Oven Fried Chicken (219)

Ok so I've been moaning and groaning about my stupid camera spitting out blurry pictures when I photograph my bentos lately and I thought this would make for a great excuse to get a new camera. My plans were foiled when Mr. Pikko suggest I check for a smudge on the lens. Sure enough, there was a little fingerprint right across the front. I will blame Buddy, since he loves to take pictures, usually of people's chests and neck. Who knows, maybe he will be some weird modern art photographer.

The Art of the Neck!

So anyway, with my camera problems unfortunately solved, I still have a blurry bento picture for today, which fills me with complete and utter rage!! AUGH!!!

Just kidding. ^_^


This here is oven fried chicken and no, I have not fallen off the weight loss wagon just yet. I still have to lose 12 pounds before I'm considered "not fat" in scientific terms. Plus, my size 4 pants are no longer comfortable, a sure sign I need to control my eating again. I picked the smallest piece of chicken in the pan and then brought soy sauce for flavor so that I can pick all the breading off. I'll try my best not to eat all the rice.

Next to it I have broccoli and takuan in a little food cup. I tucked in one il/legal tomato for color and then wished I had more food to put in. I ended up only bringing one tier since the only fruit I had was a papaya and Baby Girl loves papaya so much if I had taken some there would have been some papaya riots in the kitchen this morning.

Alrighty so last weekend, as you all know, was my best friend's wedding. Much to everyone's shock, we left our kiddies at home. This however, turned out to be a very wise decision as I think I might have shown up at the wedding slightly demented if they'd come along. (more on that below) Traveling with toddlers is not fun. You have to rent carseats, their little bodies balloon your airfare no matter how much you tell the airline they can both fit in one seat, they are of course not used to sleeping in a strange place and therefore are really cranky at night, and ALL the bathrooms are not your house one therefore making the request to "go shishi at home" extremely unreasonable.

We stayed in Kona Saturday so that we could go to Kona Bowl to watch BJ Penn defend his title in UFC 84 and me not wanting to spend too much on a hotel we'd be barely staying at, chose to go with a cheapie condo. The place was pretty decent for the price so I can't really fault it, but it was definitely not a place I felt comfortable sleeping in. For one, it had a weird odor. Two, there was this HORRIBLE looking spider in the parking lot that gave me serious freaking nightmares (not kidding). There were lots of mysterious quarter sized holes in the ceiling. The comforter was dark green with lovely white stains on them. Later that night I ended up suggesting that we sleep without bathing so as to avoid getting any ickyness on our sleeping clothes. I slept with the sheets covering my feet because a part of me was afraid that yellow-assed demon was going to get off his web and crawl in to terrorize me. I woke up at least 4 times during the night checking my feet. I cannot imagine trying to get our kids to sleep in this place.

We had time to kill so we hung out napping in the Kona Bowl parking lot, then went to Macy's where I got the flipping deal of my life on a really great Eileen Fisher jacket. The price on the tag was $228 and I got it at 65% off with an extra 20% off for signing up for a Macy's card (which I got lectured about). I was supposed to get a total of 40% extra off, so if I'm feeling particularly stingy, I'll call them up to complain. But for now, getting a $228 jacket for $37 has me on Cloud Nine. Later, we met my Aunty C and Uncle L for lunch at Big Island Grille. That was fun, thanks for meeting us Aunty!!

UFC was freaking awesome! All the fights were pretty good with the exception (in my opinion anyway) of the Machida/Tito fight. That one just frustrated the hell out of me... I'd gone shopping at Pearlridge Friday and at Champs I found one woman's Extreme Couture shirt. I was really happy with it for the design obviously, but probably also because it was a size small and anything that says small and fits is a freaking great shirt. I had tried to blur our Mr. Pikko, but he ended up looking like a danged obake, so I just cropped him out.


