Oven Baked Chicken (163)

Yesterday I started my new job at UH and it was a very nice first day! All the people that I met are great individuals and my boss is the greatest. Our office is just renovated (an old anatomy classroom that stored bodies, omg!) and my desk is brand spanking new. I'll try to take a picture of it today or something. I have increased responsibilities, which is something I've yearned for. 2008 is looking like it will be a good year work-wise.

My lunch today is an oven baked chicken thigh with rice and corn. On the side I have a small piece of banana cake I made earlier this week and some mega huge blueberries I got at Costco yesterday.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I had a pretty rough and emotional Christmas, but things are looking up now. I'd go into details, but I don't want to paint my blog in blue. I'm getting excited about the Sugar Bowl coming up in just 4 days!! GO WARRIORS!!

Stuffed Aburaage (162)

Yesterday morning my cousin Jennifer e-mailed me to say she'd missed her flight to Honolulu and that she needed to find a hotel to stay. I ended up offering to pick her up after the radio show and letting her stay the night. We had a nice night talking at Zippy's and laughing at the kiddies who apparently were high on the idea of Aunty Jennifer coming over. Baby Girl put on a Christmas singing show and at the end of one song did a shaka. She sang the song again and her shaka was taking on a weird form and we were like, what is she doing? Then suddenly she does what she wanted, which was to have only her thumb, pointer, and pinky pointing up. Then she screams, "ROCK ON!!!!!!" We almost busted our sides open laughing!!

While we were talking she mentioned a co-worker of hers that reads my blog every day. Hi Christina! Thanks for reading!! ^_^


Today I'm eating stuffed aburaage. Aburaage is fried tofu skin and the stuffing is made out of pork. It's my mother in law's dish and something that doesn't smell so great, but tastes really yummy. On the side I have some white rice and stewed carrots. I added the shelled edamame and a little sprig of parsley for extra detail.

I've been slowly but surely going down in weight, probably because I've been really good about portioning lately. My other cousin Stef heard I've become really skinny and told me I need to eat food but as you can all see here, of course I eat food. lol My best friend's wedding is at the end of May, I'm pretty confident that I can be at my goal weight of 120 by then!! YaY!

I will have no bento tomorrow as we are going to have a Christmas lunch for work.

On On Leftovers (161)

Yesterday I had a birthday party to attend at On On on McCully. I ate a whole lot of food, but was able to control myself in that I ate a TON of the salad then did not eat anything of the last two courses. (there were EIGHT!!) I thought the food was great, especially the salad! It was probably doused in fistfuls ajinomoto (MSG) but still tasted yummy!


I don't think I've ever had an 8 course meal at a Chinese restaurant, so it was quite an experience. I didn't know that we were getting this much food so of course I ate a ton of salad, then downed a lot of soup, then quickly ate up the kids' discarded "duck in buns" before I realized that I should have been saving room for all the other things. Roast chicken came out, then a seafood medley in a fried taro bowl, next came mongolian beef with asparagus, then stuffed tofu, and finally cake noodles with duck meat. The duck noodles was by far the best dish so naturally I was upset that it came out last when I'd already stopped eating. I tried a small piece of meat and it was so yummy, that's why my bento is kinda overflowing with it! lol

Sorry for the late and short posting, but it's radio show day! Tune in if you are bored! http://www.onlinegamingradio.com

Beef Stroganoff (160)

Last night we had beef stroganoff, which I really love. Still, this was a really rough bento to pretty up because it's appearance in general is just very gray and pasty looking, but I managed to figure something out. Not my best bento, but still better than what it looked like on its own!

The picture is a bit blurry, sorries! :( Anyway, as you can see from the photo, I used Ancient Peas. These are not a special variety, I mean these have been in my freezer for quite some time and have been given one last chance for glory before retiring. Some still look fresh, obviously these are the ones that decided to try Botox for Peas. I topped it with three simple sakura carrots for color and frilliness.

