Kung Pao Tofu and Tea Talk

August 12th – Okay, I lied. THIS is the last of the purple potato salad. This is a new bento that I purchased from Bento Crazy. I don’t know how I missed this store before, but she’s right by me in Maryland too! Many many (too many!) cute things that caused me to spend an exorbitant amount of unnecessary money. This bento is now living at my sister’s house. She started college yesterday and I thought this would be a nice and fun bento to ease her into making lunches. It comes with a nifty bag and I love the gold glittery interior. Chopsticks are from UGM (loFt, Japan).

Some homemade kung pao tofu (read: Chinese fried tofu cooked in store bought kung pao sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds), purple potato salad, raisins, and a ginger senbei cracker. Rice is sprinkled with some scallions. The tofu had gone bad before I cooked it. In fact, the outer fried skin of the tofu had some mold spots on it. But, I took my dad’s advice and just cut around the molded parts and cooked it anyways. I don’t know if this was part of the equation, or if I just don’t like big triangles of refrigerated fried tofu, but the texture was off.

Tea for today was the (now discontinued) Roze Marzipan. 1tsp tea, few kernels sugar. The tea smelled absolutely delicious, but the rose was overpowering. I could smell the marzipan, but couldn’t taste it at all. The person that sold me the tea said her favorite part of the tea was the candied lavender pieces, and that she would spend all day in the store just picking out the lavender and eating them. She gave my friend and I each a piece and took one for herself. No wonder I didn’t get any lavender in my bag! I think the candied lavender would have really helped the flavor of the tea. I’m going to try to brew this for only a few minutes (as opposed to keeping it in the tumbler), add a little more sugar (I was told the lavender would naturally sweeten the tea, but seeing as how I didn’t get any…), and decant into a regular cup. Let’s see how that works.