Happy Leap Year! (189)

I've watched every single episode of Lost ever since Season 1 and even though fans like me went through some frustrating moments in Season 3, I've never really ever "lost" interest in the show. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate just how magnificently awesome Season 4 has been so far. Every episode we've seen this year has the old magic of Lost back from the first two seasons. Actually, I take that back, it's much better. Last night's episode certainly was no exception, ranking up in my top 3 episodes of the entire series. Or maybe I just <3 Desmond. Can you be any sexier, brother?

Yeah, yeah, I'm a sucker for the Scottish accent I guess.

YAHR GONNA DYEH CHAR-LEH!

Anyway, SPOILERS!!!!!!!



Oh god, tears. Yeah, I so cried last night watching that. *sniff*

On to the bento!


Since today is leap year day, I thought I should do a froggy. What cuter frog is there than Kerokerokeroppi?! Plus since my old buddy Jeth commented yesterday that I haven't done a face bento in a while, this fits right in! ^_^

The bento itself is pretty bad, consisting of furikake rice and shoyu chicken hot dog (with edamame on the bottom half). Keroppi's green skin is made out of danjour pear skin. His eyes and shirt are the white fleshy part of the pear. The black outlines are obviously nori. The red stripes on his shirt are the inside flesh of a strawberry, and his cheeks are little clusters of raspberry seeds. The way I made him was to print and cut out a picture of Keroppi, then cut the entire background of him out of nori. Then I cut him into little sections so that I could get all the inner black outlines too. I cut it into eyeballs, face, two hands, two feet, and body.

After I cut out the nori I cut the black part off the papers and then used that to trace cut the fruit. I kinda messed up on the eyes because I tried to trim them down, forgetting that the eyeballs fit right into the face, so I had to do some more trimming on his face to make it look okay.

Sadly, I had forgotten my purse at work yesterday and my camera was in there. :( This picture was taken with Mr. Pikko's new Samsung FlipShot camera. Quality came out pretty good, but I had to do a lot of lighting and color adjustments in Photoshop before it looked like this. Best I could do!

Tomorrow is UFC 82 and I'm not sure where we're going to see it yet, but I'm excited about it! Anderson Silva is a very entertaining fighter and I usually root for him whenever he's not kneeing Rich Franklin's nose into last year. ; ;

Shrimp & Asparagus Pasta (188)

This past weekend Baby Girl won two passes to an advance screening of Penelope. Since it was enough for 4 people, we made a Girl's Night Out of it and she and I went with my niece and Grandma J. We got there way too early, so we went to the nearby shoe store to buy sandals. The movie was really cute, I liked it! James McAvoy was really hawt, but then I went to look him up and found that he was that creepy fawn from the Narnia movie. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and adored Mr. Tumnus in the book, but he was just so icky and badly cast. So my advice to him is to stay away from fawn roles and stick to hot-gambling-addict-with-a-heart-of-gold roles. I found it amusing that this movie takes place in what is obviously London, but none of the main characters had British accents.

I didn't have a bento yesterday because we had our free lunch at Hanaki. The food was good, but I ate too much. :( Back to healthy business today...


I had to come up with something to use up the assloads of shrimp I STILL had left in that neverending salad from Costco, so I thought this up last night while falling asleep. I sprayed Pam into a pot (I'd used it to boil the noodles and didn't feel like using two dishes) and threw the shrimp in, then the asparagus, then put in some garlic salt. I added olive oil and the noodles, tossed them around, and voila! An all Core pasta bento! The noodles are whole wheat spaghetti, which is allowed on the Core diet as long as it's just one serving. The olive oil is a healthy oil and you're supposed to eat a teaspoon or tablespoon a day on Core. I couldn't remember if it was teaspoon or tablespoon so I decided it's better to go with the lesser amount... I cut a little grape tomato in half to decorate it.

I put my name into one of those boxes at a smoothie store and "won" 30 free day at 24 hour fitness. I had to squeeze into a tight schedule of what sounded like several other "winners" to meet with the membership hustler tonight. I had a membership once long ago but was too intimidated by the place. I figure if I get a free month I should check it out again.

