The cutesy-ness continues today with usage of my new awesome animal food picks. I look at them and I think to myself, gosh, I should have bought a couple more!! I realize that I don't need more than those, but I still want them. Then I can lay them all out and count them and rub my hands together going "hehehhehehehhehehe preeeeciousssses". This is what new bento accessories do to me. Scary, huh?
I started off with a bunny onigiri. My Aunty K had sent me a while back some animal onigiri shapes and I never did get a chance to use it because I opened the box when the kids were around. Several OHHHHs and MINE, NO MINE! later they had claimed them and were soon all over the house. I only recently recovered them from the wild savages and now they happily sit in my utensils drawer doing whatever it is onigiri molds do. Knitting, perhaps?
I cut the ears out of my breakfast ham steak. I had thought they were too long at first so I cut them short, but now they look too short. Go figure. I made the nori face with my punch. It only took me 10 punches to get that one face to come out right. The rest of the mangled nori will have to be cut up for ghetto furikake or given to the monkeys for immediate consumption. The bunny rests on a lettuce leaf cause even though he's smiling, he's actually hungry too. Here's a closer picture:
Next I put in the beef, then cut the broccoli stems off and laid the tops down nicely (stems hidden underneath). If you're wondering why it's so clean, Grandma J leaves the broccoli separate so that it doesn't overcook, which is pure genius. The beef brocco comes out much healthier and brighter that way. I cut up two pieces of takuan and put them into a little orange food cup and tucked that next to the broccoli.
After that I started to fill in the parts around bunny. I cut up red bell pepper and sliced some baby carrots. He's a hungry, hungry bunny! After that I still had a lot of empty space so I used olives with food picks to finish things up.
This is one of the new boxes I got at Marukai. It's a bit thin even though the box seems thick but this is because there's space for chopsticks in the cover. It's also a great place to hide some Red Vines. ^_^
I am very close to 100k hits, people! Time is running out to enter in my 100k Bento Contest!! If you haven't done it yet, hurry!
Out of sheer laziness and busyness, I had a bento yesterday but didn't post about it. *gasp* In case you hadn't noticed, I can be somewhat of a desk potato. Rest assured though, it tasted just fine anyway.
We had quite a bit left of the Costco chicken we bought on Sunday. Even though these chickens are cheap, we never really seem to fully utilize the whole bird. I really should get more into using up the whole thing whether it's through fried rice or soup or what. It just seems like such a shame to have something so good go to waste. I will have to look up a really good chicken soup recipe and make a habit of making a batch every Sunday night or something.
I used a regular flour tortilla for this and spread out one wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese all over it. Next I covered it in lettuce, which stayed down pretty easily since it was sticking to the cheese. Next layer was chicken, peeled into strips. Finally I put in some strips of red bell pepper. I stuck food picks into three areas of the wrap so that it wouldn't fall apart as I cut it.
The apple was surprisingly easy to layer nicely. I just had to lay down some support pieces underneath before putting the top ones in. I hate empty space, so I tossed in some blueberries.
I decided last night that I have really been slacking off on being artful with my lunches lately, so I'm going to try to get back to doing the cute/pretty stuff instead of just shoving my food in a nice way into a bento box. This means I will have to definitely do my lunches at night because I am the consistent reason we are always late in the morning.
I used more of the Costco chicken to make this fried rice, which has a mix of brown and white rice. It was sticking to the pan, so I poured in some shoyu then added Nori Komi furikake. I made too much, so I gave the rest to Buddy for breakfast, which he loved. I know this because every time a spoonful went into his mouth he made me watch. "LOOK MOMMY!! LOOK! AWWMM!" He's such a cutie sometimes. ^_^
Next to the rice I tucked in a small piece of lettuce. I hate the dark green parts of romaine hearts so I usually pack it with some kind of salty meat so that I can eat it by just stuffing it in my mouth at the same time without having to taste it. That sounds so attractive, doesn't it? It works out quite well since it fills in empty spaces, looks great, and uses up food I don't really like.