Watching UFC with a lot of other people who actually like UFC is a heck of a lot better than watching at home by yourselves trying to convince the kids that UFC is just as fun as Curious George. I got some serious chicken skin when BJ entered the arena. He comes out to a mix of Hawaii 78 and E Ala E (you can listen to it below) by Eggman, which is what Baby Girl calls Bruddah Iz. We're still trying to figure out what the heck she's talking about. She gave us some spiel about how we showed her a video playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and a big dragon was chasing Iz or something... I think maybe one night I must have accidentally given her a lollipop before bed and then let her watch a YouTube video of Iz, causing her to have psychedelic sugar high dreams about the "Eggman". ?!?!?



There must have been over a hundred people at the bowling alley watching and so it was the perfect atmosphere. When BJ knocked Sean Sherk out the place just erupted, it was awesome. My only complaint was that the guy was giving away prizes on an obnoxiously loud mic, sometimes during prelim fights. I mean, those are interesting too...

When it comes to MMA, Mr. Pikko likes to accuse me of name dropping, which I fully admit to doing because while I can appreciate the meaning behind a term such as a "beautiful armbar" and can remember tons of fights, I still have no freaking clue what a "kimura" is other than my friend's last name. I know just enough to appear to be a hardcore MMA fan, but in reality I just live with an MMA freak and find it much more convenient and time-saving to have him relay to me the latest gossip from the sites and blogs.

I have however, moved on from name dropping to what I call "shirt dropping". I have this thing about buying shirts lately. I have like 8 UH shirts and then now have my Extreme Couture shirt, my BJ Penn tank top, etc. It's pretty effective too, I wore my BJ tank to the salon when I was getting ready for the wedding and the lady doing the nails of the bride next to me mentioned what a great fight it was. The man at the front desk of the salon asked me if BJ won. At the airport some guy wearing an Extreme Couture shirt saw mine and later at Kona Bowl told us about his MMA clothing store at Schofield. So now instead of asking someone with potential MMAphobia if they watch UFC, I just wear it and wait for people to talk to me. Good stuff!

After UFC we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was entertaining, but Last Crusade is still the best for me. "Water? No thank you, fish make love in it."


This is me and Lan just before her wedding. I'm kinda sad about the hair.. I should have had it down. I look like I just jumped out of that 80s music video Simply Irresistable only with less eyeliner. The back was really pretty with curls, but you can't see it. :( I loved Lan's hair and headpiece! Her wedding was loads of fun and their vows had everyone in tears. Best. Vows. Ever. Not joking. I wish I could have come up with something that beautiful. *romantic sigh*


Kahua Ranch had the most fantastic view. Mr. Pikko and I took this picture just after sunset. More to the right you had a clear view of Maui. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was up there. The road up was freakishly scary, so I was pretty relieved that we took a bus down in the dark later.

We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa Village and I got this for free from my HHonors points. The room was like a 500% improvement over the condo in Kona and I don't know if I've ever slept on a bed that comfortable in my life. It killed me to have to wake up at 4:30 AM to get to the airport for our 7 AM flight. I was most definitely on crack when I made those reservations. The Hilton has retardedly spaced out towers, so it's best to take their tram. Only the tram doesn't start up until 6, so we had to walk half a mile from our room to the parking lot. Not cool. Still, I really wish we could have enjoyed the hotel more. This is the hotel with buttloads of artwork, waterways for boats, pools, a lagoon, possibly waterslides, (I forget), and dolphins! Next time! ^_^

Hopefully I can have more pics later, I had camera brain farts and didn't take many. We got home and ate breakfast at Anna Miller's so that I could look up on the laptop symptoms of brain aneurysms, which I mentioned yesterday. Despite all my complaints, it was great to see the kids again. Buddy had a wet head from running around in circles a lot, which didn't surprise me. I just hope he didn't do that the entire weekend.

Edit:

I forgot to talk about LOST!! I guess I'll do that next week though, when people have safely watched the finale thus ensuring I do not spoil it for people.

Spare Ribs & Leftover Panda

My apologies for the long delay in returning to the daily routine of bentos, but I had a really great time on the Big Island for the wedding and I think after a while, so much complete and utter freedom from two really cute, but really rascally children gets to you after a while. I've been in recovery since we returned in the freakishly early hours of Monday morning. I have pictures, but have not yet uploaded them yet. Coming soon with details!


