bento friday: brave new attempts

I was raised largely health-nut-vegetarian-hippie-style.  I jokingly refer to myself as a 'recovering vegetarian.'  I kind of tend to eat very little meat out of preference (just never developed much of a taste for the stuff, I guess), but have to get some occasionally for health reasons.  

Then I went and married a dyed-in-the-wool, huntin', grillin', steak-gnoshin' carnivore.  

Life is funny like that.  

Anyway, my upbringing meant that I never really got a lot of training in meat-cooking, and have always been kind of squicked out by raw meat.  I have to *touch* that?  Ew. 

I've gotten a lot better about that, and can at least handle the stuff now.  I can make chicken and dumplings.  I can grill sausages.  I'm making progress, here.   But cooking cow-meat still terrifies me; there are all these super-specific amounts of cooking (WTF does medium-well actually mean, anyway?), and it's apparently really important to get it exactly right for each person.  What, you've never cooked a steak before?  Better get it perfect!  But no pressure!

Eek.  But!  I am a grown-up now, and can conquer this silly steak-phobia.  A while back I set aside a chunk of steak when portioning a grocery store family-pack, and tossed it in the freezer for bento purposes.  It got a little freezer-burned while sitting in there being ignored, but finally I thawed the damn thing and made a bento.  And it wasn't half bad!  

a bento testament to bravery: steak!

The steak was sliced super-thin (thanks, Husband, for your fabulous knife-sharpening skills), tossed in a skillet with hot sesame oil, and cooked for like 15 seconds on a side, and then covered with sesame seeds.  

I was utterly terrified.  But hey!  It kinda worked!  I ain't claiming this is some sort of pinnacle of worldwide culinary achievement, but it was downright edible and non-rubbery.  I call that a win.  

steak bento, packed all snuggled in together

Some stir-fried random-veggies-that-were-languishing-in-the-fridge accompanied the steak, and there's some brown rice under there somewhere.  

Overall, I declare victory over my cow-cooking phobia.  Booyah!