Shrimp Cocktail (187)

Allakhazam.com has been under constant DDOS attacks this past week and it has been a very frustrating ordeal for the employees and the users of the site. I wish there was some way to help, but all I can do is get whatever work done offline that I can. It's so frustrating!!

As I mentioned, my bridesmaid dress came in so this is a reminder to me that the wedding is coming up really soon. I need to shed these last 8 pounds as I'm back up to hovering around 128 lately. I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I can get it done. I just have to get back to my constant healthy snacking instead of the constant junk food snacking I've been doing while at work. To help kick start this I've brought a cold bento with all core items in it!


I have more washed shrimp here from the shrimp salad I mentioned. I put them on some nice colored skewers. I sliced an avocado I bought last week. I had intended to make some KCCA salad, but every time I go to Foodland the deli is closed. ; ; I've got cocktail sauce in the little container, tomatoes, orange, kiwi, and half a boiled egg.

I had intended to eat an entire boiled egg sliced in half but my kids saw me peeling it and immediately turned into Egg Zombies, bouncing up and down going "EEEEEEGGGGG MOMMMMMY EEEEEGGGGGG!". So I cut it up hoping to make a chickie, but got lazy and just left it like that. For snacks I brought raspberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, and baby carrots. I need to go buy me another big box of Smart Pop. Hopefully by now the stock at Costco is popcorn without that nasty chemical in it.

Ebi Curry Noodle (186)

I heard a really cute joke last week on Leahey and Leahey Live that I forgot to tell.

What did the rice say to the spam?





Let's get nori.

LOL!! OMG, I think that joke is so cute. I guess you'd have to either be from Hawaii or love spam musubis to get it, but I find it hilarious!

My weekend was okay, nothing much happened, but it wasn't completely boring either. I got a good amount of moat carps turned in (92!) which put me at around 3,400 for my Lu Shang's Fishing Rod in game. Girl's Day is coming up soon and so I have to think about what to do for that bento. I think a pretty bento for Baby Girl is in order! I'll definitely have to do the pink sakura tamago again!


I bought a new kind of salad I from Costco on Saturday which was a shrimp salad with tomatoes in it. All it really has is shrimp with celery and mayo so it didn't have much taste so I ate a lot of it with cocktail sauce. It was a $13 salad and contained massive amounts of shrimp. I ate this for two days straight and then used some for this Ebi Curry Noodle pack that I had forgotten I still had in the freezer. I washed the mayo off to fry it for this noodle dish though. I fried some asparagus so that I have more veggies and don't waste the pack that I bought.


This is the box I used today. It was a gift to Baby Girl from her teacher at school. Which reminds me, still no Hello Kitty Online access!! I got some e-mail saying I have to make a video explaining why I should get into beta. I made one, then went back to check the tutorial on how to add tags, and the tutorial opened in the tab I created the video in, erasing it. MAN I was pissed!! I still haven't made another one yet...


I've got a big round Pooh tupperware full of fruit to go with today's lunch. Baby Girl nagged her way into me buying a tub of tropical fruit, so I've got watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple in here to help us not waste it all. I also bought strawberries and raspberries again. I still have like 10 kiwis left to eat too, gah!! And danjou pears... and apples... and oranges... and blueberries... When it rains it pours!

I went to cut my hair on Saturday and was pretty bored so decided to get some highlights. I've never colored my hair before and am pretty happy with the way it looks. Mebbe next time I'll dye my hair dark red or something. Next week marks 6 weeks with my piercings, so I can go out and buy earrings this week!! :D

My bridesmaid dress came in and it's a size 12... I have to exchange it for 6 or 8. How fun is that?!? :D A year ago I'd have fit in that dress!!

