120 x 520

I'm sorry for the lack of bento lately, but I've been really busy and tired this week! I have a lot of food to show though! I'm still missing one picture from lunch yesterday and can post that next week or something.

Monday and Tuesday I had to help at the Pacific Rim Disabilities Conference. It was in Waikiki and so during lunch on Tuesday we went across the street to the Waikiki Shopping Plaza or Center or whatever it's called. There was a food court downstairs and we wandered in and I saw this place called Kiwami Ramen. It was full of Japanese people and the prices were great, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately I couldn't try their extensive menu inside at the bar (which served Kirin!) because two of my coworkers were eating elsewhere. I picked from their small take-out menu and got Shoyu Ramen with a Tasty Egg added in.


It was really oily, but it was REALLY good. This one had their "thin noodle" and it was perfectly cooked. The tasty egg was great, though I didn't eat the yolk. It seemed to be a hard boiled egg simmered in dashi. I definitely have to drag someone down there to eat with me sometime.

Wednesday I was extremely lazy and had this craving for cold tofu, so I brought bentos of fruits and veggies and a whole package of tofu. I didn't even bother to pack it in a box, I just bought the whole container and cut it open at work. I ate the whole block of tofu, LOL. And I'm not talking about the half block, I ate a whole block!


Baby carrots and edamame, carefully placed side by side.


Here I have a plum cut into wedges and then some green grapes we got at Costco.


I brought this for lunch yesterday, but we ended up walking to Manoa Marketplace to eat at the ramen shop up there. I forget the name of it and haven't done the picture yet, so I'll give more info on that later. So... this is what I'm eating today. It's beef broccoli and I garnished it with a tofu daisy and bell pepper flowers. I cut a thin slice of tofu and cut it out with my flower veggie cutter. Buddy ate the leftovers. I bought red bell peppers to eat with eggs, so you guys will probably be seeing a lot of red in my bentos in the coming weeks. :D


My second layer has strawberries and green grapes again.

I bet you're wondering what 120x520 is. That is my goal. The wedding is at the end of May, so I am aiming to be 120 by 5/20. Everytime I want to eat bad things or go for seconds, I will tell myself "120 by 520!" and hopefully that will keep me in line. It's my weight loss mantra. I was up to 132 last week, but with the mantra this week am back down to 130. 120 by 520!

One last thing... I know I have quite a few Oahu readers, so I thought I'd mention that my workplace has recently opened up their diabetes study to the entire community of Oahu. If you or anyone you know has diabetes and would like more information on how you can participate, please visit our website: Live Healthy... Work Well. Tell them you heard about it on my blog!

Beef Tofu (205)

I woke up this morning thinking it was Friday, so I became very bitter when I started eating my Cheerios and realized it was actually Thursday. Then I came in to work and turned on my computer thinking it was Friday again. Then I went to heat up soup and the thought of it being Friday snuck into my head again. Despite this stupid day insisting on being Thursday, I declare it Friday.

Unfortunately this means I will have to come in to work on "Saturday", but for today, I think I can live with that.

Since I was in a bad mood over this day thing, I didn't do much for today's bento. I had take some of the beef tofu dish leftovers and re-cooked it this morning with added tofu, then just plopped it in with rice from yesterday that Buddy never ate.


The veggies in the middle are bamboo shoots and onions. I didn't cook it, Grandma J did. :) Very yummy, like a beef version of pork tofu but without the thickening. I still have to make my katsu sticks! >.<

Pork Tofu (202)

With Mr. Pikko and Baby Girl off to a lesson on Saturday, I trucked Buddy off to the supermarket to buy vegetables for my soup. I ended up trying the first Garden Vegetable Soup recipe I found. Though I didn't need any, Buddy would not stop furiously pointing at the "brokko zee" until I picked up this one tiny little stalk that got broken off and gave it to him. This did not satisfy him because after I handed it to him, he demanded "BEEG WUN!" but then I put it in a bag and suddenly it was like, Magical Bagged Broccoli Extraordinnaire and we were able to move on.

Having not made a soup in quite a while, I opted for the whole head of cabbage instead of the conveniently cut-in-half ones. I figured, the recipe said "half a cabbage", so I just bought one, thinking I'd just go double.

