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. ^_^

Teri Hamburger Patty (199)

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

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

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

Miso Pork (195)

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


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

Okay, that was funnier on Sunday.

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

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

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



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

Stuffed Aburaage (192)

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

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


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

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

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.

Ebi Curry Noodle (186)

I heard a really cute joke last week on Leahey and Leahey Live that I forgot to tell.

What did the rice say to the spam?





Let's get nori.

LOL!! OMG, I think that joke is so cute. I guess you'd have to either be from Hawaii or love spam musubis to get it, but I find it hilarious!

My weekend was okay, nothing much happened, but it wasn't completely boring either. I got a good amount of moat carps turned in (92!) which put me at around 3,400 for my Lu Shang's Fishing Rod in game. Girl's Day is coming up soon and so I have to think about what to do for that bento. I think a pretty bento for Baby Girl is in order! I'll definitely have to do the pink sakura tamago again!


I bought a new kind of salad I from Costco on Saturday which was a shrimp salad with tomatoes in it. All it really has is shrimp with celery and mayo so it didn't have much taste so I ate a lot of it with cocktail sauce. It was a $13 salad and contained massive amounts of shrimp. I ate this for two days straight and then used some for this Ebi Curry Noodle pack that I had forgotten I still had in the freezer. I washed the mayo off to fry it for this noodle dish though. I fried some asparagus so that I have more veggies and don't waste the pack that I bought.


This is the box I used today. It was a gift to Baby Girl from her teacher at school. Which reminds me, still no Hello Kitty Online access!! I got some e-mail saying I have to make a video explaining why I should get into beta. I made one, then went back to check the tutorial on how to add tags, and the tutorial opened in the tab I created the video in, erasing it. MAN I was pissed!! I still haven't made another one yet...


I've got a big round Pooh tupperware full of fruit to go with today's lunch. Baby Girl nagged her way into me buying a tub of tropical fruit, so I've got watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple in here to help us not waste it all. I also bought strawberries and raspberries again. I still have like 10 kiwis left to eat too, gah!! And danjou pears... and apples... and oranges... and blueberries... When it rains it pours!

I went to cut my hair on Saturday and was pretty bored so decided to get some highlights. I've never colored my hair before and am pretty happy with the way it looks. Mebbe next time I'll dye my hair dark red or something. Next week marks 6 weeks with my piercings, so I can go out and buy earrings this week!! :D

My bridesmaid dress came in and it's a size 12... I have to exchange it for 6 or 8. How fun is that?!? :D A year ago I'd have fit in that dress!!

Valentine's Day Bentos (181 & 182)

Yesterday I went to go look at the screenshots of the new MMORPG coming out soon, Hello Kitty Online and I about died of anticipation. I realize that people in the Allakhazam community will likely look at HKO with complete revulsion and disgust, but I find myself mysteriously drawn to a world of pink and flowers and Pompompurin houses. You can make farms and grow crops and pick fruit from trees. A virtual gardener such as myself cannot stay away from such a game, especially since it's free! I used to be such a Sanrio freak as a teenager and from looking at these pictures, apparently I still am.

I woke up at 5 am this morning to cook rice and make tamagoyaki for my bento this morning and to make my first ever bento for Mr. Pikko. He usually doesn't eat lunch or just buys food, so I never bothered to make one. But... since the Kokua Festival tickets I had planned on giving are not here yet, I thought maybe a bento would be a nice, thoughful gift to give that wasn't costly.

This is Mr. Pikko's bento, which has 3 little chicken drumsticks and wings. Grandma J made a new recipe last night as a test for some function she is going to and I think these are called "Lip Smackin' Wings". To go with the chicken, I made a round onigiri dyed with red food coloring. I had initially wanted it to be all pink, but then when the coloring didn't mix too well, I thought the haphazard coloring came out really well. I cut out the two hearts from bell peppers and sprinkled black sesame seeds on to add more color.