Turkey Croquette

Living in Hawaii you tend to get used to the whole "small town, small state" thing where everyone seems to have a friend who knows this person who is related to this person who is real good friends with your next door neighbor or something like that. Hilo is especially notorious for this because it's such a small town but it happens here in Honolulu as well. Take for example the fact that one of my readers works at the same campus as me or that one of my FFXI linkshell members is a mere 10 minute walk from my office. A real shining example showed itself today though!

One of my co-workers here calls me over to her desk to show me an e-mail from her sister and it's got the picture of me and Colt in it. I was looking at it thinking, Err... HUH?! Turns out she found my blog, figured out I work at UH, realized her sister also works at UH, thought to ask whether she knows me, and turns out she sits right here in this office with me. We were all cracking up about it. Hi Cindy! Thanks for reading! ^_^


Today I have for lunch the turkey croquette bento I mentioned yesterday. I cut it in half so that it would fit into the box nicer, shoved a tiny bit of white/brown rice into the corner, and added broccoli, sweet potato, carrots, and cucumber kim chee. The cucumbers were being really stubborn because they're big fat pieces, so I sliced it thinly to make them more cooperative and that worked out pretty well.

There are times when my kids drive me completely insane and I blame this for the evil mommy that comes out of me occasionally. I don't know if it's just me and my parents goggles, but sometimes my kids make the most hilarious frickin' faces when they're sad and I crack up laughing. Sometimes when I'm thinking straight I try to hide it, but most of the time I burst into giggles or cackles about it.

Take for instance dessert the other day. Grandma J bought a box of these Skinny Cow fudge bars (which, at 50 calories per, rock by the way) that my kids are now addicted to. Buddy loves them and shared one with me. He couldn't bite it very well so would only come away with little nibbles. When Baby Girl had one to herself, he of course wanted some. Since he was only skimming the surface of the pops, I told her to let him have some since he can't bite off much anyway. She holds it out and he comes over and CHOMPS off a good 1/3 of the bar, leaving her with this look on her face which I think was a mixture of shock and being on the verge of tears. I'm still getting the giggles picturing it now.

Anyway, I told him he should give some back, kind of as a joke. But kids sometimes listen in a very literal sense and so he spits it out, nibbles off a bit, and gives it back to her, melted chocolate and spit and all. Of course, she took it and ate it immediately. lol

Lunch

Yesterday I stayed home, so I ended up eating Subway even though I have a picture of a bento, which I will probably eat tomorrow so as not to waste it. It's got turkey croquette, woo! I didn't make a bento today because I thought I was going to get a free lunch at Hanaki at Manoa Marketplace, but turns out my co-worker moved it to next Wednesday and forgot to inform me! Anyway, we're going to go eat at some Japanese place at the Stan Sherriff Center since I have no food. D: I'll post pics later today!


Update!

So here is what I ended up eating for lunch yesterday! We went to fiscal first so ended up arriving at Aja at like almost 2 pm, which meant they were out of a lot of food. They had no beef left and no vegetable tempura either, so I just got the plain tempura udon instead of the combo one. It was $5.75 for this and it was okay. Not the best, really, but decent for the price and location. It really made me miss the Nabeyaki Udon from Suehiro. Suehiro was this great Japanese restaurant on King Street where Gyotaku is now. They had, hands down, the best nabeyaki udon you ever tasted. Second place goes to Yamagen, also on King Street right next to Longs. Third place can go to Sushi Ten by Waimalu Shopping Center. Suehiro's nabeyaki udon was divine. I can still smell it... the broth was on the sweet side, the chicken was so tender, the egg nicely half cooked, the veggies just turning translucent, the shrimp tempura... ohhh. Okay, I have to stop. *sob*

Teriyaki Beef (184)

I made teri beef for dinner on Sunday so that's what I'm having for lunch today. I made spaghetti last night but decided I will freeze the leftovers into single portions like I've seen on Biggie's blog before. This is assuming that I remember to do it though... My mom wanted to eat sashimi, so we bought a couple of ahi fillets and she sliced it up nice and pretty for us on a bed of lettuce. Tofu was on sale, so I bought some of that too. My kids thought it was completely hilarious to pick up a tub of tofu and put it in the wagon, so they started doing this over and over while giggling uncontrollably. My mom thought she weeded them all out, but when we got to the register, we found one last soft tofu tub hiding under a bag of green onions.