This is last week's bento which I forgot to upload and then blog about. No one can blame me though, I was alternating between trying to find my head and wracking my brain to figure out if I'd forgotten to print any maps. Not that they were needed in Kona. Turns out if you drive along the main road you can basically eventually find everything needed. It was so simple that even Mr. Pikko took over driving after a while, which was shocking since he normally starts to lose his sanity any time he gets near the Big Island. Silly townie. (I say that with much love!)

These spare ribs are by far my favorite dish of Grandma J's. They smell horrible because of the vinegar, but they taste so so good. I stuck in tomatoes for color, added sesame seeds to the rice for some flair, and I have no clue as to why I added the lime wedge. I was pretty mad at it for being slightly open at the top, making it look like a lime wedge with it's head lopped off. Stupid lime! Ruined the look I was going for! (whatever that was...)


I stayed home because of a sinus headache yesterday because on the plane ride home Monday I fell asleep with my head on the side of the plane and began to very attractively snooze with my mouth wide open. This means I was not swallowing as we descended so when I woke up, I had some seriously crazy sharp pains on the left side of my face. I thought blood vessels in my face were popping and that I was going to die of a brain aneurysm before I could give my kiddies one last request to stop their whining. As you can see, I am thankfully not dead.

Anyway, enough of that. I wasn't so sick that I couldn't crave some Panda, so I went out to go buy us some. I had to drive so freaking far for this, it took me like I swear, at least a minute 30 seconds to get there. The things I do for food!

I remember years ago Panda Express was pretty gross and I only went there if I wanted Chinese American food and there was no other option, but they seem to have gone through a big makeover in the last few years and I really enjoy their food now. I was especially craving their String Bean Chicken so I got two servings of that along with plate with Chow Fun and Orange Chicken.

The bento itself looks horrible because the picture is blurry and the box is obviously too small. I was too lazy to move it out into another one. One of my worst habits is leaving my dirty bento boxes around. It makes no sense for me to dirty up extra ones when I can barely wash my lunch ones. You can tell I'm really lazy from the trip still...

Don't forget to enter my 100k Bento Contest!!

100k Bento Contest

*sigh* I forgot to upload my bento picture today. I'll try to post it tonight, if not, then I'll post it from Kona!

I just looked at my counter and saw that I'm quickly approaching 100k visitors!! I think it's time for a contest! Prize will be a bento grab bag. I don't know what I'll put in it, probably a bunch of bento boxes and accessories. My favorites (depending how many people enter) out of the entries will get posted here on my blog and I'll create a poll for people to vote. The winner will get the grab bag! This does not have to be a bento that you make just for this, you can pick an old picture of a bento long eaten. Just make sure it's made by you!

Send to me:

First Name
Country
Picture of bento (must be your own)
Description of bento components
Bento blog link (if any)

Entry deadline is whenever I hit 100k. Get to work, fellow bentists! (my coworker Fleven came up with this ingenius term)

Tonkatsu (216)

Today's bento is brought to you by the letters 'B' and 'P'. I was making it this morning and went to the fridge to grab the tomatoes. Buddy saw me and immediately got frantic, "BUDDY DO! BUDDY DO!!!!!" He started wailing when I picked them out and washed them because he had wanted to choose them. Since he doesn't know a firm tomato from a football, I was unable to accomodate his wishes.


Instead, I let him put the tomatoes into the bento, which worked like a charm in getting him to stop screaming. I swear, the kid can turn the tantrum on and off like a light switch. So anyway, this one was done by Buddy and Pikko. I'm one proud bento mama today!

This is tonkatsu from a few days ago. I had no bento yesterday because I had a lunch meeting at The Willows. The place was a ghost town, it was scary. Don't people eat lunch out anymore?? I especially liked the roast turkey and prime rib. I wish I'd skipped the fish and chicken long rice and gotten more turkey.