In the middle is some sliced asparagus and then on the bottom area I have some pink tamagoyaki cut into sakura flowers. I added about 5 drops of red food coloring and then after it was cooked, rolled the egg into a circle shape with my bamboo sushi thing before putting it into the fridge to cool. I sliced it up and used my veggie cutters to get the sakura shape. Next to that I have some imitation crab and then a slice of orange. Behind the onigiri I put a little raspberry too! I was quite happy with the amount of food I was able to cram into this little box! The tradeoff was that I was pissed to find out that 4 of my romaine heart heads were frozen in my crisper drawer. GRRR!! What a waste!!


Here is my matching bento! It's basically identical except I have a grape tomato hiding behind my onigiri, one less chicken piece, and kiwi instead of orange.

We're giving the night off to the in-laws so we're leaving work early to pick up the kids and will probably take them to eat dinner at IHOP. If you're wondering why we're eating at a pancake house for dinner on Valentine's Day, it's because for a mom of two toddlers, I'm still pretty stupid about some things. Tuesday was Free Pancake Day at IHOP and so I stupidly started telling the family about this in front of the kids. Buddy's eyes glazed over and he starts waddling towards me chanting, "CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE..." Baby Girl starts in with her broken record repeating, going, "Mommy, I want paaaaaancaaaaake? x500" Yeah, big mistake. Never say any word that contains "cake" in front of toddlers unless you're ready to bust them out right then and there.

It was 9 pm, but I got us all to go there only to find it was dine-in only with a half hour wait. NO CAN DO! So this is sort of a makeup for the other night. An emergency trip to Foodland for frozen pancakes had to be made.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Salmon w/ Pasta (166)

Last night I called up my brother to go out for dinner so we could talk about my wonderful 2008 year. We met at Ala Moana and ate at California Pizza Kitchen. Yes, we have those in Hawaii! lol

I was going to order the Chicken Piccata, which I really enjoy, but then saw that they had a new salmon dish with pasta and ended up getting that. As usual, it was mega freaking huge and I could only eat about a third of it. This is one of the best parts about my diet with Weight Watchers: I really learned to watch my portions. Last year I probably would have snarfed that whole plate down no problem and then shared a dessert with someone. No more! :D

So anyway, I have a rather large lunch today, haha! The pasta is very lemony, but I still love the taste. The salmon was perfectly crispy on the outside and moist on the inside. I'm really sorry that I picked at both ends of the salmon because it makes for very weird looking bento fish, don't you think? It's got this little missing piece, like some bento monster came by and said HMMMM, SALMON!!! and took a bite. *sigh*

On the side is some yummy asparagus. Anyway, I've got a lot to do today. Happy lunching everyone!

On On Leftovers (161)

Yesterday I had a birthday party to attend at On On on McCully. I ate a whole lot of food, but was able to control myself in that I ate a TON of the salad then did not eat anything of the last two courses. (there were EIGHT!!) I thought the food was great, especially the salad! It was probably doused in fistfuls ajinomoto (MSG) but still tasted yummy!


I don't think I've ever had an 8 course meal at a Chinese restaurant, so it was quite an experience. I didn't know that we were getting this much food so of course I ate a ton of salad, then downed a lot of soup, then quickly ate up the kids' discarded "duck in buns" before I realized that I should have been saving room for all the other things. Roast chicken came out, then a seafood medley in a fried taro bowl, next came mongolian beef with asparagus, then stuffed tofu, and finally cake noodles with duck meat. The duck noodles was by far the best dish so naturally I was upset that it came out last when I'd already stopped eating. I tried a small piece of meat and it was so yummy, that's why my bento is kinda overflowing with it! lol

Sorry for the late and short posting, but it's radio show day! Tune in if you are bored! http://www.onlinegamingradio.com

Curry Croquette

My husband has expressed distate at being referred to as "Mr. Pikko" so for today I will refer to him as Pokko, which was the name of his character back when he played FFXI with me. After this, I'll switch back to Mr. Pikko just to be evil. *snicker* Anyway, Pokko received his call for new season tickets today and he managed to get us the amount of tickets we wanted, though not in the section he'd been told by another lady. We'll probably go buy them later this week and once we do, guess what that means?!? Solid excuses to make football game bentos for the entire UH home football season of twelve weeks! Not thirteen! *cough* hermanfraizersuxass *cough*

Two days ago my latest bento treasure arrived from Japan. I got this beauty for a very reasonable $5.00 plus combined shipping with another box I will use soon. Isn't it wonderful!??! I do believe this is the nicest one I have now.