For the red flowers I used red bell peppers with my veggie cutters. This was actually really difficult because the skin was so hard to cut through. Now that I think about it though, I really should have just peeled the skin off completely. The flowers are skin side down and I sliced off the bumpy inner sides of the pepper to create the smooth look. Oh well, bento and learn! The middles are made out of cheese. I got too frustrated cutting them out by hand so I ended up just balling it up and squishing it down. Usually I use a straw, but the kiddies are drawn to straws like I am to bento accessories. I'm lucky if I can hide one for 24 hours straight. The leaves are made out of romaine lettuce cut into the shape of leaves.
My second layer is simply sliced papaya and blueberries with a little mini fork to eat it with, since papaya can be so messy to eat sometimes. On the side I have sliced apple and a peach. Several of my peaches have bite marks on them because aside from being Tasmanian devils, my children are apparently peach vampire ninjas too. They slip in quickly when I'm not looking, bite one, then run off as if nothing happened. Sometimes I wonder about those two.
Lately I am just walking around or driving and suddenly I remember something I forgot to blog about. Like last night I was driving home and just as I hit Red Hill I realized I forgot yet again to blog about my thoughts on the super duper magnificent omg wonderful Lost finale.
I am a bit torn as to which scene to post since there were four that I considered incredible, but I finally settled on the Goodbye Kiss.
Ok seriously, oh my god. And I thought Sawyer couldn't get any hotter. Other greats for me included Penny and Des reunited, Ben sobbing as he moved the island, and of course the now infamous ending scene between Jack and Ben. The one that made me laugh the most was probably in the very beginning though, when Ben told Locke, "You couldn't find the anthuriums, could you?" "I didn't know what they looked like!"
I found this fantastically amusing, but this is probably because I grew up in the floral industry on the Big Island, where wanting to die at the sight of anthuriums is very common. Hey, you try staying up til 2 am making tropical Costco bouquets in the freezing winds of Mountain View. My brother will get a chuckle out of that.
My family has caved into the peer pressure and acquired a Wii, much to the delight of Buddy, who thought Wii Boxing was awesome. We had to start keeping the wiimote on top of the tv where he can't reach it after he was sighted hammerfisting the nunchuck and wiimote into the hallway walls. He's such a hallway bully.
If you were going about your business a few nights ago and suddenly heard a high pitched screech, that was probably me. I'm sitting in the living room when I hear, "Um, should he have that?" I look up and Buddy has opened my bento accessories drawer and somehow taken out my cottage cheese tub of precious soy sauce bottles. My immediate reaction was to yell, "BUDDY, NO!" and it was as if I'd set off some alarm in his head that any mischief to be done had to be done immediately or not at all. He thrust his grubby little toddler paw into the tub and began to flurry his fingers around like a cake mixer gone psycho. Piggies and fishies and pandas and flowers and carrots went flying in every direction.
I was not happy.
Okay, so... my bento contest. I hadn't said what I was giving away, but now I have a picture so you can all scramble to enter!
Click that for a bigger picture. Tally:
1 pink two tier bento box with a cute wolf on it 1 yellow two tier bento box with a cute bear on it 1 green Hello Kitty bento box with fork 1 black lacquer round bento box with berries design 1 pack zoo animal food dividers 1 penguin hot dog cutter 1 set of sea animals food picks 1 mini rice paddle 1 pack pastel sushi grass 1 onigiri mold (cylinder shape) 1 set Hello Kitty soy sauce bottles 1 onigiri mold (large flower) 1 set of chopsticks 2 wine bottle soy sauce bottles 2 piggie soy sauce bottles 2 fishies soy sauce bottles 1 yellow Putifresh banana cup 1 Charmmy Kitty bento bag
Oh yes, this bento prize pack is totally filled with awesome sauce! If this doesn't inspire you to submit an entry, you need your head examined. I mean this in a good, concerned fellow bento fan way.
Mr. Pikko was ill yesterday, so this was my cue to dart down to Marukai to raid their new stock. I went a little cuckoo. :(
Click for big version! I ended up with 8 new boxes, two bags, cookie cutters, food picks, BENTO STRAPS (omg they never have those), onigiri molds, cute disposable bento boxes, and soy sauce bottles. You see that red one on the right side? It's obviously for a triangle musubi but I was like, WTF? Are there monster sized onigiri that I've never heard of or something? Then I read the package and it says it's to store 2 convenience store musubis in. As if I'd feed my kids musubi from 7-Eleven! Ech!!