Anyway, tonkatsu with furikake rice and green beans and Buddy's tomatoes. The wedding is this Sunday and I have no idea how much I weigh, but I tried on the SIZE SIX dress last night and I fit just fine (awesome), so that is really all I care about at this point. I've got my shoes, my bra, and my dress. I just need to find some nice wedding appropriate earrings, a matching sweater to keep warm, and pantyhose and then I'm all set.

Mr. Pikko and I will be watching UFC 84 in Kona this Saturday. GO GO BJ!

Somen Salad (215)

We had spaghetti for dinner last night but due to some kid craziness, I forgot to take leftovers again, something I was really upset about since I love spaghetti. With no food to take to lunch today, I ended up making somen salad.


I had somen noodles hiding away in a drawer. They've been patiently waiting for me to remember them and so this morning they cried out in joy at the thought of being the center of attention on AIB at last. Luckily, I still had eggs. I say "luckily" because I am really bad at keeping fridge inventory. I'm constantly going to the fridge for eggs or mirin and going, "Oh crap."

I had a kamaboko in the freezer, which was easily defrosted under water. The Okuhara or Okamura or whatever brand of kamaboko is usually cheaper, but having grown up in Hilo, I am biased and always buy the Amano brand. I chopped up romaine lettuce really fine, added the egg (which I did not mess up TOO badly), added the kamaboko, then topped it with toasted sesame seeds. I have the sauce separately. My mom has a reeeeally good somen salad dressing recipe, but unfortunately she never wrote it down and can't quite remember it. She's working on getting it down again and hopefully I can post it then. For today I have store bought sauce.

I was going to add spam to it, but horror of horrors, I looked in my cabinets and found NO SPAM. I AM A DISGRACE TO ALL HAWAII MOTHERS. *sob* Trip to Costco planned ASAP.

As I mentioned, we ate at Kyoto Ohsho on Friday night. This place is located at Ho'okipa Terrace at Ala Moana or "the fancy schmancy top floor".


We had pre-ordered all our food because had a huge ass party (maybe 35 people) but we still didn't get our food until like 7:45, which was quite annoying, especially since we seemed to have only one waiter for all of us. I do have to note though, they have AWESOME rice. I can't really describe it, but the rice was just divine. They brought a bowl of miso soup for the kids and a bowl of rice and while feeding them I tasted some and I just had to keep eating it. Plain, nothing else. It was that good.


I got the Grilled Salmon. Usually I drown (and I am speaking literally) my salmon in shoyu because I just love salmon with my shoyu, but the salmon at Kyoto Ohsho was salted, so it was very tasty on its own. It was also cooked thoroughly, yet still very moist. So in the end, despite the service, I was quite happy with my food. The kids' teriyaki chicken was really good, too. I had a lot more pictures of the appetizers and sides, but I ended up having to delete them because my camera was full. Candle blowing and family pictures are more important than food. ^_^


On Saturday we took the kiddies to go eat at Genki Sushi and while we were eating I suddenly smelled smoke. I looked up and one of the chefs in the middle was flamethrowing some sushi. I picked one up off the line and

OH

MY

GOD

It turned out to be something they'd added since my last visit, Garlic Salmon. It was soooo good. Raw underneath, cooked with char taste and mayo on top, this thing was some of the best sushi I'd had in a really long time. I ordered a second one and popped it into my mouth before remembering to take a picture, so that is why one is missing. I just couldn't wait to eat it!! They had two other garlic sushi types, but I didn't try them. Someone commented on my Flickr stream saying the ahi one wasn't as good, so maybe I'll just stick with the salmon cause boy that one was a winner for sure. Yum!!

Legalized Tomatoes

A few weeks ago, Mr. Pikko saw a cool thing on TV that was basically a special pot that allowed you to grow tomatoes upside down, eliminating the need for stakes and other annoying things about growing tomatoes. He looked online and found out you can actually do this on your own with a little bit of work. Since our tomato plant in the yard was illegal by growing in the ground, he decided to make this my Mother's Day gift. Mother's Day was, of course, last Sunday but this is Mr. Pikko we're talking about here. It's the thought that counts!