One week until Christmas and here I am with the same long list of people to shop for as I did a week ago. +_+ I got really cute cards from the guys at Square Enix, which is actually the only cards I've gotten this year, so thank you!! It's a snowman with cutout eyes and when you open it, a chocobo is peeking out at you. I'll definitely put them up at my new desk! (whenever I finally start my new job!)

I finally got to watch the Survivor finale and YAY the person I wanted to win, won! Next season they are doing Survivor: Micronesia and are putting old favorite Survivors against people who have watched the show since day one. I looked at their application and man it looks like fun, but I think my severely bad eyesight and reliance on contact lenses would be a huge issue. *sob*

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (159)

Yesterday we finally got off our asses to go take the kiddies Christmas tree shopping. I figured Walmart was a good place to start since they always seem to have the short little trees we want so we headed out to the Mililani one because if they had none, City Mill and Star Market are right there. All three stores had no trees left! We headed back onto the freeway with Baby Girl asking us every 15 seconds why we didn't buy a tree yet and whether we thought the trees on the side of the road were nice. By the time we got to Home Depot I was ready to claw my eyes out at her non-stop questioning. Oh wait, I mean, my daughter is the most wonderfulest little person in the whole world!

We could see buttloads of trees in the back but there was a chain on the gate, so we went into the store and come to find out Home Depot's tree lot, which is open from 8 am to 8 pm, closed at 4 pm for a Christmas party. ON SUNDAY. There were at least 4 other customers with us in shock that they'd be this dumb. I hope Home Depot eats all their trees. Yeah, I'm bitter and full of scorn, so sue me.

We went to the Pearl City Walmart nearby, but they had no short trees either, so we went all the way to Waikele to Lowes where we found out that they had only 6-7 foot trees left but they were all 50% off! Woohoo! That's my kinda tree price! We chose a nice grand fir tree and had the guy cut all the love handles off to leave us with a nice 5 foot tree for $20. YaY!

Buddy was driving me insane, picking off all the glass balls and throwing them like fast balls into the middle of the tree, then picking them up as they fell out and throwing them again. On the bright side, he's got quite the throwing arm! I had to put each ornament on like 5 times, but eventually it got done. I tried to get them to take our Christmas photo but just couldn't get it done. I even busted out the puffs and that didn't work, so I'll have to try again another day. D:

We ate Costco chicken for lunch on Saturday so I used up some of the leftovers in today's bento. I chopped up the thigh meat into small pieces and added a tablespoon of light mayo to make it stick together then wrapped scoops of this mixture into romaine lettuce leaves. These leaves were pretty awesome for making what look like temaki sushi rolls. I ripped the stem out until about halfway, put the chicken mixture into the cup area at the top of the leaves, then wrapped the two strips of leaf at the bottom around to make this nice shape!


I fit three in very nicely and added a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese plus some carrot sticks for a side and color. My bottom tier didn't look so great so I didn't post the photo. I have peeled tangerine slices and some fat free chocolate pudding. Mmm!!

PB&B Sammiches (158)

I'm at home all morning with Baby Girl as she woke up with a fever. This afternoon we're having my goodbye coffee hour at work, so I have to go in at lunchtime.

The OOT forum at Allakhazam is having this nut challenge in posts, so I decided to play by doing some peanut butter and mashed blackberry sandwiches. I'd been thinking about this during the week and finally today had a good opportunity to do a peanut butter bento!

I cut each slice out first; 6 gingerbread men and 6 trees. Then I put the peanut butter on both sides, then the mashed blackberries went in the middle. My very nice Aunty Cheryl sent us her yearly batch of yummy Lilikoi and Jaboticaba Jelly jars and I wanted to use it, but my blackberries are getting rotten already, so I wanted to use as many as possible. Thank you Aunty!! We had just run out of grape jelly!!

