32 Lunches - Day 23, Dec. 22: Pork tocino + fried egg

Yummy lunch last Friday! I had homemade pork tocino (this recipe, but halved the marinade ingredients and omitted the food coloring) and fried egg, with tomatoes on the side. Pork tocino is one of the usual cured meats served for breakfast in the Philippines. Who doesn’t love all-day breakfast? We sometimes have tocino for dinner too.

Dessert was a couple of oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies, which I baked with A the night before.

32 Lunches - Day 22, Dec. 21: Roasted turkey leg + steamed okra

Dinner leftovers again. I had the turkey with Mang Tomas All-Around Sarsa.

32 Lunches - Day 21, Dec. 20: Chicken ramen

I made chicken ramen for dinner the night before, following a recipe off the box of ramen broth. My ramen had chicken breast fillets, corn, spinach, egg, seaweed, and roasted sesame seeds. And I used instant ramen noodles (just threw out the soup powder packets). There was enough left over for lunch. I may have put too much sesame seeds on this bowl. 😬

32 Lunches - Day 20: Embutido meatloaf + cucumbers

Christmas seems to be the season for embutido, the Filipino meatloaf which you would usually see roll/cylinder-shaped. This one I make is loaf pan-shaped. I use a recipe from casaveneracion.com, which is the first food/recipe blog I followed (when it was still pinoycook.net). Ate my embutido with cucumbers. Dessert was a homemade brownie (Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownie mix).

32 Lunches - Day 19: Baked sole fillets + scrambled eggs + cucumbers

32 Lunches - Day 18, Dec. 17: Congee Queen takeout/delivery

I forgot to take a photo! We had the Christmas party/get-together of the kids’ playgroup last Sunday. It was a lunchtime-afternoon party and we parents agreed on ordering in (vs. potluck). We ordered from Congee Queen, which had a lot of branches in the Greater Toronto Area, including Markham, where we were having the party. (No CQ in Guelph.) Congee, yeung chow fried rice with shrimp & BBQ pork, chow mein, salt & pepper squid, stuffed eggplant, sweet & sour pork, another noodle dish, a tofu dish, and a mince mixture with lettuce for wrapping were the food I remember we got. We were all full and satisfied after. You really can never go wrong with Chinese takeout. :)

32 Lunches - Day 17: Baked chicken wings + cucumber-carrot salad + tuna + wonton soup

The chicken wings, wonton soup, and cucumber salad were leftovers from dinner the day before. The leftovers weren’t enough to feed all of us so I opened 2 cans of tuna (brought over from the Philippines!) and cut up some tomatoes to go with it. For the chicken wings, I used this recipe. The cucumber salad is a mix of cucumbers, carrots, and shrimp + fish sauce dressing (recipe from my Vietnamese friend L).

32 Lunches - Day 16, Dec. 15: Leftover pork alfredo pasta

My son was sick Friday and I had to bring him to the hospital. I knew I didn’t know how long we’d be there so I packed us lunch... leftovers from the previous day: pork, garlic, mushrooms, peas, and rotini in alfredo sauce.

32 Lunches - Day 15, Dec. 14: Pasta alfredo with pork + lettuce salad + leftover pork spring rolls

Pasta: rotini + bottled alfredo sauce + garlic, pork, mushroom & peas
Salad: iceberg lettuce + cucumber + crispy fried onions + feta + italian dressing
Leftover lumpiang shanghai

32 Lunches - Day 14: Baked tilapia fillet + fried egg + leftover sauteed veggies

Leftovers for lunch again. Baked tilapia fillets from the other night + sauteed sayote & carrot from the night before that. I added a fried egg (the yolk broke 🙁). Dessert was cantaloupe.

32 Lunches, Day 13, Dec. 12: Pork spring rolls + sauteed chayote & carrotss

I spent a good part of Tuesday morning rolling up spring rolls for dinner that I decided to enjoy my hard work and eat spring rolls for lunch, instead of the fish leftovers I had originally planned to eat. I fried a few and had a good freshly-cooked lunch of lumpiang shanghai with rice and leftover ginisang sayote & carrot, cooked the way Manang L prepares it at my mom’s house in the Philippines. It’s meals like this that help me not miss the Philippines too much.

32 Lunches - Day 12: Spaghetti bolognese + fresh veggies with dip

Lunch earlier was leftovers again: spaghetti bolognese from last night's dinner and cut fresh veggies from the supermarket (Zehrs) veggie tray from a party we hosted last weekend.

this ranch dip that comes with the veggie tray is really good

A slice of cookie butter cake (leftover from the party, too) for dessert :) Cake was also from Zehrs.

32 Lunches, Day 11: Taco rice

Taco Sunday! I made the beef filling from scratch, using this recipe. Ate it with chopped lettuce, tomato-onion salsa, grated cheddar cheese, bottled salsa, sour cream, and rice. It was too late when I realized that we didn’t have tortillas or taco shells. We always have rice though... white rice to the rescue!

I also found some chips in the pantry so I used them too when I got tired of rice. From taco rice to nachos! Yum yum!

