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March 31, 2008

Aloha, Aloha

The State of Hawaii received some very crushing news this weekend when it was reported that Aloha Airlines, who has flown Hawaii residents from island to island with a friendly smile and a little jug of guava juice for 61 years, would be flying its last flight tonight. I have always flown on Aloha Airlines if I could help it. I don't know why, but I've always just preferred them over Hawaiian for some reason. I still remember the old Aloha planes with the orange and yellow plumeria flower. 1,900 employees are out of a job. Sad, sad times.

I blame go! Airlines of course. They came in a couple years ago and started a price war that was obviously going to cripple the two local airlines. Lawsuits, CEOs that publicly admit to keeping porn at work and whatnot. As far as I'm concerned, they can just go! away. I have never flown go! in the past and you can be darned sure that I never will because I'm officially boycotting go! Airlines. Hawaiian will get all of my interisland business. That's just one born and raised Hawaii resident doing her small part to stick it to the big bad wolf. EAT THAT!

Anyway, no bento today as I'm attending a going away luncheon today at Manoa Marketplace. I'll be sure to take pictures of my food and update this post later!!

March 28, 2008

The Road to 200

Alrighty, it is now 1:52 AM on Friday and I am obviously tired out of my mind and starving to boot. However, I brushed my teeth to ensure that I wouldn't eat something just before going to bed. No guarantees on correct spelling and grammar in this post though.

As I mentioned yesterday, the kiddie terrors put a damper on my Thursday plans, so I had to continue my bento tonight. This one took me a lot longer than the first, mostly because the food preparation took so much time. I took three hours yesterday to cook food and today I took another three hours to complete the embellishments, bringing this gigantic mass of Sanrio lunch to six hours preparation time. Here it is!! (click it for bigger photo)



Before I start describing just how messed up in the head I am, let me just say that I'm not all that pleased with the results I got from this landmark lunchie. I had envisioned something much more vibrant in color and my favorite character, Pochacco, ended up looking the worst of the little guys. I think it still looks cute and all, but it's nowhere near the one I'd put together in my head.

There is food underneath the characters and so at the top I have oyako donburi sprinkled with chopped wheatgrass, since I had no green onions. I thought this was amusing since we watched the finale of Celebrity Apprentice last night and so much attention was given to wheatgrass, which I just so happen to be growing all over my house and at work. Too funny!! On the right side there is some vegetable yakisoba, on the bottom I have little squares of Okinawan sweet potato. People ask me about the potato all the time and to answer the inevitable question again: No, I do not dye the potato. It is naturally colored that way. On the left I have shelled edamame.


First up, to get rid of my shame early, is what is supposed to be Pochacco. I think I just picked a bad picture of him to copy and it was too small as well. He's made out of nori, pear skin (shirt), egg, and toasted sesame seeds. All the little characters sit on a d'anjou pear star. I thought afterwards that I should have dyed it yellow to add more color, but by then I had already stuck Bad Badtz and Keroppi on, so it was basically too late. *sob* Also, I had wanted to use my star shaped Whale of a Punch, but it's gone AWOL. I suspect either Baby Girl or Buddy have hidden it in a secret place and have forgotten where already. So anyway, that star is freehand!

I had previously used white cheese or d'anjou pear to make white things but finally figured out something even better! Boiled egg whites! With all the boiled eggs still sitting in the fridge, I realized that it would make the perfect white carving material. It worked out great for all the characters. I am so unhappy with Pochacco that I wasn't going to take a close-up picture of him. But then I realized that he's sitting on top of my donburi and I didn't want him to get offended and pee all over my food. He is a dog after all...


Monkichi is a rather old Sanrio character from when I was in high school. I'm not sure a lot of kids nowadays would recognize him. I made him out of hotdog skin. You can kinda see how he is slightly curled, which actually turned out good because it made him look more 3D. The lighter parts of him are hotdog as well, only the inside part is showing outwards. I forgot to make him his two cheeks, but after six hours I no longer give a crap.


Picke Bicke is another older character that you don't see around much anymore. He's a cute little mouse that should have a tail with a red ribbon on it, but it was too microscopic of an effort for me to undertake. His ears are made out of Okinawan sweet potato, his body is made out of sliced ham, and the white parts on him are boiled egg. His eyes and nose are toasted sesame seeds, which I trimmed to give them less of a pointy shape.