He stayed home for two days to work on this, but mostly because it rained like all day the first day. This thing hangs quite nicely off our yard fence and the plant hangs out of a hole in the bottom. You're supposed to plant flowers in the top so that you have a nice planter of pretty flowers in the top and tomatoes growing out the bottom, but he couldn't find the right flowers in time, which I think he said were azaleas.

The illegal tomato plant was actually a freaking crazy tomato bush. He pulled it out, pruned it, and planted it. I went to take pictures yesterday morning and realized that he had actually legalized my illegal tomatoes! I'm sure they will taste just the same, but I found the thought hilarious.


Here's a picture of some of the ripening ones! I think they look a bit confused as to why they're suddenly upside down. Maybe that will make them redder? lol


As I said, he pruned it a lot, but look at how many tomatoes are still on it!! It's about half the size it used to be. Clearly we are not allowed to grow things in the ground because there's some radioactive tomato super fertilizer in the dirt.

This morning the plant looked a little droopy, so we're worried that it's a little too traumatized from the pruning and the replanting and the whole sudden shift in world view thing. Hopefully it survives because it really is a most thoughtful and cool gift!! ^_^

Okay, on to more evil things. Bento readers, meet Brownie of Doom:


I know, I know. 120 x 520. That hasn't gone so well lol. The other day, a brigade of wild women came storming into my desk area and held me down while one of them shoved a brownie into my mouth. I screamed and put up as big a fight as I could, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Once they got it down, I was released, but the damage was done. I chased after the brigade for another piece. I wrote a pathetic begging email to the source of evil for the recipe.

So, why do I call this the Brownie of Doom? If you saw the ingredients you would immediately know why. Evaporated milk. Caramel. Gobs of butter. Chocolate chips. Oh yes, this brownie is truly evil. Mostly because I ate like 3 this morning instead of my regular breakfast of toast and Cheerios. I made them to take to my grandmother-in-law's birthday party tonight.

It's not my recipe, so I'm not comfortable with sharing it yet, but you can email me and I'll ask! One of my readers here would already know it though, since it's actually her mama's recipe. :)

Tonight we're eating at Kyoto Osho or something at Ala Moana, so I should have more restaurant pictures for you all soon! No bento today because I somehow forgot to take leftovers. Massive brain fartage.

Two Bentos

Okay, so yesterday I had my yearly wimminz exam and so when I was packing up my laptop and getting ready to make the longass trek down to the parking lot, I remembered I'd forgotten to post my lunch. HOW UTTERLY THOUGHTLESS OF ME. *sigh* I need to slap myself.

Maybe I forgot to post it cause I didn't like the look of it. It reeks "lazy". There's no color, too. Wrong box for brown food! And then I just toss edamame in there like that makes it all better. Well it doesn't! Yech!! Food tasted great, though. Grandma J made chicken tofu. LOVED it!

I asked her for her pork hash recipe and she kind of laughed and said she just mixes pork, mushrooms, a bit of oyster sauce, and green onions. She doesn't measure. She cooks it in a pot, but obviously like you saw, you can fry them in little patties. Yum yum!

Okay so anyway, back on topic. That was yesterday's lunch and it was le good.


Today I am having teriyaki hamburger patty. I had to think of yet another way of presenting this since last time I did hamburger fried rice and before that I did toddler style meat loaf. This time I opted to slice them into little wedges. They weren't really tall so I took one of the wedges and sliced that in half flat-wise to use as a little "platform" for the wedges. That worked out nicely!

I made a ball onigiri and meant to put sesame seeds on it, but forgot it. I was in a hurry! I put in some sliced bell peppers and colorful tomatoes. Unfortunately, these are not illegal. I'm sure they taste good, just not illegal good. People back in Hilo have this saying that "Lichee tastes better when it's stolen." I know, you're thinking, what the hell kind of people does Pikko hang out with back home??? Stealing lichee isn't that big of a deal because even if you buy it down at the farmer's market, you know they must have stole that anyway. The same can be said for tangerines and some mangoes. Anyway, last of all, I have some julienned baby carrot and parsley.

