bento #23: the one with the pumpkin porridge

have not been preparing any bento for some time now... reason being:

1. don't really like the taste of overnight dish
2. no microwave in the office. so even with insulated food container, i'll be having lukewarm food for lunch at best, and outright cold lunch at worst
3. no proper pantry in the office. so it's really a hassle washing up all the food containers in the (one and only) wash basin in the toilet
4. i'm always rushing to get out of the house in the morning (coz running late for work lar!), so dun really have a lot of time to prepare my bento
5. ok fine! i'm just pure lazy. satisfied?

anyway, last weekend i suddenly had this urge to cook some porridge, so went to the supermarket to look for some ideas as to what can i throw into my porridge.

at first, i was thinking of sliced potatoes, carrots and maybe some crabsticks. then i saw a quarter pumpkin for sale in the fresh produce section and my brain went 'ting!' and i can immediately see my pumpkin porridge in my mind. heck, i can even taste it in my mouth, even though i've not eaten a pumpkin porridge before!

so that's what i cooked for dinner yesterday. i tell you, cooking for one is a real bitch. as i don't really cook that often and i'm not that confident to share my culinary experiments with my housemates yet, i need to use up all the perishable ingredients that i buy. in the end, i had more pumpkin than rice in the pot! which explained why my porridge is such brilliant orange in colour. hehehe...

other than pumpkin, i threw in a lot (again, perishable items!) of oyster mushrooms (not sure it's called, but according to Mona and from my searches in google, this kind looks closest to the ones i used) and some red dates that i found in my larder. would love to throw in some kei-zhi (wolfberries) but found out (too late) that i didn't have any. and the result...

it's quite yummy lar... not sure if it's becoz my pumpkin is organic, but the porridge is not as sweet as i'd expected it to be. while i was shopping for the ingredients, mom called and when she learnt of my plans to cook pumpkin porridge, she said it's so weird but there's no harm trying. but it did not taste weird at all! will definitely try it again, when the cooking bug bite me again the next time!

neeways, as with my previous porridge attempt, i ended up with a big pot again. hmm... i guess i need to improve on my estimation. so that's by bento for today's lunch. incredibly, i was able to wake up early, nuke the leftover porridge, dish out my fav condiments of fermented bean curd and pickled sizhuan vege into my food containers and still reach the office in time for the 1st shift (i'm on 1st shift every monday due to !@^!@&($@&# monday morning meeting)!

read also:
1) bento #18: the one with all the shapes
2) bento #14: the one with the experimental porridge
3) bento #8: the one with the yellow vege