Chococat was nice and simple and I took us to McDonald's and made Mr. Pikko run out and grab a straw for me to cut out his eyes easily. I should have had my own straws at home, but since my children like to drink with at least 5 straws at a time, we run out pretty quick. His eyes and mouth are made out of boiled egg and nori. I used a hole puncher to make his nori pupils. His collar is boiled egg dyed yellow and his nose is a little bit of hotdog. He's quite happy to be sleeping on a bed of edamame!


For some reason, Keroppi was very difficult to photograph. I had to try 4 different angles and finally got one that didn't have too much shadow. Same as the last time I made him, his face is made out of d'anjou pear skin. This time though, his eyes are made with boiled egg instead of cheese and his shirt (tomato skin) is not striped this time. I forgot to give him cheeks too!! :(


I have saved the Badtz for last. He's such a great character and if Pochacco is my cutie pie favorite, Bad Badtz is my favorite Sanrio character with attitude. He's of course, being a rascal and sticking tongue at you, no doubt thinking several kinds of @*#& thoughts. I cut him out of nori and then put egg white eyes and tummy on top. His beak is the same as Chococat's collar, egg white dyed yellow. His tongue is made out of tomato skin and nori. He was by far my favorite to make!!

In the middle of all of them I have the Queen of them all, Hello Kitty. Her ribbon is made out of red-dyed pear. The onigiri is to eat with the donburi. I lined the whole box with lettuce to make it look a little more frilly. I still wish I'd thought early on to dye the pear stars yellow. That would have looked great! I had tried to make colored egg omelettes to wrap my food into so that I could have brightly colored sections of egg wrapped food. The egg stuff just wasn't meant to be for some reason.

For one, I was cracking the five eggs needed for the donburi and on the fifth egg, I crack it open and blood comes pouring out. I was SO disgusted and didn't feel like scooping it out. What a total waste of 5 eggs. And then, I'm preparing the omelette mix when I add in the red coloring to make it pink. What do I get? ORANGE EGG MIX! Grrrr!! I tried cooking it, but it just didn't look good. I ended up using it to wrap some string beans in. You can see a few down by Badtzmaru. I'd also wanted to use a pink bento box, but I didn't have any that were big enough for what I needed.

I had more to talk about, but right now my eyes are closing involuntarily. I hope you guys like it. Tomorrow I probably won't eat anyone except Hello Kitty. I'll line them up in the bento cover and they can watch me eat lunch.

March 27, 2008

No 200 Yet!

Sorry folks, but my kids were being little devilish dingbats and did not go to bed until 10:30. I stayed up until 2:30 am cooking the food and then I just had to go to bed, hoping I'd get up in the morning to finish it, but I ended up just getting extra winks. The journey to 200 will conclude tomorrow!!

March 25, 2008

Teri Hamburger Patty (199)

Tomorrow is a holiday for us state slackers, so if all goes well, Bento #200 should land this Thursday. I've finally decided what I want to do, but am not going to say what it is so that it is a nice surprise for everyone. And just so that it will be more impressive, I made a really crappy bento today. LOL

In reality, I was just lazy. I slept in a bit and didn't start making my bento til it was like 7 AM. I have a teriyaki hamburger patty, cut in half to make it lay out nicely. Next to that, some cucumber pickles and garlic pan fried asparagus (in garlic salt and olive oil). I filled in some space with some chopped up egg whites, more leftovers from Easter. To make it not look that horrible, I added some sakura shaped carrots. Hopefully those distract you guys enough. I put soy sauce in the tomato bottle to eat the egg with.

I bounced down a bit to 128.8, so hopefully I can keep up a good thing this week with increased work exercises, walking, and being good in general. I think my problem for the last few months has been that I adopted this really bad "Hey, I'm skinny now, I can eat wutevas now." mentality. Someone commented that I shouldn't obsess over my weight, but instead pay attention to how my clothes fit. Good advice, only my pants ARE getting tighter, so I do need to get back on track. I am happy to report that I successfully dodged the box of Truffles some evil person brought in to work.

March 24, 2008

Chicken & Egg Salad Sandwich (198)

Today I'm having a chicken and egg salad sandwich. With Easter, was there ever any doubt that I'd be having this for lunch today?? I'll be eating boiled eggs for snacks for a week! I usually eat them with soy sauce, yolk tossed. I loooove boiled egg whites with shoyu, especially Kikkoman.