I do not recommend this unless you want a pretty good vegetable soup with ASSLOADS of cabbage in it. No, seriously. It tastes pretty good, kinda like the Campbell's Vegetable Soup (which I love) but with enough cabbage to kill someone. I looked at other recipes this morning and found that you're supposed to use 2 cups cabbage. Great. Good thing cabbage is cheap. I used vegetable bullion and don't have nearly enough soup for the vegetables, so I'm kinda stuck eating mostly heaps of cabbage for the early part of this week so that at the end of the week, I can have a nice soupy soup. Next batch, I will use beef bullion, cause I had to add some extra salt this round.


I made Pork Tofu this past weekend. Grandma J makes a really good non-spicy Mapo Tofu and I use this recipe as a substitute for when I want some. It reminds me a lot of the Pork Tofu dish that Y's Lunch Shop used to make on occasion. Let me tell you, that dish was made in heaven. Whenever I saw they had it, I bought it. Mine totally pales in comparison, the only thing similar is the look. I think maybe when the wedding comes around, I should beg my friend to bring me some Y's before she drives over from Hilo side. The last time I went to my cousin's wedding in Kona my aunty did that, bringing us musubi and fish. I'm drooling right now just remembering it.

Anyway, this is Pork Tofu with some diced carrot on top for color and my brokko-zee.


We bought champagne mangoes at Costco yesterday but I need to go get credit for it or something. I cut them open and they were black in the middle. These ones were the third mango I peeled and though it was still black, I just cut that part out. Added some strawberries in too, sliced up for easy eating. ^_^

I never did post more pictures of my wheat grass! It's dying by now and I had to toss most of it out due to mold, but I will try again and this time will harvest them as sprouts as they look in this stage here:


They were actually pretty sweet and tender at this stage. Right now my last tray of grass is really stringy and tastes like... well, grass. The sprouts were much better. I still have a huge bag of berries, so I think I'll just grow a batch, harvest sprouts fresh from my desk at work, and then start over. It's really quite fun!!

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**

Mapo Tofu

It was the strangest thing this morning. Pigs were flying around in the sky in droves! I was confused for a bit, then I realized that they were out because the University of Hawaii announced this morning that Greg McMackin is our new head football coach, meaning that UH... ***UH*** hired someone in 9 days. This my friends, is a miracle!!

The flying pigs make my bento today very fitting because 1) it's got pork in it and 2) it went flying.

I love my MIL's mapo tofu because it's tasty, moist, and not spicy. I added shelled edamame and grated carrot for color so that put together with the pink container, it would make the food look more attractive. Unfortunately, when I took it out to the car, I made the fatal mistake of placing the bento box onto the top of the car where I ALWAYS forget things.

We didn't hear it fly off so I don't know where it is, but this box is presumed lost which makes me so sad because it was a wonderfully shaped box and one of my matching Putifresh containers. I'm hoping that it is just sitting nicely in our parking stall at home, but I won't kid myself. **sigh** I didn't even figure it out until I got to work. Clearly I accidentally packed my head into my lunch this morning along with the food.

I think to console myself I will have to go down to Marukai and buy myself some new bento goodies. Bwahahaha!

Pork Tofu

As any Hawaii resident knows by now, the University of Hawaii Warriors are the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) Champions!!!! The game against Boise was last Friday and it overtook the Fresno State game I attended years ago as the most adrenaline pumped game I've ever attended at Aloha Stadium. There was a point during the game when the stands were just electric and the shouts and screams were deafening. It was truly magical to be there. This picture will be too big for my blog, but I wanted to put it up anyway:



We started chanting B-C-S and that gave me chicken skin! I feel so good for Colt and so happy that he came back. The season was looking kinda bleak with the injuries and all but now it just seems like this was all he could have hoped for. Baby Girl got into it too. I'd hoist her up and her job was to scream and wave the shredded ti-leaves we had. I can't wait for this week's game. GO BOWS!!!!