When I recovered from the Flu of Death, I came back to work to find this amazing "award" on my desk:


Isn't that just about the COOLEST award you've ever seen!? She put everything in! Musubi with ume, sushi grass, fish, chicken, boiled egg, carrot, and even a lil soy sauce bottle. I was blown away, but hadn't had a chance to take a photo until yesterday. I don't know if she would want me to post her name, so I'll just say, you know who you are, thank you so so much! Of course I could just walk 20 steps to her desk to gush about it with her again but bento blog thanks are way cooler.

On to the Chibo pics!


This, obviously, is the entrance to the bathroom. I kid!


As I mentioned, I got a "special dinner" so it came with appetizers. This appetizer tray had beef tataki, tofu, and ahi poke.


The beef. VERY good. I love medium rare! Or rare if you're going to nitpick.


The tofu with bonito and green onion. Most of this went to Baby Girl, until I accidentally let a green onion about 1/2 millimeter in size get onto the piece I gave her. She has razor sharp green onion eyes.


This is the ahi poke. The first piece I ate was great, but the other two had a lot of tsuji, so I didn't like it overall.


My sister-in-law got the yakisoba crepe style and this is her crepe laid out to cook. I got to try some and though it was interesting, I didn't really like it.


The crepe being folded up! He basically dumps the yakisoba into the middle and folds it neatly. Then he adds the okonomiyaki sauce to the top and slices it into fourths.


This is someone'e else's food. I think it's a cabbage one. If you read the Wikipedia article on okonomiyaki that I linked the other day you can get a better description of it. It looked like they were frying cole slaw to me!


And finally we have here my yakisoba "Chibo". I asked for more shrimp instead of squid, but I guess that request didn't make it to the kitchen because I had squid in it. It worked out though, Buddy loved eating little donut shaped food thingers. It should be noted however, that he will eat practically anything. Except eggplant.

I got off my lazy ass and bought shoes for exercising at home and actually did Tae Bo last night. It didn't help that my legs were still rubbery from doing jumping squats, but at least I'm exercising again. I anticipate this lasting at LEAST 3 days. Wedding is less than two weeks away and I'm still at 128. At least I'm not at 132 though, which was where I was at a couple weeks ago.

This morning I was ready to rip my ears off and fling them at Mr. Pikko because I was so frustrated with my earrings. I bought new ones yesterday and for some reason my left ear decided it didn't WANT to have something going through it today. After like half an hour of trying and Mr. Pikko trying, I ended up with my stud in backwards cause that was the only way I could get it in. He tried really hard, but I really wanted to strangle him only because I was so mad at my ears and he was the closest breathing person. Who knew you could get so gosh darned MAD at your own body parts!

Chibo Yakisoba (212)

For Mother's Day the family decided we should beat the crowds and eat out on Saturday instead of Sunday. We went to a restaurant at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center called Chibo, which is an "Okonomiyaki" restaurant. I had actually never heard of this type of food before and really wasn't sure how I'd like eating Japanese food in a crepe, so I went with the yakisoba. They cooked it right in front of us and this amused the kidlets for about 5 minutes before they were throwing napkins, stealing chopsticks to break them apart and toss them, and asking to go outside.

I don't eat yakisoba very often but have made it a few times at home myself. I got the "Chibo" combination special dinner. Though the food was good, I'm not really sure it was worth the money. I guess it's the experience you pay for. I have additional pictures of the food that I will post tomorrow!

For today I have leftover yakisoba from the kid's meal. Buddy and Baby Girl split a yakisoba dish with chicken and pork, so that is what I am eating today.

I added some green onions to the top to give it a bit more color and added in a flower-shaped onigiri with nori paste in the middle and small umeboshi stuck into the middle. This tasted pretty good reheated!

Yoshida's Sauce Chicken (211)

I got an e-mail this morning from someone at Chow.com telling me about a Food Discovery contest they have going on right now. I wrote up a quick entry about bentos and kim chee crab salads, so make sure you vote for it to keep it visible! There's no need to register! Any votes are appreciated!