I used light mayo for the filling and so that with the bread already makes this a 5 point bento. The Jello eggs are probably 2 points since one is Sugar-free, but one is not. Those will zero out though, since I did a hundred squats earlier today and still have to walk to fiscal later (40 min walk). I still want to try that Spark People site and have been getting really useful tips via e-mail from them, but I find myself still looking at everything in a points mindset. Perhaps a combination of both will help me out. Easter waged war upon my midsection and came away with only a minor victory. I gained .2 pounds as of this morning.

Anyway, I toasted the bread to make it easier to cut and added chopped Costco chicken to the egg mixture, meaning I can use this one to start off my 10? 12? 20? Ways to Eat a Costco Chicken thing. I tucked in as many baby carrots as I could fit. I love d'Anjou pear (crunchy, not soft) so I sliced up a whole pear to fill up all that empty space. Next to the carrots is a silicone cup of cucumber pickles and then for dessert, my two Jello eggs! My cousin e-mailed me after she saw yesterday's post and was like, "omg me too!" The Jell-O egg frenzy is alive and well!

I still dunno what to do for #200. :( It's only 2 bento away! D:

March 23, 2008

Happy Easter!

I had a rather hectic weekend with a lot of things to do ahead of time for Easter. Add in the fact that my two little devils very thoroughly went through all of our belongings, making sure that every last thing was out of place or ripped to shreds. I did a lot of really bad grazing on the Costco bag of almonds I bought and fortunately, all the walking and bending over to pick up things probably helped negate it. That's still no excuse for bad habits though...

We currently have five little kids in the family that adore anything Jell-O, which is a really good thing for me because I'm always looking for backup excuses to make Jell-O eggs, something I've never been completely sure any adults other than me care for. My Aunty is the one who passed on this odd craving for egg shaped Knox Blox. Before advanced technologies were discovered (plastic eggs & molds), she used to poke holes into the tops of her eggs and siphon the egg out whenever she made scrambled eggs. She'd then save the rinsed out eggshells all year until finally Easter came around and she could use them to fill with Jell-O. I still remember helping crack the eggs under warm water. This freaking insane yet endearing technique must have done something to my head over the years because as it is now, I cannot have an Easter without Jell-O eggs. And I don't just make a dozen, I go crazy and make at least 50. My co-workers will find this out tomorrow. He he.

This year I made Cherry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, and Berry Blue. I made one box of Grape, but I ended up eating all of them with the kids on Saturday... hee. I still have tons of boxes of Strawberry, Raspberry, and Grape to make. Since Buddy had hidden a bunch of boxes around the house (I found one in the toy chest), I was missing some boxes and had to go to Foodland to round things out. I almost broke down crying when I saw that they didn't stock Peach flavored Jell-O anymore. Peach Jell-O was something I was addicted to while I was pregnant and I only have two boxes left. Hopefully they just don't stock it and it's not discontinued. My mom had a favorite Jell-O flavor: Blackberry. That got discontinued! D:


I had talked about my co-worker's cupcakes and how I was going to steal her idea. Well, there they are! They didn't come out quite as good as I had hoped. I should have gone for Jelly Bellys instead I think. I thought about using the little box of Bertie Botts I had here, but then thought that would be mean and that maybe eating a Booger flavored bean would make the cupcake experience a bit less than pleasant. They're topped with green dyed coconut and Smoothie flavor Skittles. Sadly the bag had very few purple Skittles and I found those made the cupcakes look the best.


I made a really huge ass Kim Chee Crab and Avocado Salad for the family and everyone liked it, so that was a good success again! I added sliced baby carrot this time for a bit more color since I forgot to buy grape tomatoes. Easter was really fun overall. My almost brother-in-law made scallop with mustard sauce appetizers and and a really, really good beef dish. We dyed eggs. Buddy dyed his legs yellow. I had a lot of fun with this Tye Dye set I bought. Yes, I dyed eggs. I'm still a kid at heart, so sue me. Sadly, no egg fights. I'd seen an oddly pointed egg while boiling them too. I had plans for that egg! Perhaps when the kids are older. It's just as well, they'd probably cry too much from Aunty Crystal owning them.