Last night I had to make something that I thought Buddy would gobble up because he's sick and hasn't been eating much so I made pork tofu. It was a lil lacking in taste so I think next time I'll use Kikkoman instead of Aloha. I'm also out of onion powder so I need more of that... It's the only way I can sneak the taste of onions into food because Mr. Pikko has the Ultra Onion Detector 3000 built into his tongue.


It looked real plain, so I picked some of my last green onions and cut them up with my scissors. When we had severe rains a couple weeks ago I looked out at my plants to see my poor green onions floating in a pot of water. They're still alive though, miraculously.


A KCCA salad, yay. This was all nice and good until I realized that I forgot to pack LETTUCE. hahahaha! So I guess I'm having this as sides instead of a salad. Good job, me!

Chicken Tofu (143)

The highlight of my day came this morning. I was just about to lie back and fall asleep on the way in to work when Kanoa Leahey (we listen to Leahey and Leahey on Mondays and Fridays) says, "Soon we'll be joined by Dana White, president of the UFC!" and both me and Mr. Pikko were like, "WHAAAT!" lol

It was a cool interview and Mr. Pikko had me call the show people (I talked to a screener) to ask them to ask Dana White if he was ever going to bring UFC to Hawaii. They did ask, whether it was because of my call, I'll never know, but he did say that perhaps in 2009 there would be a Hawaii UFC card. But yeah, possible third hand phone call question to Dana White was pretty amusing, haha!

Yesterday was a very rainy, gloomy, and chilly day so it was really cool to be greeted with the nice smell of hot miso soup yesterday evening. My MIL's chicken tofu is a really good rainy weather comfort food and though I wanted to make more miso soup and bring it in today, I ended up deciding I didn't feel like going through the hassle of making it this morning. There was a lot left over, so I took what I thought was a really small portion, but when I put it into the box it looked like a lot of food!


I cooked rice this morning for this, meaning it will probably go to waste. I always tell myself I should freeze onigiri, but I always forget cause my brain is so muddled lately. On the left side I have cucumber slices, some kamaboko, and okinawan sweet potato.

!!!SURVIVOR SPOILERS!!!




Two weeks ago I was fuming at the tv and cussing at the pompous and cocky attitude of Jaime, who thought she was so funny and clever to be throwing a challenge to vote off one of their new tribemates that she couldn't help snickering at the thrown challenge AND could not help laughing at tribal council. I was just like, what a freakin' bean!!! I hated her!! Things started to look up last week when Todd gave the hidden immunity idol to James with a plan to get rid of Jaime. That didn't go well since they didn't win immunity, so I was let down.

BUT THEN! Oh this week was such sweet television watching. I finally got to watch that snide chick get her bachi. She has in her possession what is a "fake" immunity idol, so she plays it before the votes are read. Jeff Probst says that if she has immunity, then all votes for her do not count, then he announces that it's NOT the idol and then throws her idol into the fire. HAHAHAHAHA! And then she gets voted off! Oh my gawd. Picture me on the couch rolling, dying, crying. lol

Man I <3 Survivor.

Chinese Leftovers (135)

So as you all know, I had a very good girl Core lunch yesterday and everything was going quite well and then suddenly, the CHINESE TAKEOUT DINNER OF DOOM struck! Before I saw an article in the paper about the intense calorie content of Chinese cuisine I'd always looked at Chinese food as one of the more healthier types of foods. Now that I know better I get so scared because not only is it full of calories, but it's so damned good too!

But fear not, I was good. I ate very little noodles and focused on broccoli and ong choi. I ate only until I wasn't hungry too, rather than stuffing myself until I felt full. So hopefully day 1 is not completely lost. There was a ton of leftovers so I felt obligated to take some. I took all veggies and a little bit of the noodles then added some rice that I cooked this morning. I've gone back to my old WW Core breakfast of scrambled eggs with sweet onion, bell pepper, and lean turkey slices and it was nice to be back to eating a hot breakfast again. I've been eating cereal every morning for about a month now and at least this way I'm fuller longer and it doesn't cost very many points.