I have a small bit of furikake rice to go with the beef as well as Okinawan sweet potato, a grape tomato, some thin slices of cucumber kim chee, eggplant pickles, cucumber pickles, sashimi, and tofu. I added a little shoyu fishie on top of the tofu. I squashed it down so no doubt when I eat lunch, there will be a funny fish imprint on the tofu, haha!

I am happy to report that my ear is no longer infected. Out of all the advice people gave me I think the one that worked was to stop cleaning it so much. I cut it down to 2 times a day instead of 3 and that seemed to help a lot. Two more weeks and I can wear other earrings!

I just realized that I am only 16 bentos away from #200! Augh! I have to come up with something!! **brainstorm begins**

Zoo Bento (183)

Today was a rather exhausting day. It was President's Day and since I work for the state, of course we get the day off. At least, I think it's President's Day... lol! Anyway, my mom stayed over last night so that we could go to the zoo together today before she flew home. I made a bento for all of us. Mr. Pikko was going to go, but then discovered the toilet was leaking and so had to stay home and fix that. Yuck!!

So me and moms headed off to the zoo with one really itchy girl (she broke out in hives last night for some unknown reason) and one monkey. It took us like an hour to get from the car to the picnic area because Buddy wanted to stop and "WHOAAAAAA!" at everything. It was a sweltering day and I was ready to leave after staying 5 minutes in the Keiki Zoo.

I made spam musubis and tucked in some sliced fishcake to fill the spaces on the side. This time I used Spam Lite so that I could excuse myself for eating more than one. ^_^


I could have just brought the musubis and that would have been enough, but I made yakisoba, sweet potato, and shoyu hotdog for the second layer. I don't know why, but it didn't even occur to me to use my octopus dog cutter that I bought from J-List during Christmas. I was packing them in when I remembered it and I was ready to kick myself. Oh well... next time!! Baby Girl didn't seem to mind. She grabbed like 5 hotdogs and proclaimed to all that were listening that those were HER hotdogs. When she couldn't eat them all she ever so graciously gave them to Buddy to eat. Cause she's so nice like dat.

For the yakisoba I just had a package of yakisoba noodles in the freezer. I bought a bag of stir fry veggies, fried it in 2 Tb of olive oil, added two slices of Spam, the noodles, and then 10 Tb of oyster sauce. Very quick and easy to make and tastes really good. I have some for my lunches this week.

After the zoo we went to Waiola for shave ice and man the line was retardedly long. My mom took like 20 minutes to come back with the cups. Tasted so good though, was worth the wait. Anyway, it's 8 pm and I need to go bathe and pass out.

Valentine's Day Bentos (181 & 182)

Yesterday I went to go look at the screenshots of the new MMORPG coming out soon, Hello Kitty Online and I about died of anticipation. I realize that people in the Allakhazam community will likely look at HKO with complete revulsion and disgust, but I find myself mysteriously drawn to a world of pink and flowers and Pompompurin houses. You can make farms and grow crops and pick fruit from trees. A virtual gardener such as myself cannot stay away from such a game, especially since it's free! I used to be such a Sanrio freak as a teenager and from looking at these pictures, apparently I still am.

I woke up at 5 am this morning to cook rice and make tamagoyaki for my bento this morning and to make my first ever bento for Mr. Pikko. He usually doesn't eat lunch or just buys food, so I never bothered to make one. But... since the Kokua Festival tickets I had planned on giving are not here yet, I thought maybe a bento would be a nice, thoughful gift to give that wasn't costly.

This is Mr. Pikko's bento, which has 3 little chicken drumsticks and wings. Grandma J made a new recipe last night as a test for some function she is going to and I think these are called "Lip Smackin' Wings". To go with the chicken, I made a round onigiri dyed with red food coloring. I had initially wanted it to be all pink, but then when the coloring didn't mix too well, I thought the haphazard coloring came out really well. I cut out the two hearts from bell peppers and sprinkled black sesame seeds on to add more color.