After that we played Rock Band and I finally gave it a try. It was fun and even Grandma J tried it out. Yay!


On Thursday, my boss mentioned I should grow some wheat grass as Easter grass for the kids. I had heard of wheatberries before but had no idea what they were or how completely dirt cheap they are. I headed to Down to Earth after work and bought 2 pounds of wheatberries for around $2. I soaked way too much and laid them out in one of my roasting pans on top of wet paper towels. The next day they had started to sprout already:


They're really fun to grow!! The only bad part is that like I said, I soaked way too much and so now they're all piled up on top of each other trying to grow. I transferred some of them to the bottoms of my flowerpots but there are literally thousands of them still needing transplanting. The really retarded part is that I'm doing it by hand, one at a time. LOL


These are the transplanted wheatberries on Day 3. They grow really fast!! Luckily I had a spray bottle and the kids have been having a ton of fun watering them by misting them. The grass is actually even taller now. Updates tomorrow!

We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who! again. It was Buddy's second time and Baby Girl's first. She chickened out the first time and this time was sobbing, asking if we could go home. I had to trick her back into the theater and eventually she started peeking and as soon as the credits rolled, she yelled, "NOW I LIKE IT!" When I was younger I used to watch movies like Aladdin and Lion King and wondered why the hell these little kiddie movies were so riddled with adult humor. Now that I am older, wiser, and nearly braindead from whining children I understand that the humor is there to make the movies bearable for parents. It really just wouldn't do to have a bunch of stupefied parents driving their children home. They no doubt already have that dead look in their eyes from one too many Barney's or Dora's. That being said, I really enjoyed seeing Horton twice. My son adores him. Now if I could just survive the 50 daily requests for the longest Horton video I could find on YouTube (7m 5s), things should be okay.

Two Jell-O eggs were consumed while writing this post.

March 20, 2008

Jang Su Leftovers (197)

I passed out last night with 8 Easter Baskets unfinished and so it was a good (well, not all good) thing that Baby Girl woke up this morning at 5:15 am to announce that she'd wet her bed. We finished them together and she so kindly topped it off with a nice big tantrum/meltdown. I can't wait til these "Tantrum Threes" are over as lately I can just about see the edge of the cliffs of sanity.


There we have it, all 17 baskets. Now my brain can rest easy. One had no tag cause I forgot the name of a kid. 16/17 is still good though...

With all of that going on, I had to rush this bento and managed to finish in 10 minutes. Go me!!


We ate food from Jang Su BBQ last night. This place is at Waimalu Shopping Center and though Kim Chee still has my favorite food, Jang Su's food is pretty good. I took some of the chicken and bulgogi (thin bbq beef). I put some nori paste onto the rice because I just bought a bottle of this recently. I looooove nori paste. They have different types, I think plain, mushroom, and bonito. Since I'm allergic to mushrooms this is the bonito one. Sooo good on rice.

The bulgogi had a lot of fat on it but since I refrigerated it, the fat was white and hard and very easy to just pluck off. Much easier than staring at a piece of hot meat not knowing which is meat and which is fat. Tucked in with it are cucumber pickles and a baby carrot all sliced up. I only put it in for color, I have a whole bag of baby carrots to eat too. I bought one of those Costco baby carrot bags. You know, the one so huge you could mistake it for a Longs bag? (Longs Drugs bags are bigger than supermarket bags, thus are win.) Anyway, I'm in a Carrot Race right now to eat them all before they go bad.

I missed Idol last night and hadn't even watched Tuesday's show. I dunno why but I've lost a lot of interest in this season suddenly. I'm still pulling for David Archuletta and Ramiele Malubay, but I just got so bored with the show. Mr. Pikko says its because of the two weeks of Lennon/McCarthy and I think he's got something there. I mean, they made great songs, but they're very mellow and not very exciting. I don't get how they expect the kids to MAKE a mellow song exciting. Survivor was on last night, but I'll have to watch it tonight! I hope Cirie is finally gone! I despise her for getting rid of Yao Man.