32 Lunches - Day 10, Dec. 9: Chicken a la pobre + siomai + garden salad

I forgot to take a photo of my lunch last Saturday. I had leftover chicken a la pobre (from Friday night dinner) with garden salad (leftovers too) and siomai (which I steamed from frozen). I just have a photo of the siomai packaging:

32 Lunches - Day 9, Dec. 8: Garden salad + ham & egg salad and cheddar-pineapple sandwiches

32 Lunches - Day 8, Dec. 7: Cheddar-pineapple sandwich + curried egg salad sandwich

I had errands today so I decided to make a lunch I could easily take along if I ended up running late (to leave the house to catch the bus). Therefore, sandwiches! I made 2. First was a cheddar-pineapple sandwich made of grated cheddar cheese, drained crushed pineapple (I had some left over from when I made embutido), and mayonnaise. I don’t remember the ratios, but it was inspired by this recipe for cheese pineapple spread I saw on kawalingpinoy.com. Second sandwich was a curried egg salad sandwich--chopped hard boiled egg+mayonnaise+salt&pepper+curry powder.

32 Lunches - Day 7, Dec. 6: Baked haddock fillets + steamed okra

It was another late lunch day (because I joined my son for a morning nap). We had leftovers for lunch.

32 Lunches - Day 6, Dec. 5: Tim Hortons’ chicken noodle soup

Oh wow. A week into this project and I have backlog already. :/ Anyway, Day 6... We had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and by noon we found ourselves in the mall. I wasn’t really hungry yet but thought that I should have lunch already because I likely wouldn’t have time to eat later. So I just got chicken noodle soup, which Tim Hortons serves with a half bun of white or whole wheat bread (I got white). The soup was filling enough and my son N enjoyed it too.

I almost forgot! December 5 is carbonaramara.com’s anniversary! Happy 6th anniversary to my domain name! :) (I should have celebrated with a more photogenic meal. :D)

32 Lunches - Day 5, Dec. 4: Baked basa fillet + steamed asparagus

I had late lunch today because I napped with my son and we both woke up a little past noon. Lunch was leftovers from the other day: baked basa fillet & steamed asparagus with rice, and apple wedges & a chocolate cookie cake slice for dessert.

32 Lunches - Day 4, Dec. 3: Pho Kinh Do’s mango salad + vermicelli bowl

We had Sunday lunch out as we came from R’s company’s children’s Christmas party in the morning. His company sponsored a movie for the kids (“The Star”) and Santa Claus came to distribute presents for the kids. Pho Kinh Do is one of the many Vietnamese restaurants/ neighborhood pho joints in Guelph. Vietnamese were one of the first Asian immigrants in Guelph (they started coming in during the time of the Vietnam War over 30 years ago). If in other Canadian cities the Asian supermarkets are owned by Chinese, in Guelph the Asian groceries are Vietnamese-owned. The many neighborhood family-owned pho restaurants usually serve Vietnamese and Thai food. I love pho (noodle soup is a comfort food) so I’m really happy that there’s always a place just around the corner where I can get my pho fix. I usually order pho, but for Sunday lunch I got a grilled pork + minced shrimp + spring roll vermicelli bowl for myself and shared a mango salad with R who got a plate of seafood pad thai for himself. My elder son A got a vermicelli bowl too, and we just gave N the youngest a little bit of what each of us got.

mango salad with shrimp

32 Lunches - Day 3, Dec. 2: Turkey meatballs + mac & cheese + steamed asparagus

Almost forgot to take a photo of today’s lunch: turkey meatballs, mac and cheese, and steamed asparagus.

32 Lunches - Day 2, Dec. 1: Pork ribs sinigang leftovers

Leftovers from dinner last night. Pork sinigang is always a good idea. Comfort food from the Philippines.

32 Lunches - Day 1, Nov. 30: Chicken leftovers + cucumber-apple salsa wrap

Hi! I’m back! In my attempt to blog again, I decided on a 32-day project to help me write/post something more regularly, get back into the habit. A lot has changed in 4.5 years. From Japan, we moved back to the Philippines, then we moved to Guelph, Ontario, Canada 3 years ago. I am now a stay-at-home-mom of 2 beautiful boys. Amidst the chaos of managing a preschooler and almost-1-year-old, I try to find some peace and calm in my daily weekday lunches (while my eldest is in school and I just have 1 kid to handle). Lunch prep is done while the baby naps and my it’s ready when he wakes up, in time for us to enjoy lunch together.

November 30 lunch was a chicken wrap using shredded leftover baked chicken (I used this recipe for the marinade and baked the chicken pieces—breasts, thighs, legs—at 375F for 45+ minutes) from the night before + cucumber-apple salsa (cucumber, apple, red onion, cilantro, lemon juice, salt & pepper) + Kraft BBQ sauce + sour cream. My son had the chicken too, but he ate it with rice. Dessert was vanilla yogurt with Philippine mango jam (my last spoonfuls! 😱😩). It was a good, light lunch. 

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