In the middle is some sliced asparagus and then on the bottom area I have some pink tamagoyaki cut into sakura flowers. I added about 5 drops of red food coloring and then after it was cooked, rolled the egg into a circle shape with my bamboo sushi thing before putting it into the fridge to cool. I sliced it up and used my veggie cutters to get the sakura shape. Next to that I have some imitation crab and then a slice of orange. Behind the onigiri I put a little raspberry too! I was quite happy with the amount of food I was able to cram into this little box! The tradeoff was that I was pissed to find out that 4 of my romaine heart heads were frozen in my crisper drawer. GRRR!! What a waste!!


Here is my matching bento! It's basically identical except I have a grape tomato hiding behind my onigiri, one less chicken piece, and kiwi instead of orange.

We're giving the night off to the in-laws so we're leaving work early to pick up the kids and will probably take them to eat dinner at IHOP. If you're wondering why we're eating at a pancake house for dinner on Valentine's Day, it's because for a mom of two toddlers, I'm still pretty stupid about some things. Tuesday was Free Pancake Day at IHOP and so I stupidly started telling the family about this in front of the kids. Buddy's eyes glazed over and he starts waddling towards me chanting, "CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE..." Baby Girl starts in with her broken record repeating, going, "Mommy, I want paaaaaancaaaaake? x500" Yeah, big mistake. Never say any word that contains "cake" in front of toddlers unless you're ready to bust them out right then and there.

It was 9 pm, but I got us all to go there only to find it was dine-in only with a half hour wait. NO CAN DO! So this is sort of a makeup for the other night. An emergency trip to Foodland for frozen pancakes had to be made.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Beef Cutlet (180)

It's been miraculously sunny on Oahu for the past, I dunno, five days or so? It was getting to the point where on a day of sun you go out of the house and say, "Wait wait wait, what? IT'S NOT RAINING!?!" But then as soon as I'd go to fiscal or something, I'm about to go out the door when I hear roaring rain outside.

Someone mentioned an ice storm yesterday and I started joking that my brain couldn't process such a term. Ice is in your water or soda! Ice is what you eat when you go to Baldwin's or Waiola Shave Ice! It doesn't STORM ice!

Anyway, point is, the seasons we have in Hawaii are basically "Sunny" and "Rainy", but if I had to break it down into four pidgin seasons, I'd say:

Winter = "Stay Sum Cold Outside"
Spring = "Get Choke Rain"
Summer = "Frickin' Hot"
Fall = "I No Can Stop Sweating"


Today I have this three bowl contraption that I bought at Price Busters. I've used a green one before for my salad kit once long ago and have had this pink one sitting around in a cabinet for quite some time since. I finally busted it out to carry some soup to work. I have here some Chicken Long Rice, made by my MIL.


In the main dish bowl I have some green salad with grape tomatoes, which I dripped with 4 drops of Caesar Italian Lite. Then I have beef cutlet, rice, and corn. In the Hello Kitty bowl I put some katsu sauce.


In my last bowl I have fruits. I cut two kiwis, half an orange, blueberries, and raspberries. Adding the oranges really brought the other three fruit colors together. I was really happy with how it turned out. To cut the orange I sliced it in half, then made half moon slices, then cut those in half to make little triangles.

As most people know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I just got back into posting my lunches at LiveJournal and of course, the bento challenge for this week is a V-Day theme, so I have to think today how I want to do my entry tomorrow! My eggs expire tomorrow, so maybe I can implement tamagoyaki somehow...