March 19, 2008

Gyoza & Onigiri (196)

Someone commented on yesterday's entry with a link to Spark People and I went to take a look and will definitely have to give that a try. I realize that I owe Weight Watchers a lot for helping me lose 22 pounds, but right now Mr. Pikko is very concerned about all the doom and gloom talk that economists are having so I need to shave spending. A subscription to WW again is something I want and not something I necessarily need, so I really need to thank mbbored for the referral. Free 99 is most definitely a Pikko kind of price tag!

As I mentioned, economy has become a hot issue in my household. To show my support for this, I'm going to start trying to focus on doing more cost-friendly bentos. I might even start a series of a subject like say, 50 Ways to Eat A Costco Chicken. Actually, 50 is a lot... I should start lower with 12 maybe, haha!

For now though, I'm trying to uh... purge my fridge and freezer from things that I've bought during naughty trips to Foodland. I packed 3 pork gyoza into this bento along with a leftover pink onigiri from the freezer. The fish bottle has soy sauce for the gyoza. Next to it I have kim chee crab, which I will eat with the lettuce that lines the box. In the middle I have sliced takuan, ume, and edamame.

When I first got these small round boxes I didn't really care for them but now I really enjoy packing small lunches into them. I wish I had more of these black lacquer boxes as I really think food in a black box makes for great contrasting colors. I haven't used my two-tier boxes in quite a while, I guess I am just going through a bento box mood right now.

Easter is right around the corner and UGH do I hate holidays like these because it means giving a whole lot of things to a whole lot of kids. Don't get the wrong idea, I do enjoy giving to kids. But 17 kids? My wallet is crying uncle! My husband's eyeballs are still rolling around the cash register at Price Busters. My sanity is pleading insanity! (Don't you just love the feel of Easter grass between your toes?) And this doesn't even include my own kids and my niece and nephew. After this ridiculousness I'm done with classmate Easter baskets. Next year, I'm having a big Easter card project at my house for my two kids and we're giving handmade painted egg cards and a healthy snack. This just costs way too much.

March 18, 2008

Miso Pork (195)

I thought I had it all figured out last week when I skipped bentos in order to have my 200th bento timed right in time for the day after Easter. But then yesterday I woke up and immediately yakked and stayed home. The one day I made my bento the NIGHT BEFORE (OMG OMG OMG!) I end up sick. I guess me being on time just disgusts my body and this started some kind of inner revolution. So anyway, this was yesterday's bento. I also did not take Good Friday into account. So while I was supposed to have bentos 195-199 done this week, alas, there is a little fly in my ointment.


I made miso pork on Sunday, though this time I put sake and I could really taste it. Since the kids had been throwing tantrums on an hourly basis I drank some of the sake while cooking. Bwahaha!

Okay, that was funnier on Sunday.

I despise the way the pork looks in this picture and it looks that way because it was refrigerated overnight. It looked much more golden brown and attractive when I first made it Sunday. D: Underneath it is the healthy rice I mentioned last week. I sliced up a piece of takuan and tucked it into the section with some cucumber pickles. Lastly I have garlic salted asparagus spears pan fried in olive oil.

I've decided to join Weight Watchers again after Easter. Next Monday will mark 2 months before the wedding and I'm basically 130 right now. My eating habits have really slipped and so I'm hoping having the online tracker at my disposal will once again put me back on track and help me kick off that last 10 pounds. My problem is usually dinnertime and weekends. That and my new weakness for curry ramen. ; ;

I know a bunch of you watch Lost and that you all might agreed the Desmond episode was highly emotional and probably one of the most tear jerking so far. Well that was true before last week's episode, Ji Yeon. My butthead husband figured it out about 15 minutes in, so I didn't have that fuzzy "Oh I'm so stupid to not have figured it out!" feeling. That didn't matter though, I still cried my eyes out. I'm not sure if it's because Sun is Asian and that makes me identify with her more or something, but damn did that scene break me down! I even watched the ending again last night just to find out if it was still that raw and sure enough, Niagra Falls again!



I love, LOVE the new, slow piano theme they play lately. *sigh*

March 12, 2008

Crab & Avocado Sandwich (194)

Sorry for the lack of bentos this week, but as I mentioned last Friday, we had a potluck on Monday. Lots of yummy foods were consumed including an apple/nut salad, lobster ravioli, healthy rice (from me, more on that later), enchiladas (which I didn't eat after someone said, WOW THEY'RE SPICY!), lots of fresh veggies, some REALLY ono fresh salsa with corn chips, salami & cheese on toothpicks, cold cut sandwiches, and lots of other goodies including the cuuuutest Easter cupcakes which I am so stealing for Easter this year.