From left to right I have white rice, broccoli, ong choi, and then the noodles in a cup on the right side. On the bottom layer I have:


This is the last of the shrimp I bought on Sunday. I have to use it up before it goes bad! The cocktail sauce is in the pink Hello Kitty cup. I have more tofu and then some edamame topped with a carrot flower. There's a little soy sauce bottle for the tofu. :D

I really really have to find the time to do my Dreamland again. I've been working so hard on Allakhazam while at home plus I've been trying to do more Pikko Pots updates so that by the time Fan Fest rolls around, I have a nicely updated site to show off. Then there's my costume and booth work... ugh. I really don't think I'll be able to find time to use all my spiffy tools and toys until after Fan Fest. This is just sucking so much of my time.

Core Bento (134)

After two days of sickness and a weekend of last minute naughty food gorging, I'm back today on the Core diet to lose the last 10 pounds to reach my goal.


On the left side I have some shrimp and in the little yellow container there is cocktail sauce to dip them into. I didn't get to photograph the egg too well, but this is from one of the new egg molds I mentioned last week. Next to the egg I have cucumber kim chee, then some small carrot sticks, and two small blocks of tofu. I've got a fish with soy sauce for the egg and the tofu, but now that I think about it I should have brought a piggie cause the fish isn't much sauce. Guess I'll eat the egg with salt!

I've also got a kim chee crab and avocado salad. I took a picture this time since it's been a while and people may not know what it is when I say KCCA. Foodland sells at their deli Kim Chee Imitation Crab and since it's spicy I use that along with avocado and romaine lettuce to make a dressing-free salad.


I'm starting this new phase of my diet at 129.5 pounds, so let's see how well I do by the time Fan Fest rolls around!

Teriyaki Ahi & Tofu Steak (109)

As I mentioned yesterday, we had teri ahi and tofu steak for dinner last night. I set aside a small piece for me to cook for my bento. It turned out pretty good even though I wasn't going by any recipe or anything. I simply cooked the tofu steaks and fish fillets in olive oil and then added Mr. Yoshida's sauce to the pan.


I have furikake rice underneath the tofu and broccoli on the side. The little fish bottle contains extra teri sauce for me to pour on the rice when I eat it today. With the small amount of rice, this bento is about 2 points. I packed this into my newest bento box that I got on eBay, a blue Doraemon box. It's a great size and has a food divider, so of course I love it! A picture of the box:


I forgot to freeze my spaghetti last night and I'm not even sure I'll be able to because my freezer is ridiculously packed with stuff. This morning Mr. Pikko called me over to it and said, "You hear that? That's the ice machine breaking." Apparently it's not good to shove packs of frozen gyoza and bagels into the ice tray. Who knew!? ^_-

Pot Roast Pork

I had wanted to do a Harry Potter bento for bentochallenge but I just haven't felt the inspiration and last night I was bummed out over something so I ended up just watching King Kong and doing my bento this morning. I am definitely getting better at that by the way. We still end up late, but not as bad as before. Yay?


This is some pot roast pork leftover from dinner last night along with a bit of rice, some poke, and green beans. 3 points for this lunch: 1 for the rice and 2 for the meat since I couldn't get all the fat to come off. My bottom layer is here:


Tofu cubes and some shelled edamame. The last time I had tofu cubes my buddy Exodus made a comment, "Oh, tofu cubes, neat. What's it made of?" LOL! You crack me up, cheese man! I'm not really feeling all that wordy today, so I'm just postin' the lunch and gonna hele on out to frolic on the internets while I do work.

Hopefully I'll have bon dance and garden pics this weekend!

Chicken Curry w/ Croquette

I'd like to start off today's post with a quote from my daughter. I had bought a pair of sunglasses while in LA so that I didn't look like I had slits for eyes and now I wear them in the mornings to block out the sun so that I can sleep on the way in to work. (they're way cooler than using Mr. Pikko's black sock) On the way to dropping off the kids she likes to ask if she can use them and this morning I asked her why she needed it and her answer was simply:

"The sun is trying to kill my face!"

I can't argue with that kind of logic, so of course I gave it up. She totally cracks me up. She starts preschool next week Wednesday so I am trying to think about whether I should base the one bento I will make for her each week on a specific day (ie every Friday) or on days when I know she'll have a hard time with what they serve. I guess we'll see! Should I make her one on her first day to help her cope or just let her plunge head first into school?