Teri Hamburger Patty (179)

Today I'm using a new bento box but I forgot to take a picture of the outside of it. It's a two tier box with a cute froggy on the outside. It even comes with a matching fork! ^_^

Today I'm eating a teriyaki hamburger patty with leftover shrimp fried rice. I was trying to eat this for lunch during my radio show on Sunday but didn't get much eaten for fear of making too much noise. I really have to remember to eat before showtimes. The rice looked great with the peas so I decided to leave the shrimps on the side next to the patties. The piggy bottle has soy sauce in it for the rice because it wasn't the tastiest of fried rices and I'm one of those people that thinks soy sauce makes everything taste better. The little food dividers were a gift from one of my blog readers, Stephanie. I finally got a chance to use them! So cute! Thank you again!

I'm a little upset that I didn't notice that open space next to the piggy. I hate having open spaces like that. ; ;


In my bottom tier I packed a lot of fruit. I have two sliced kiwis, some raspberries, and then a little silicone cup of blueberries. The cup is from a set of cups that I got from Nizdaar in the Allakhazam Secret Santa exchange we did. They're so tiny and a perfect size for the shallower bento containers I have. I have the regular sized silicone cups and they're only useful in my taller boxes. This set came from Amazon and the set contained lots of different colors. A great bento item since you can use them over and over!

I noticed yesterday that the Hawaii Chair video got removed, so I edited the post to display a new video!

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (178)

I was driving in to work this morning when I heard the radio hosts I listen to talking about a "Hawaii Chair". As soon as I got to work I looked it up and it just about split my sides open watching it.



That is just too funny. I'm lucky I wasn't drinking water when I saw it.

Today's bento is almost entirely from Costco. As usual, the Costco chicken was a big part of the weekend meals and I chopped up a lot of the white meat this morning and made the lettuce wraps I've made before. This time I added some diced bell pepper into the mixture to give it more color and veggies.


The grape tomatoes, kiwi, blueberries, lettuce, chicken, bell peppers, and raspberries are all bought from Costco. The only thing messing up the all-Costconess of it is the two little carrot flowers. Dang those carrot flowers!! ^_^ Here's a blurry close-up:


I ate some of the blueberries Saturday and I dunno why but they taste like they have sand in the middle. I'm debating taking them back and telling them this and getting an exchange. I know they don't normally taste this way but I'll see if maybe I just had a few bad berries in the bunch I picked up to eat.

I finally got some real gardening done this weekend and cleaned up all my dead tomato plants. While I was pulling weeds I discovered that a stray tomato must have fallen to the ground and then had the seeds dispersed all over the yard because I found at least 10 tomato plants sprung up all over the place. Some had no leaves and I didn't understand why until I found the gigantor caterpillar on a nearby plant. The most bizzare discovery though, was the little pools of shrimps. My kids have little play pots and pans in the yard that have been collecting rain water and I was about to dump one out when I noticed there was a bunch of tiny little pink "things" in it. Upon further inspection, I found that they were actually dozens of tiny little itty bitty dead shrimps.

At first I thought maybe they were there because of the little container of seashells Baby Girl had left out, but then I found more little containers nowhere near the shells container that had MORE dead shrimps. It was very weird and quite stink.

The yard looks neater now and hopefully next week we can plant some edamame plants. :D

I noticed that a bunch of my earliest blog entries were using pictures from my Swapsonian domain, which I have basically given up hope on. I'm so pissed with Ipowerweb that I'm never using them again. I continue to pay for a broken domain and cannot get my files off the server. I wait forever on the phone and in chats and no one seems to know how to help me. Ipowerweb can SUCK IT! Anyway, I fixed the pics to use my Flickr ones.

BBQ Chicken (177)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today I have for lunch the Korean BBQ leftovers from Wednesday. I used my red bunny lacquer box because it was a nice, compact size and tall too, so it fit everything in nice and tight.


I put some furikake on the rice to help hide all the brown juices that leaked onto it from the BBQ chicken. I sliced the chicken to make it easier to eat and then put the veggies in on top. It looked really dull, so I sliced up some carrot very thinly and tucked it in to give it more life. A very simple fix and the bento looks more colorful!

I am happy to say that I am the prowd owner of Kokua Festival tickets, which will be featuring... Dave Matthews! Woo! This will be his first ever concert in Hawaii. Should be fun! :D

Kung Hee Fat Choy!