Yesterday I stayed home because poor Baby Girl caught Buddy's stomach virus. She lay limp and miserable all day, the poor thing. ;(

As I mentioned, I made Healthy Rice, which is a very good and increasingly popular dish that I got from Grandma J who got it from someone else. It's very simple to make and I was asked for the recipe by at least half the office.

5 cups cooked rice
1 jar Nametake mushrooms
1 jar Ochazuke furikake
2 cups shelled edamame

Instructions:

1. Combine and stir together well.

I still have leftover ingredients so I'll be sure to make more for a bento once I buy more edamame. The best part of it all? I am allergic to mushrooms and I gave this a try, happily discovering that I can eat nametake mushrooms no problem! WOOHOO!!!

I haven't had a sandwich bento in quite some time so I decided to use some of the big pack of Costco imitation crab meat that I bought for a sandwich. Since mayo is a big no-no in calories and I've brought a lot of food for lunch, I opted to use Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese instead. It's possible this will turn out to be a terrible combo, we'll see!!


I lightly toast the bread but it gets a bit soggy in the fridge anyway, so I only toast it to make the cutting easier. I lined the sandwich box with lettuce, which I eat with the sandwich so nothing gets wasted. I also sliced up some avocado to make it less boring. With the cheese and the bread, this comes out to a 5 point bento. Each slice is 2 points! D:

The silliest part of this bento is the baby carrots. This bag was a bad batch, containing a lot of carrots that didn't get peeled well, so were therefore very bitter. Trust me, peeling little baby carrots is a severe pain in the ass. And I just noticed one of them had the nerve to fall out of place in the box before I took the picture. How rude!


I haven't had one of these in a while. Since this is an additional quarter avocado, this salad is 1 point. But, with all the walking I do for this job, the 1 point isn't a big deal. I get about 40 minutes of walking done per day just to pick up the mail. Pretty good, huh? :D


Lately I've been eating a lot of food so I have to keep myself under control by eating a lot of healthy food. I brought miso soup with tofu to eat in the morning, which was a good thing since Buddy had me up at 4:30 AM asking to eat everything under the sun. (catching up for 3 days of almost no eating) I brought more of my ancient kiwis along with their buddies the Senior Citizen Blueberries. If you look closely, you can see their wrinkles. As I've said before, I hate wasting fruit. You should have seen the nasty ass raspberries I very reluctantly threw away this morning. (I almost ate a few before tossing too, lol!)

It's more important than ever for me to be adhering to my diet now because my bridesmaid dress came in. I ended up being asked to pick my own and I chose this one. I love it! And even better, I fit quite perfectly into a size 6 petite! WOOOO! That's actually better than the dress, hehe!

March 7, 2008

Onigiri (193)

Today's bento is not for me. Baby Girl has a party today and parents were given the option of bringing food for the kids. I decided to bring in onigiri or what people in Hawaii call musubi (moo-soo-bee). I got up at 4:30 am to do this because I'm such a die-hard crazy mom.

Just kidding. I got woken up by a horrible stomach ache and by the time my ordeal was over, I decided to just stay awake already. I cooked two pots of rice to make pink rice and blue rice, adding two drops of red and blue food coloring to the water before I pressed the Cook button. I made two cups of rice each time and it turned out to be too much so I wrapped the extras in Glad wrap and froze them. FOR ONCE I did not waste rice! I am sadly a notorious rice waster when it comes to the rice pot.


Before I highlighted my hair I had one white hair. After punching out 16 nori faces this morning I'm sure I must have at least 50. Getting a good sheet of nori that will punch right is SOOO rare. Punching these faces made me want to punch something else. Like maybe me for deciding to put faces on these accursed riceballs. Hopefully the kids like them and eat them. Buddy liked looking at them, giving them a nice long "Whoaaaaa..." He's such a great confidence booster for me!

I won't have a bento on Monday because we're having our monthly work potluck. Have a great weekend all!!

