it’s purpose as the fulfillment of a drunken dream of the best food in the world. (It actually was kinda good.)

In addition to the buffet, we were lucky enough to have a friend make our wedding cake:

And another friend did the flowers (including those on the cake):

Let me just say, I highly recommend doing your wedding this way. Even if you have to pay for a cake and a florist, the potluck adds such a community feel to the event. Everyone gets to show off their favorite dish, and share in good food with friends and family.

Pictures taken by George Paginini and Jayanti Anand.