Inside I have pan fried asparagus on one end, then a curry croquette sliced in half and laid next to some brown/white rice. I have no idea what the croquette will taste like, but it's only 2 points, which I felt was a great deal for something so big. I fried it in the leftover oil from the asparagus so there are little flecks of very tasty burnt garlic on it.


Not only was this awesomest box pretty, but it came with a matching bag!

Today I was supposed to be on a plane to Los Angeles to attend the Anime Expo 2007 but instead I am here at home. The trip had to be canceled due to another engagement I have to take care of. I'm bummed, but I've been promised some of the loot from AX so it's not a total loss! And as a bonus I was 128.6 yesterday morning!

Mapo Tofu

My ultimate mother-in-law (she'd kick your MIL's ass in a cooking contest for sure) made us beef broccoli and her version of non-spicy mapo tofu yesterday. Her mapo tofu is one of my favorite dishes of hers, behind her spare ribs, which completely own me. I decided to take only some of the tofu because I needed a lower point lunch today to help me get back on track.


Due to my husband's claim that onions are responsible for everything from cancer to blindness, she chops green onions and then banishes them to one side of the pan. I felt bad because I know what a pain it can be to chop them so fine and with the green onions put in time-out, no one took them. I ate a bunch of them and was happy to take more to accent my lunch.

To help me make it through the day I packed a veggie bento. The top layer has asparagus fried in olive oil and garlic salt. I made too much so Mr. Pikko and I had a few of the extras. Pan frying is the best way imo. I've done them in the oven before but I get bored standing around then forget about it and by the time I get back they're past the point of no return and I end up with olive green limp stalks instead of bright green spears of goodness. With pan frying I stand there constantly flipping it around and can pick them out as they're done.


On the bottom is a small KCCA Salad. I just realized that it sounds like a radio station, haha! Speaking of radio, if any of my Hawaii readers happened to be listening to the Leaheys on Kumu yesterday, I was the Crystal that called in asking if they were going to interview BJ Penn. I get so nervous calling radio stations, but luckily didn't stutter more than once this time.

I want to thank all of the people that have been rallying and voting for me at Allakhazam. You guys have gotten me over 50 votes in just one day!! <3

Chicken Fried Rice

I went to Marukai on Friday and it was basically a total phail trip. The only new item I found for myself was this packet of tiny Miffy paper cups for the kids and even that I found completely by chance in the gardening section. Everything else was nearly gone. Hopefully I will be luckier on my next trip, for now all I was able to accomplish was some bento box purchasing for an Allakhazam forumite. Still no egg molds, furikake bottles, reusable divider cups, or bento straps for the putifresh boxes. Bah!!

We ate out at Monterey Bay Canners and I was betrayed by my waiter. I decided to get fish and since they had Opakapaka (pink snapper) on the menu I decided to get that. There was a version "stuffed with crab salad" and so I asked how they cook it and he said they bake it then top it with the crab salad. I figured being on track meant I could splurge a bit on points and get the salad because it most definitely would come with mayo.

Well the food comes and he plops this bowl of goo in front of me. I was like, "Excuse me, I ordered the opakapaka." Turns out that IS the opakapaka, only he kindly forgot to tell me that they douse the frickin' thing in a butter cream sauce. Overall, it wasn't the greatest of experiences. The kids' chicken nuggets were way burnt, the calamari we ordered was over-fried, my sis in law didn't like her steak, and hubby said his prime rib wasn't that good. Plus it irritated me that he brought the kids food last. Meanwhile my son is so hungry he's thrashing his head against the back of his highchair. The fish was good, though I had to immediately bail it out of it's little fishing boat dish in the hopes that would help me avoid a few thousand more calories.

Lunch today is chicken fried rice simply made by chopping up some leftover Costco chicken and adding 1/2 cup of rice, a little Aloha shoyu, and then topped with furikake.


My bottom layer has asparagus and edamame. Boy do I looove the pre-cooked frozen stuff! All I do is wash the ice off and throw it in and by the time lunch rolls around it's all defrosted and ready to eat! :D Sides today include kim chee crab and avocado salad, a fruit bento with strawberries and cherries, and a crispy yellow peach.


Today was weigh-in day and despite being reeeeally naughty this weekend (Milano Freezer frozen yogurt on Friday, a Jello Cream Cheese square from Zippy's on Saturday, and Milano Freezer again on Sunday) I lost weight again! As of this morning I am 130.3 lbs! Yesterday at dinner I got told by two people in separate conversations that I look like I lost a lot of weight. My MIL said I looked really good in my jeans. I will probably be buying a points calculator and then canceling my Weight Watchers subscription to save money. The "switching to maintenance" article showed up for me and says that to maintain, I'd get 9 points a day instead of 5. I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and 9 points seems SO doable to maintain my weight. I'm so so glad that I decided on Weight Watchers and I hope that anyone I inspired to start up finds the same success that I did. <3

Fried ahi poke

Note to self: a whole pound of ahi poke is too much, so don't buy a whole tub from the seafood section just because the deli is closed! With my poke fast approaching the point of tossage, I had to use it all up, so I decided to try fried poke for the first time. Even though I'd used this in two previous bentos, it was still way too much so I ate a couple pieces then gave the rest to Mr. Pikko, who said it smelled awesome. Extreme close-up!

I fried it with olive oil, but it soon became apparent that this particular poke had oil already in it because there was a lot more oil than what I'd put in. So I looked up some recipes and LO AND BEHOLD an ingredient is sesame oil. WTH! Luckily most recipes I saw call for 1 Tbsp of it for 1-2 lbs of fish. So though a tablespoon of sesame oil is 4 points, I doubt I was eating much during each meal with the portion I took. Maybe 1/2 a teaspoon or so, which comes out to about .5 points. The ingredients listed were: ahi, nut, wheat, soy.

SUCKIN' FOODLAND!

Anyway, I stuck in more lomi salmon cause the hugeass bottle that I bought from Costco says I have to eat it by June 4th. In the middle is, durr, asparagus, fried with Pam and onion powder. I also packed some miso soup, which I will eat with the somen noodles that didn't get any love yesterday. I figure eating it with miso soup is better than eating it with a salty, sugary sauce.

On the exercise front, I've decided to always do the additional stairclimbing that I implemented this week. (i.e. yesterday *sheepish face*) I've always had thunder thighs and after the two kids they were upgraded to Category 5 Hurricane thighs, so this will hopefully put me on the path to once again being able to stand without thighs that nudge each other.

By the way, it appears that last night I got my 2000th hit! Thanks are in order for my readers! May the bento bug bite you!

Grilled salmon w/ asparagus

Last night me and the kids went out to eat at Big City Diner with my mom and brother and he very nicely treated us! This being my 3rd time eating out after switching to Core, I can understand why I was so overweight before. Portions are huge, everything has butter, and most things are fried. After closely examining everything I settled upon the salmon (as usual) and following WW advice, asked if they were willing to grill it for me. Thankfully, they were happy to do so and the miso sauce it came with was a nice compliment. I'd upgraded to their garlic mashed potatoes, which turned out to be insanely yummy, but very buttery. I made myself count this meal as 5 points.

Digging my old bunch of asparagus out of the fridge, I was sad to find mold on the bottom of the stems. But ever the food optimist, unlike my husband who will issue death sentences to apples with the slightest spot, I simply picked out all the ones that were still crisp at the top and snapped off the moldy end. Should I die in the very near future, please attempt to contact my next of kin and point out that it's likely I stupidly ate myself to death with some old asparagus. The spinach is arranged a certain way to cover up the parts of the fish I'd already eaten and I added the lemon, tomato, and parsley for decoration and color.


I'd mentioned before about some bento cloths I found at Marukai for wrapping my box. Well I finally got to use it! Here is the box all packed up in a bunny rabbit cloth with my matching color bunny rabbit chopsticks.

We're going out to dinner AGAIN tomorrow for a special occasion. It's likely I'll end up eating... yep, salmon. *sigh* I re-packed (from MIL's containers) Buddy's dinner to make it prettier. I have a Pokemon cloth I can take it in for him. :) Here is the top layer:


It has half brown/half white rice, stewed baby carrots, and chopped cucumber kim chee. I used one of my "Whale of a Punch" scrapbooking punches for the stars.



The bottom layer contains the stew. I'm so demented with bento obsession that I actually took the piece of carrot out, washed it, sliced it, and made them into sakura carrot flowers. The extras I shoved underneath the stew for him to eat. The parsley was really cheap at the market and is a really handy decoration for bento. I'm an instant parsley fan!

Tomorrow will be a really bad day in points... damn restaurants!

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! ^_^

Teriyaki chicken & fish egg!!

I went to the Post Office yesterday and after a lame joke about a $5.00 late fee for picking up a box after hours from the mail clerk and a snarky remark about "another eBay gift", I got my new $2.00 bento box and my egg molds!!! Wheeee!!! I was so thrilled that as soon as I got to MIL's house I boiled one of her eggs for Baby Girl to eat. You're supposed to use a large egg and she only had medium, so the bunny rabbit didn't come out too good, but she was tickled and so was I. When we got home we boiled 3 eggs and made a fish, a car, and a bear. I soaked the bear in soy sauce so he'd be brown (so cute!!) and the fish in red food coloring. The coloring makes it much easier to see the pattern on the egg. She ate the car.

We had chili for dinner so I didn't take leftovers. When I got home I couldn't think of anything to make, so I ended up pulling some frozen chicken thighs out and after defrosting them, shoved them into an almost empty jar of kim chee with teri sauce to marinate. I didn't make my bento last night because I wanted to see if I could do it in the morning, sort of like a test.

I FAILED.

First off, my Buddy alarm decided to sleep in. He usually wakes me up at around 6:15-6:30 am with a combination of hissing, laughing, screaming MAMA in my ear, or razzing my stomach. Well he decided to play around the house quietly until about 7:20, so I had to light a fire under my ass to get everything done. Next thing to go wrong was that "strange Japanese grill" I bought at Shirokiya last week. It was not in fact a stovetop grill as I thought. The circular grooves on the bottom made me think they were for putting on the stove. Makes sense right??

Well, I turn the heat up and start placing some chicken on top the grill. First thing I note right off the bat was I should not have sprayed it with cooking spray. Second thing I note is that the house is quickly filling up with smoke from the sauce dripping down and sizzling on the bottom tray. I was a little alarmed at this because I didn't get why there was so much smoke for a little sizzling sauce. It all made sense when I finally just shut off the stove and tried to scrub it down to start over. It was then I noticed that the circular grooves were not just grooves. They were grooves with slits!! You're supposed to put this thing on a real grill! Durrr!! The stovetop had charred sauce all over the burner, hence the assloads of smoke. lolnoob

I ended up shoving it into the oven with foil on the bottom rack to catch drippings while it broiled. Turned out fine and of course, there were no drips. Typical. The lesson learned here is that I must do the following to make morning bento:

1. Set my alarm.
2. Cook my breakfast in bulk so I can just nuke a portion.
3. Not be a complete idiot and play with new tools while in a rush.

And here it is:


Despite all the hangups, I like how it turned out. I had cooked rice last night and this morning, mixed up some with a musubi mix packet, which I think is ume flavor. Fried two stalks of asparagus in olive oil and garlic salt and added the fish egg, which still looked cool. (Baby Girl claimed the bear) I cut out a couple carrot flowers to add too. I'd learned that you have to blanch them so that they don't look dried out at lunch, so to be fast I just heated some water in my Pyrex measuring cup and threw them in for maybe 30 seconds. Nice and quick. Added a shoyu fish for the egg and some sliced takuan. The rice will cost me 3 points, but I didn't bring any cheese today, so I should be fine.