Yesterday before the meeting, we went to eat at Kim Chee 7, which is my favorite place to eat Korean food. They have really great kim chee here, especially the daikon pickles, which are pictured below on the left. On the right is their regular kim chee, which I didn't like before, but now love. In the two little bowls are their onolicious meat jun sauce. SO GOOD!

I had the lunch special, which is a combination plate of meat jun, bbq chicken, mandoo, and vegetables. I don't really care for their plate veggies all that much, it's really the only weak part of Kim Chee restaurants. If you want the best bean sprouts namul, potato, cabbage, and taegu you have to go to Gina's. Usually I dump the cabbage into the kim chee sauce in a little attempt to make myself more of that yummy stuff.

Before the people who pay attention to my dieting completely flip out, I did not eat all of this. I ate all the meat jun and a small part of one chicken. The rest will no doubt show up in a bento tomorrow. I ate very little rice, so it wasn't too bad.

Work parties and meetings are proving to be a constant interruption to my bentos! lol Today is Chinese New Year and so we had a team meeting + potluck. I bought some pork hash from Chun Wah Kam this morning.

This is a very beautiful salad made by my boss:


We also had another Chinese chicken salad, pasta salad, cantaloupe, watermelon, a spicy shrimp and pepper dish, curry manapua, pie, almond float, a noodle dish, choy sum, and some sticky rice with meat. My plate:


As you can see, I was pretty good, even though it was a lot of food. I took from both salads, the shrimp dish, half a manapua, choy sum, and fruits.

I hope no one is getting annoyed that I'm posting regular food here now. I just figure that bentos aside, the food we eat here in Hawaii can be just as interesting. I bet I make my ex-Hawaii mainland dwellers drool too, haha!

"OHHHH! MANAPUA!!"

"OHHHH! PORK HASH!!!"

"OMGGGG MEAT JUN!!"

Hehe.

By the way, the teacher gave an exceptionally glowing review of my darling spawn, leading me to the conclusion that I am the proud mother of the Teacher's Pet. It was a combination of the "she defends the littler kids from bullies" and "she's like a leader in the class" comments, the fact that she gets to sleep next to the teacher's desk, and the story she told us on the way home about how the other kids go out to play and she stays in class with her best friend and they eat gummy bears (A whole package, Mommy!!) with the teacher. Nice.

Also, I'm a bit worried about the quality of education my baby is getting here:


I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do when she watches The Secret of Nimh for the first time!!

Parent/Teacher Conference

I have no bento today as I'm leaving at noon to attend Baby Girl's parent teacher conference. This should be interesting as her teacher gives me the impression that she's allergic to parents. Anyway, we received her report card a couple weeks ago and were a little taken aback by some of the reportings.

She had "Needs work" down under the curiousity and asking questions section.

I can imagine the meeting already.

"Your daughter doesn't ask very many questions, we are concerned."

I will then look at her with a facial expression that says, "You, madam, are on crack." After that, I will inform her that in the last year, I have heard more questions come out of her in one car ride home than you hear during a week of Family Feud reruns. Then maybe as a joke I could tell her I'm thinking of having my ears surgically removed until the Whiny Years are over.

I'll also have to ask whether her little boy crush Ryan really is eating cockroaches and zebra heads. She tells me this at night as a little joke, which leads me to wonder about how healthy her imagination is. +_+

Beef Curry w/ Croquette

A couple days ago I found out that one of my favorite "secondary" TV shows, The 4400, had been cancelled. This severely pissed me off as it had been in my opinion, one of the best shows on USA. Granted, it was also the ONLY show I watched on USA, but that's neither here nor there. The theme song by Amanda Abizaid is my cell phone ringtone. It's a great lil tune!



So anyway, yeah, I'm mad. Especially since this is the THIRD good, quality show that has been cancelled in the past year. (the second being Journeyman) However, I was happy to find out that there is a movement to save the show, much like the one that successfully saved Jericho. If I'd had my way I would have picked The 4400 over Jericho hands down. You can buy sunflower seeds to send to the network to protest the cancellation. It's 5 bucks though... so I'm still debating. lol Some fan I am.