Close-up of the accessories. Aren't those doggie straps so cute?? There were chicken ones too, but one of them clucked at me rudely and I put it back. The nerve of chickens, I swear.
Finally, we get to my lunch. Whew, I sure had a lot to talk about today. I have to start writing down my topics as I think of them. Today I had mapo tofu with rice in one of my new boxes. I love this box! It fit a perfect amount of food for me and the blue strap I bought came in really handy. In the second tier I just dumped a lot of blueberries in cause the pack I bought at Costco was huge and decently priced, so I have a lot of berry eating to do.
We recently discovered that Baby Girl and Buddy find Hawaiian music incredibly amusing. My boss gave me a spare CD of some of her favorite Hawaiian songs and with them being obsessed with Eggman's Somewhere Over the Rainbow, they make me play it all the time now. There's a version of No Ke Ano Ahiahi that makes them break out in fits of giggles and then yell at me to start the song again. This CD has provided many hours (yes, I said hours) of car entertainment, so Auntie B scores points with my kiddies.
When I first brought it home Mr. Pikko immediately began joking that "Mommy's boss is giving her mixed tapes." This led to me and my cousin Jenn lamenting about how kids will never understand how much work it was to get music when we were growing up. If you had the standard boombox and heard your favorite song come on while you were pretending to clean your room, you had to dash to the radio to hit Play and Record at the same time. If you had the mega uber boombox with two tape decks (holy crap), you could move songs from one tape to another! (seriously, holy crap!) This is a sure sign I am getting old. I can already hear myself yelling at my kids when they're older...
YOU KNOW, THERE WASN'T ALWAYS TIVO. IN MY DAY WE HAD TO USE THE REWIND BUTTON ON THE BETAMAX AND LET ME TELL YOU, IT SUCKED!
Yesterday I did what I despise doing. I went to Costco to buy contact solution, spent almost $200 on food and stuff, then realized late last night that I'd forgotten to buy the contact solution. ARRRRGH!!!
While there, I fell prey to those damned food stands and bought a bag of pre-marinated kalbi or as the package called it, galbi. Ever since a former co-worker of mine explained to me how to easily clean my George Foreman grill (I had previously positioned it by the sink and poured water on it continually while cursing such a stupid invention) I am more eager to use it. I grilled the meat with it and it was pretty good. I've definitely had better at Korean restaurants, but it was still pretty good for Costco.
I cut up a piece really small and then added it to a pan to char a bit while I cut up the leftover grilled bell peppers (which were AWESOME!). There was very little rice left thankfully, so this isn't too bad of a lunch today. I got onto the scale the other day and was horrified to see the number 134.4 staring back at me. Way too much Pandas... This didn't seem to stop me from eating Pandas again on Saturday though, haha! It did motivate me to do more Tae-Bo though, which I did Saturday and Sunday, bringing me back down to 131.4 this morning. I think the approach I need to get to is eating what I like, just a lot less of it and keeping up the exercise. I'd love to dive headfirst back into Weight Watchers and all, but you've all seen me struggling to stick to that for a while now and it hasn't been working.
So anyway, I'll keep up the exercise and stop freaking stuffing myself, which I've been doing a lot lately. Complete plan:
1. Better breakfast so that I snack less 2. Daily tae-bo 3. Controlled eating 4. Much more water drinking 5. No more freaking horrible desserts
For #5 I bought a box of Skinny Cows. This should keep my sweet tooth distracted. With the massive slew of birthdays we just got through, it's no wonder I'm always chowing down on sugary crap without a care in the world lately. >.<
I'm a 28 year old mom to two, who I lovingly refer to as Baby Girl and Buddy. I am married to Mr. Pikko. We live in Hawaii with invisible pets and a colony of ants. I lost 22 pounds in 3 months on Weight Watchers and now I just follow their Core diet "when I feel like it".