On the side I have more blackberries and then some sliced apple cut out with more Christmas cookie cutters in the shapes of angels, holly leaves, and candy canes. I should have been more creative and made the candy canes out of the skin parts and then made stripes, but I got a little lazy halfway through. Maybe next time!!

Meatballs (157)

Last night Baby Girl had her Christmas program and she was chosen to be in the finale. They assigned her to carry the 'C' in MERRY CHRISTMAS and we were of course quite proud of this since not every child gets to be in the finishing number. They come filing out and she's looking looking looking for us and starts dilly-dallying until she lags behind so much that the sign now says MERRY HRISCTMAS and Mr. Pikko is laughing his ass off saying, "Our daughter ruined Christmas!" Afterwards we took his parents to their first trip to Genki Sushi, which was fun!

Having no leftovers to use for my bento I busted out my frozen Aidell's stash of meatballs and cooked a cup of rice for onigiri. I added carrot sticks and edamame but it still looked rather dull in color so I used some of my animal food dividers, which just waste away in my cabinet. If you listen carefully you can hear them all giggling with glee at being used in a bento!

My wonderful friend and co-worker Cem has very kindly taken up a campaign to get me more Bloggers Choice Awards votes for Best Food Blog this year and I felt that for his efforts in spreading the word about my blog I owed him a personal thanks here. <3! I have to admit I'd started to get a little sluggish on my bento enthusiasm after Fan Fest and with Christmas stressing and work overload, but seeing how much effort he put into getting people to read my blog and vote for me has brought back my bento drive.

Pot Roast (156)

My mother in law makes really good pot roast but I always love the vegetables in pot roast dishes the most. When I was packing up food last night I wasn't sure how I'd turn this into a nice looking bento since pot roast generally doesn't look very attractive. So to help offset the doodoo like characteristics of the meat and potatoes, I decided to make the majority of this bento focus on the salad instead. Lettuce and tomato always look really nice in a box (in my opinion anyway) and so I took a large portion of salad to go with a tiny portion of food. I figured this is healthier for me anyway.

I packed some Catalina dressing in the little lion container for the salad. Not my best bento, but it looks yummy to me! This is packed in my Doraemon box, which is a wonderful size!! On the side I have some blackberries we bought at Costco last night.

I don't know how everyone else is doing but I am slacking so badly on Christmas shopping. I've bought the exact same DVD set for both my parents and presents for Mr. Pikko, my mainland niece and nephew, but that's about it. I still have to shop for my brother, in-laws, niece and nephew, sitter, sitter kids, MY OWN KIDS, and my grandma. D: It's December 11, this is not going to end well!! Normally I'm so good about shopping in November, but my head has been scattered with too many things lately.

Beef Brocolli & Party Leftovers (154 & 155)

Last week Friday I can't even remember why I didn't blog my bento, which shows how the holidays are taking a toll on my sanity in addition to the transition to the new job and a Fan Festival writeup that is now over 3 weeks overdue. I had leftover Beef Brocolli.


It didn't have much color so I just put a few star shaped carrot slices onto the middle of it. It's a very easy way to brighten up a bento and so quick too! I have some Christmas shaped mini cookie cutters I'd like to try out on my bentos in the coming weeks, but I'm not sure what I'll cut out just yet.

Yesterday we went to my cousin's son's birthday party and they had food catered from a place called Tanioka's in Waipahu. The food was really good!! I totally snarfed down about 3 meals worth of food like the horrible WW cheater that I am lately. I bounce between 125 and 128 all week and at the end I can usually end up right back at 127. If I were to finally go back to my diet I think I'd have no problem getting to 120 at last, but I've just been so lalala lately that maintaining this way just seems a great way to have fun with food.

Anyway, we had leftovers to take home and I packed a lot into my bento because I didn't want it to go to waste.