March 6, 2008

Stuffed Aburaage (192)

I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not doing a Girl's Day bento and for not doing a bento to enter into the FFXI Fan Art contest. I had thought about doing it but kinda just lost track of it and now I wish I'd done one. /wrists

This is bento #192, which means that in a couple of weeks I will have reached the big 200. I'm still thinking of what to do, but have narrowed it down to two ideas. I might end up scrapping both and just making regular food nicely arranged, I dunno.


Today's bento was a little hard to do because it involved a lot of thinking. Grandma J stuffs triangles of aburaage with pork to make this dish and they turn out looking basically like cone sushi but with pork in it instead of rice. It tastes really good, but it's a very awkward piece of food to arrange nicely. I had meant to do this bento last night as I keep telling myself that the reason we're late in the morning is because of my lunches, but I had to think and think and think. I finally settled on slicing it up like a mini meatloaf and that turned out working really well.

I mixed the small amount of rice with some ume furikake and had made it into a round ball, but it didn't fit well so I mashed it around to just sit there as a bunch of rice. I sliced one asparagus spear to arrange. These pieces gave me a lot of trouble! :( I added takuan and pickles to the side and then raspberries in the last section. This box is great because it's split into 3 spaces, which I love. When I was at Shirokiya the other day I wanted to buy a Ms. Bento but they don't sell them anymore and even worse, all their pretty boxes are gone too. :(

March 5, 2008

Chicken Tofu (191)

I made like the hugest mistake ever and bought one of those jars of garlic salted Planters peanut jars and I am whacking it at work. It's ungood. I know peanuts are healthy, but in moderation. There ain't nothing moderate about my peanut intake, let me tell you! The sooner it's gone the better. You know this translates into "eat it all today". Gah!


I was lazy this morning, so this isn't much of a bento. I have leftover chicken tofu, a car shaped boiled egg that I had in the fridge already. I dyed it green cause my kids have this thing for green cars for some reason. On the side is some edamame and carrots. On my bottom layer I have strawberries. For snacks I brought a yogurt and a Fuji apple.

This past Sunday was the 6 week marker for my earrings to come out and so I went earring shopping. I bought a ton of earrings and then was able to wear some hook ones for a day. Then I tried to wear some hoops and the dang holes were being stubborn and I was poking around and could not find the hole in the back. My holes started bleeding and everything, I was sooo frustrated. ;( My co-worker finally got them in for me. I put the studs back in and will leave them there for a couple more weeks. Such a bummer!

March 4, 2008

Butter Yaki Leftovers

My apologies for not posting on Girl's Day, but I didn't have a bento to post because I ended up not having enough time to finish it in time. ; ; We had to tour a preschool early in the AM and I had to just put my bento into the fridge for today. I ate leftover hamburger stew for lunch.

This is the bento, finished at last. I have as the "main" food, three pan friend shrimps, some eggplant, and some zucchini. Along with that is a flower shaped onigiri, a bunny shaped boiled egg dyed pink, pickled cucumbers, pickled eggplant, and a lone blueberry to fill up the middle. I put soy sauce for the boiled egg in a carrot bottle for the bunny. ^_^


For Girl's Day we went to Shirokiya to buy Baby Girl a yukata and hair piece, which looked so so cute. I also bought some chichi dango, which is pictured below. I couldn't resist bringing some to work for lunch. The pinks are strawberry, the greens are melon, the white are plain (?). There were blueberry ones as well, but I didn't really like the taste of them. My favorite is the white.

On Friday Mr. Pikko had a surprise for me. He took me to dinner at Sam Choy's in Diamond Head where we had some gift certificates for and then took me to see the Romeo and Juliette opera at the Hawaii Opera Theater. It was an interesting experience, but that darned place needs to turn up their AC! Who wants to sweat while watching Romeo and Juliet?? :( I had a very nice time though, especially at dinner. I took pics of our onolicious food, too!

Seared Sashimi Appetizer - VERY good!
Butterfish - Mr. Pikko's dinner
Red wine Braised Shortribs - My dinner, VERY GOOD!
Pineapple cheesecake - Looked great, but I didn't like it. I thought it would be pineapple flavored cheesecake, but it turned out to be cheesecake flavored pineapple.

The cheesecake was really cool because that fan you see at the top? That's a thin slice of sun-dried pineapple. I thought that was so cool, even though I didn't care for the dessert itself. I also had a melon dacquiri, which I really didn't like. I'll stick with strawberry from now on. D: