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!!

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!

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!

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!

Shoyu Chicken (207)

My apologies for the technical snafoo yesterday with my picture. I went to look at my Flickr and was like WTF?!? Where is my picture??? *sigh*

Grandma J made shoyu chicken the other night. It was still on the bone so I refrigerated it overnight so that it would be hard and then in the morning was able to pull it off the bone in one nice piece. I wanted it in one piece so that I could slice it nicely. When the meat is warm and soft it tends to flake and looks terrible. I laid the slices on top of some furikake rice and then poured some Mr. Yoshida's sauce onto the chicken since it was looking a little pale from refrigeration.


I added broccoli which I had let sit in some hot water heated up in the microwave in a Pyrex cup. I find this is much easier than boiling water in a pot and it cooks the broccoli just fine. I cut a slice of takuan into little wedges and tucked it into some empty space near the end of the box.

We have this wild tomato plant that is growing from a seed of an old tomato from our potted plants. It's growing under the AC unit and it's CRAZY huge. I wish we were allowed to grow plants in the ground, but we're not. I've been letting it grow just to see how many tomatoes it spits out. One was nicely ripe and we picked that one. I had told Baby Girl two other ones were only dark orange so we'd pick them in the morning for my bento. Then we went out to the yard and the two were gone!!! We think the birds got them. I'm really surprised she didn't blame it on the beavers.

Tonkatsu (204)

I type this with blurry eyes. Buddy woke up at 4:15 AM, asking for "chicken and rice" since he didn't eat much dinner the night before. I went to the kitchen and like any other good, kind, caring bento-minded mother woken up at 4 AM would have, gave him a wonderfully nutritious and beautifully prepared breakfast: chopped up microwaved hotdogs. LOL

Did I have you going? I suggested everything from Cheerios to strawberries to pancakes to grapes to peanut butter whole wheat toast. He wouldn't have any of it while he waited for the rice to cook so that I could make him some Costco chicken fried rice, so that's what he ate. And then when the rice was ready to fry, he was "full" and wanted to watch tv. Typical toddler, living in the now, which changes every 5 minutes.


Today I'm having tonkatsu. I had meant to cook some chicken I didn't get a chance to use over the weekend and try chicken katsu in a different way, but fell asleep putting the kids to bed. This looked a lot better before the sauce all oozed together, but unfortunately I took too long to take the picture. The katsu is cut into small pieces, there's rice underneath, and the asparagus lays nicely on top.


In my second tier I have a salad. I topped it with some Costco chicken so that I didn't need dressing, but I might go trolling into the work fridge and see if there's some healthy dressing I could sprinkle on.

Someone commented yesterday with a really great link to a blog post by Biggie on how to do thin omelets in the microwave. It made me think back to when I had lots of time to read everyone's blog and see all the great lunches and I really miss doing that. Biggie has such a wonderful, helpful blog and if I ever get around to constant reading again, hers is definitely on the top of the list. When I first got into bentos a year ago, hers was always a favorite of mine. Please take a look at her site if you haven't seen it yet. ^_^

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!

Shrimp & Asparagus Pasta (188)

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

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


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

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

Shrimp Cocktail (187)

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

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


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

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

Turkey Croquette

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

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


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

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

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

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

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**

Beef Cutlet (180)

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (178)

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



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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon (174)

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

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

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

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

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon

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

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

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

Roast Chicken (165)

Every day this year so far has been a unique mixture of shit and today is no different, but somehow I feel a little better about things. I'm not sure why. The situation I'm in is just as crappy or worse now, but my head is clear and my emotions in check. Maybe I'm just numb already, which is probably bad.


My lunch today is sliced Sam's Club rotisserie chicken with furikake rice. On the side I have some green salad and tomato. There is French dressing in the little orange container. The green shamrock bottle has some soy sauce for the chicken.

In my crappy 2008 year I do have something awesome and win to look at with glee. Something to look at and squeal, "EEEEEE!!" whenever I feel like I need a picker-upper.



OH YEAH, BABY! That's right!! A pic of me with Colt Brennan!! I was walking through campus to meet Mr. Pikko to go to a UH rally at Bachman Hall when I see Colt standing on the lawn in front of Hawaii Hall. I kinda hung around then went to meet the Mr. I told him we should go back and we waited with two other women until he was done filming the promo. The other ladies got his autograph and I walked behind until he noticed I was there. Mr. Pikko took the pic really quick and my hair got in the way, but it's still a good pic with great lighting! He's really freaking tall, lol! (ie I'm really short)

So yeah, that made my day yesterday.

The highlight of today will be the canning of Herman Frazier. I will have to pinch myself. Someone at UH actually has half a brain for once?! How is this even possible??

Beef Brocolli & Party Leftovers (154 & 155)

Last week Friday I can't even remember why I didn't blog my bento, which shows how the holidays are taking a toll on my sanity in addition to the transition to the new job and a Fan Festival writeup that is now over 3 weeks overdue. I had leftover Beef Brocolli.


It didn't have much color so I just put a few star shaped carrot slices onto the middle of it. It's a very easy way to brighten up a bento and so quick too! I have some Christmas shaped mini cookie cutters I'd like to try out on my bentos in the coming weeks, but I'm not sure what I'll cut out just yet.

Yesterday we went to my cousin's son's birthday party and they had food catered from a place called Tanioka's in Waipahu. The food was really good!! I totally snarfed down about 3 meals worth of food like the horrible WW cheater that I am lately. I bounce between 125 and 128 all week and at the end I can usually end up right back at 127. If I were to finally go back to my diet I think I'd have no problem getting to 120 at last, but I've just been so lalala lately that maintaining this way just seems a great way to have fun with food.

Anyway, we had leftovers to take home and I packed a lot into my bento because I didn't want it to go to waste.

In the back is some sliced steak. On top of that are two mochiko chicken wings, which though I know are so horrible for you, tasted oh so good. In the middle I have rice with little slices of baby carrot decorating them. Tucked next to that is a piece of lumpia and then a salmon patty. In the little yellow tulip bottle I put some soy sauce for the lumpia. I added the tomato and celery for additional color!