Yesterday we had Zippy's frozen stuff for dinner, which never disappoints. For the first time I had their chicken curry and it was really good. I'd had their hamburger curry once before so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but I hadn't eaten it in like 8 years so I forgot what it tasted like. I took leftovers and was at a complete loss this morning on how to dress it up. When I first started it was just boring rice and curry.


I ended up adding a cream corn croquette. This is actually the second one I fried. The first one I made the big mistake of sitting down at my comp instead of watching it and remembered the poor thing 2 threads later. But I ate the first one so it wasn't a complete loss. After a while I thought it was still too boring so I scooped out some of the rice and added sliced sanbaizuke. It made sense because whenever we eat at Curry House (Coco Ichibanya) they include brown pickles anyway and of course this one tastes worlds better than the bitter stuff they serve there. Then I finished it off with some nori flakes and crackers from a ochazuke flavor packet.


Instead of a KCCA salad today, I packed another bento with tofu cubes and ahi shoyu poke. To add color I put in a red tomato soy sauce bottle and some chopped green onions onto the poke.

Although I've been cheating by eating cream cheese brownies I made Sunday, my high vegetable intake seems to be working slowly. I'm back down to 127.2 from hovering around 128.5 for the last week or so.

Oyako donburi w/ fried rice

The portion of fried rice I defrosted yesterday had too much in the bag, so I'm using up the rest of it in today's lunch. We had ribs for dinner last night and I didn't want to eat that two days in a row so I was yet again lunchless last night and had to come up with something based on the contents of the fridge. Since I need to use my leftover stash because it's threatening to cause freezer asplodage, I chose the donburi.


This will be a real bento for me (by real I mean, "to go") because I took the day off to run errands and do some bento shopping for a couple people so I'm going to heat it up soon and eat it in the car during a break or something. This second layer has tofu cubes and some edamame on sticks. I forgot to pack soy sauce before I took the picture so it actually has a little piggy bottle in it.


I was 131.1 this morning, woot! Weight Watchers advises you to not get on the scale more than on your weigh-in day, but I'm more the kind of person that needs to know how I'm doing to keep the momentum so I check every single night and morning. I'd read in Reader's Digest that people have an easier time keeping the weight off when they weigh themselves daily, so I took their little tip to heart and it's been good for me so far. I'm sure it's different for others. I think next week I will take a picture of myself to show my progress at last!

Kaolian's Bane

In celebration of the arrival of my cute lil' Urara bento box set (box, strap, chopsticks, case, and bag!) I decided to make it color coordinated. This morning I fried up some asparagus and bell pepper (chopped last night) in olive oil, garlic salt, and toasted sesame seeds. On the bottom tray I put in the last of my kim chee crab, the last of the ahi shoyu poke, and some small cubes of tofu. I packed some soy sauce in one of my piggie bottles with the cap exchanged from the red piggie. The tofu expires today, so I'm bringing the rest of it in a separate container. I call it Kaolian's bane because he can't stand tofu and despises asparagus.

Top layer:



Bottom layer:



Fruits will be mango, strawberries, and blackberries. All Core meal! ^_^

Beef broccoli w/ tofu

My super duper MIL made two dishes last night, one being gluten-free (beef broccoli) and the other being not (mapo tofu). I took a lil bit of both along with some white/brown mix rice. It looked pretty plain color-wise, so when I got home I added some chopped kamaboko, furikake, and an extra carrot flower I couldn't fit into yesterday's bento. It looks basically the same as yesterday, but I'm ok with that. I sure am eating a lot more rice than last week. >.<
Yesterday, I either had an allergic reaction to something I ate or I burned my throat really badly while drinking my tea because my throat has been swollen ever since I ate lunch. I don't know whether it was cause I microwaved the bento box, cause I cooked my food on that grill, or if the musubi mix in my rice had mushrooms in it. I'm thinking I must have burnt my throat because usually my reaction to mushrooms goes away by the next day. Whatever it was, it's very uncomfortable and I feel like I have cotton in my throat everytime I swallow. -_-