Yesterday Grandma J made Yoshida's Sauce Chicken. I asked her for the recipe once. The words that came out of her mouth were basically, "I put chicken in some Mr. Yoshida's Sauce and a bit of water." LOL I think she thickens the sauce at the end, but other than that, the name of the recipe is pretty much the recipe itself. I'll have to clarify how long she cooks it and on what heat, but I assume it's cooked on low to get it really soft. It's by far one of my favorites of hers.

My rice looked really plain and white and I have had furikake on my rice a lot lately, so I added nori paste. Mr. Pikko finds this stuff disgusting, probably because it's wet and black and just all-around yucky looking but don't judge a paste by it's color! This stuff tastes GREAT! It makes a really tasty onigiri filling too.

Next to that I have corn with illegal tomatoes sitting on it. Illegal tomatoes?? Yes, illegal tomatoes. I think I've mentioned the wild cherry tomato plant in my yard. That thing is going wild and is giving tomatoes like crazy. We're not allowed to grow things in the ground at our place but I've let it go nuts for a couple of months now. There are a couple that even fell to the ground because I forgot to check it, so it's possible I'll have a serious tomato plant problem soon. I picked all of these this morning, so they're quite fresh. Aren't they so cute?? I wish I could grow a regular garden in the ground... that one plant is doing like 50x better than my potted ones did. Someday!

Pork Hash (210)

My son has definitely entered his Terrible Twos. The other night I was putting the kids to bed and he wanted to watch more TV. After the usual squabbling back and forth, I finally just pushed him into his room and shut the door behind us. I tried reading to Baby Girl but he was screaming his head off and she said it was too loud to hear. He was holding a little toy Thomas train in his hand and when he finally calmed down he was in grumpy mode. He finally gets my attention with his glare and then proceeds to very flagrantly lick the wheels of Thomas.

Next thing I know, he is steamrolling Thomas up and down Baby Girl's blanket, which of course turns into more chaos. Oi. Later, when he's finally in bed, I'm reading him a book and he begins to very carefully roll Thomas the Spit Engine up and down my arm. He'd long dried out, but I knew the evil intent behind that seemingly cutesy toot tooting.

Today for lunch I had pork hash, which Grandma J usually makes in a gigantic wheel of meat and then slices into wedges. This time she made some of the excess into little patties, which makes for great looking bento food!


My sister-in-law had brought home some fancy looking rice from a client, so I took some of that instead of the plain white rice. It turned out to be sushi rice with cut up cucumbers, tuna, and pickled ginger. I sliced 1 patty in half and layered it together with the last half that I had taken in addition to the whole patty. On top I layered baby carrots and edamame. There was some extra space so I added two tomatoes and finished the whole thing off with a little thing of parsley.

Happy Boy's Day!

I am finally back at work today. That "cold from hell" turned out to be the flu. I was out for a whole week and it really sucked. My diet consisted of soup, McDonald's, soup, rice, tofu, cucumbers, and soup. We were finally better on Saturday and SO ready for real taste in our mouths that we had to go to Panda's and get orange chicken to put some zing back in our taste buds. Last night I had Zippy's chili as that was another tasty yum to help bring back the feeling to my mouth again.


I was too busy with meetings all day to post this, but I had furikake wasabi salmon. Grandma J had given this to us earlier in the week but I just didn't have the appetite to eat it. I added in some mixed tomatoes and put French dressing into the little Hello Kitty container.

Friday Mr. Pikko went to work and actually brought me home Gina's Korean Miso Soup, which I had been craving but couldn't have due to them closing down their Waipahu location. *sob* I felt so gross and uncivilized after being at home for a week that I actually moved my take-out miso soup and veggies to the nicest dishes I had and ate them off that, just to feel normal again.

Anyway, hopefully I'm back to normal. I won't have a bento tomorrow as I'm going to a work assembly. It's 5:30 PM, I'd post more, but I want to go home!