{Thursday Lunchbox}

Today is the last day of September. As you may recall, I initially started the Lunchbox Series as a week-long project, which I then turned into a month-long endeavor. I have been receiving a lot of great responses encouraging me to continue the series. I would love to, but for October and November I would really love to profile lunchboxes by others as well as my own.  If you are interested in guest-blogging, please email me at citylifeeats at gmail dot com.  Guest blog posts need not be long – just a picture of your lunch and a description.  My only requests are that the lunch be gluten-free and focused on whole foods.  You do not need to be a gluten-free blogger, or a blogger at all, to participate.

And now, today’s lunch:

• Azuki stew with butternut squash (see below)
• Choosing Raw Cheezy Red Pepper Hemp Dip with Mary’s Gone Crackers (Original Flavor) for dipping (because my ambition of cutting up carrots last night did not happen)
• Kale salad (massaged with just extra-virgin olive oil and sea salt and a drizzle of lime juice)
• Kale chips, made by dehydrating Ricki’s Hail to the Kale Salad (see yesterday’s lunchbox for more background)

As I have mentioned before, I am determined to find more azuki recipes I like.  They are a nutritious and low-glycemic powerhouse, but do not have as versatile in flavor profile as other beans.  Also, unlike other beans, there are not a ton of recipes out there.  My latest favorite has been these Azuki Beans with Brown Rice (for a very pared-down version, also see last Friday’s lunchbox) though I was flipping through the Kind Diet recently and saw an Azuki and Kabocha stew that made me think of trying something along those lines.  What was interesting was the lack of spicing to the stew, which made me think to focus instead on ginger as the main flavor.  This is the first experiment, which includes ginger, garlic, azukis, butternut squash, carrots, and several kinds of chilies.  I think next time I want to increase the squash component but I am liking the combination so far, even if it does require tweaking. And by tweaking, I should explain that I made this stew extra gingery and extra spicy in hopes to help my flu-ish-ness to go away (working through the weekend did me in in terms of fighting my husband’s cold).  So the next time, I will make a more universally appealing approach to this recipe.  In the meantime, I did notice that Ellen at I am Gluten Free has the combination of squash and azukis in mind too, so do check her recipe if you are looking for a squash and azuki recipe right now.

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