Spaghetti with asparagus

Ok so, being pretty much a bento presentation n00b, I had to think for quite some time (the entire time it took me to do the dishes) on how I was going to arrange things. My bento box is on back order from this cool website I found yesterday called Jlist so I was going to just use a tupperware container when I remembered that someone had been nice enough to give my daughter a Hello Kitty bento box at one point. I happily dug it out of the toy chest.

One of the first things I had to do was clean the kitchen. I figure if I'm going to start making cute lunches for myself, I need to have better dish discipline. I washed all the dishes and scrubbed down the stovetop and after about 40 minutes, I was ready to start. Yeah. 40 minutes. I'm not really good about keeping the kitchen clean every day. In fact, some of the dishes I washed included my jello egg molds from Easter. Just one of my disgusting habits that I need to smash and burn this year. Maybe with bento making I will be successful at last. Now if I could just convince the hubby that it's completely fair for him to wash the kid's dishes in addition to his own. (the butthead doesn't do dishes I make)

Anyway, I thought all that cleaning time on what to put into the bento but was having a hard time with presentation planning. It turns out that kind of stuff came with actual doing and planning didn't really help all THAT much. Planning is probably the most useful for food prep. MIL had made spaghetti last night so I ate only some of the serving I brought home with me. (I ate at home so I could eat whole wheat pasta) I mixed up the spaghetti sauce with the steamed veggies she served and the pasta. I made a little foil "cup" for the spaghetti and placed it in the box so that it took up about 2/3 of the space and dropped the spaghetti in. To add more veggies, I fried up some chopped bell peppers that I keep in the fridge for a quick veggie omelette in the mornings, using only cooking spray, pepper, and onion powder. I topped off the bell peppers with some cheese flowers that I made with my new veggie cutters from Shirokiya.

Next I pan fried a few stalks of asparagus with garlic salt and a bit of olive oil. I'd chopped the top section so that they were all about the same length and chopped the lower portions into small bite size sticks so that I could use them to prop up the tips. That turned out pretty well! There was some extra space in the corner above the asparagus tips, so I tucked some sliced sanbaizuke (pickled daikon) in there. There was also some empty space at the bottom of the tip spears, so I added in one of the cocktail tomatoes I bought on sale. I doubt I'll eat it though, they taste like ass. They're all getting wrinkly, so at least this little guy got to be useful. I'll try to oven roast the rest and see if that helps kill the horrid taste any. Next time I'm buying cherry tomatoes! Here is the pic:

Next I needed to make my fruit/veggie snack bento. I'd bought this little round container at Don Quijote a few days ago and that came in really handy this time. I first added some baby carrots (which I found out yesterday, are NOT baby carrots but regular carrots chopped and shaved to look like baby carrots. the nerve!!!) then some slices of mango. I have no idea what kind of mango it was. It was hard and yellow and the sticker said Freska, Produce of Mexico. So either it's a Freska mango or Senor Freska of Mexico found a good tree to steal from last week. (in Hawaii all the swap meet people steal mangoes)

To top off, I added one strawberry sliced in half and sliced kiwi cut to look like sakura blossoms.

Hubby was very impressed, calling me "nuts" and saying "oh my god". It's just a start, but I'm very happy with it. I'm hoping that smaller portioning and the vegetable/grain/protein ratio of bentos combined with a very slow technique of eating will cause me to have very different eating habits than before. I'd read before that savoring each small bite of your food helps you to enjoy your food more and get more out of a smaller meal. Certainly having such a nice lunch would make me want to enjoy it slowly. We shall see if this works for a mom who has previously needed to snarf down her food in order to keep her kids from eating it all.

We shall also see how long it takes for me to burn out of this little fad of mine.

Everything in this lunch is a Weight Watchers Core food. ^_-