For lunch today I am having beef curry rice with curry croquette. I plucked out the carrot slices and cut them into flowers with my veggie cutter and then shoved the leftover carrots underneath. The flowers are a little thick, but I didn't have time to slice them up. I had fried two croquettes, but burned the first one by accident... It wouldn't have fit in the bento box anyway!!

My ear has become a mess. I've got this bumpy rash all over it and I totally blame my little eye makeup remover snafu. I can't even tell if it's swollen because all I can think about is how badly it itches. If the rash doesn't clear up soon, I'm definitely going to see my dermatologist.

Gyoza (175)

I don't really have a full fledged bento today as I ran out of time in the morning and decided to buy lunch at the little shop in my building at work. They usually always have spaghetti and pasta sounds like a good thing to eat today. I'll probably microwave it though, as I like to have my food on the verge of singing the skin off my mouth.

I made 3 pork gyozas with furikake rice for a little "filler" bento today. I desperately need to go to the market as I have basically no fruits and just carrots and bell peppers for veggies. I need lettuce (I'd have put some under the gyoza), parsley, broccoli, berries, and maybe some shrimp.

Usually what I do for the lettuce is buy romaine lettuce. The inner, lighter colored leaves taste better, so I use those for salad. The more bitter outer leaves I keep to line my bentos. This works out really well as I don't like to eat them, but I don't waste them either! They make great liners for bento boxes and add so much flair to a lunch. :)

The Mog House went well yesterday, especially since it was Superbowl Sunday! I have to admit, I was really disappointed in the commercials. Other than the E-Trade baby ones, I didn't really like any of the others. Some made me laugh, but they were only marginally funny imo. I didn't really care who won since I don't follow pro football anymore, but I'm sure once Colt is drafted, I'll have more interest then. :D

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon (174)

Last night was the season premiere of LOST and I have to admit that I was very happy with what I saw. Last season was such a drag to watch and the only redemption in the whole year was the finale with the flashforwards. Without spoiling anything, the premiere continued on this flashforward trend and with that, has brought life back into the series. And boy did it need it. Manual labor cracking rocks? Locked in cages and tricked into having sexy time on camera for your doctor crush to see? It really did sound like some silly fantasy a girl has as a teen. Hot doctor/hot bad boy love triangle on a remote island. Oh yeah, baby, who didn't wish for something like that when they were 13? I sure as hell did.

Okay now that I've got my schoolgirl fantasy confessions out of the way, we can move on to my lunch.

Last night Grandma J made Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon, a recipe which I actually remembered to ask her for this time! Woohoo! And even better, I have a picture of her to share with everyone. The majority of my bentos contain the food she so lovingly cooks for three families, so I think some credit is due. She protested the picture, but Mr. Pikko insists that under the surface she likes it. So if she meets us with a screech this afternoon, I'm so blaming it on him.

I've also decided to start referring to her as "Grandma J" because when I named the pic of her "MIL", Mr. Pikko's brain did some flipflops because it's too close to "MILF". Anyway, this is her! She's holding up a cookbook on the page with the recipe for the salmon, which follows:

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon

1. Drizzle salmon with Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce. (or other teriyaki sauce)
2. Spread mayo on top of salmon. If desired, mix some wasabi into the mayo.
3. Sprinkle Aji Nori furikake on top.
4. Place in microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Check the salmon and if needed, cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Pretty quick, huh?? I am not a wasabi fan at all, but I tried the wasabi one (she makes with and without) and it tasted really great. It had the wasabi taste, but not the hotness. It's a quick 10 minute recipe, give it a try! ^_^

I forgot to mention that my ear is still swollen. I'd done the Neosporin and it seemed to help, but then last night I was cleaning my puffy ear when I realized that I was cleaning it with eye makeup remover. GOOD JOB, ME!