In the back is some sliced steak. On top of that are two mochiko chicken wings, which though I know are so horrible for you, tasted oh so good. In the middle I have rice with little slices of baby carrot decorating them. Tucked next to that is a piece of lumpia and then a salmon patty. In the little yellow tulip bottle I put some soy sauce for the lumpia. I added the tomato and celery for additional color!

Leftover Panda (153)

No, I did not find, kill, cook, and eat a panda bear. Yesterday was radio day and Mr. Pikko took the kids to eat at Panda Express, which is one of those fast food Chinese restaurants over here. They brought me their leftover plates and I didn't really eat much of it and packed some of it up right away to eat for lunch today.

I couldn't stand Panda's food before but then they went through some kind of image re-working where they made some major changes to their dishes and such and the end result is some pretty decent fast Chinese food. I wish I could blog more today, but I'm trying to finish up a lot of work for my job right now so that when I leave this month, I can have everything in order. Please forgive me!

SUGAR BOWL

The ending of the first quarter at Saturday's game had us all stunned. We sat there in muted horror, unable to grasp what was going on. DOWN 21 to nothing? Was the scoreboard wrong? WERE THE WHITE JERSEYS A JINX??!?!?! (I seriously thought this at least 50 times)

And it rained. It was as if Hawaii was weeping and we were all bathed in its tears. We couldn't seem to get the ball past the 50 yard line. I took Buddy walking down to the other side and I talked him through the next drive. Colt will pass and the ball will go there. It happened. Again and again Buddy and I walked down and I whispered in his ear each time where the ball would go and that this was the drive we'd finally score on. And we did! He got a real kick out of me screaming and hoisting him up. He'd grin ear to ear and laugh and laugh and laugh.

It was truly a wonderful and memorable experience. I'll carry the memories of that game with me forever, just as I still carry the memories of that last catch of the Fresno State game years ago. When we scored to finally bring ourselves up we were screaming so much and so excited. Then to see the Huskies down at their own 4 yard line... it was too much. The thought of having to suffer through overtime was horrible!! Everyone was screaming "DEFENSE" but I was screaming, "PLEEEEEASE!" I really thought they caught that last pass, then to see it just bounce out of his arms and into the hands of Mouton... I thought I was dreaming.

I know the black box over her eyes is creepy, but Mr. Pikko is a privacy stickler. Just pretend they're sunglasses!

The kids were a real handful at this game and the monster sized Disneyland lollipop I bought for Baby Girl reeeeally came in handy, but we know that 10, 15 years from now our kids can happily say they attended that football game. And we have proof too! We watched the ESPN broadcast later and we're in a crowd shot at the end of the game. YaY! I look grouchy, but this is due to having to carry Baby Girl for almost the entire 4th quarter. That will make any person sour, trust me.

And the Warriors are bound for the SUGAR BOWL!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!! GO WARRIORS!!!!

My mom came over to attend the game with my brother and they were in yellow CC, which I think was a good view even if they were in the nosebleeds. She dragged my brother down to Chinatown to get some char siu and spare ribs from her favorite place for Chinese food, Nam Fong. If you've never been to Nam Fong it's a little shocking at first. It's a really gross, bare place and the guy just takes it off the hook in the window and chops it for you right there. The char siu is SO good tho, I tend to nibble on the way home and that's a bad idea. It's possible to just stand at the container and just eat and eat. Anyway, I have some for lunch!

I have with it a flower shaped onigiri with ume in the middle, then a small piece of corn, char siu, spare ribs, and some sakura carrots. And in case anyone is still curious about my weight, I'm still maintaining at 127! :D

Game Day!!

Tonight the University of Hawaii Warriors play what is arguably the most important game in the history of the school. Washington has a terrible record, but we have so much to lose. I've been walking around with my head on backwards since yesterday because of the anticipation for this game. This morning Buddy shocked me by picking up a football and yelling, "GO BOW!!!" I was so stunned! Anyway, it's almost lunch and naptime, then it's off to the game for us. GO WARRIORS!!!!!!