Happy Easter!

I had a rather hectic weekend with a lot of things to do ahead of time for Easter. Add in the fact that my two little devils very thoroughly went through all of our belongings, making sure that every last thing was out of place or ripped to shreds. I did a lot of really bad grazing on the Costco bag of almonds I bought and fortunately, all the walking and bending over to pick up things probably helped negate it. That's still no excuse for bad habits though...

We currently have five little kids in the family that adore anything Jell-O, which is a really good thing for me because I'm always looking for backup excuses to make Jell-O eggs, something I've never been completely sure any adults other than me care for. My Aunty is the one who passed on this odd craving for egg shaped Knox Blox. Before advanced technologies were discovered (plastic eggs & molds), she used to poke holes into the tops of her eggs and siphon the egg out whenever she made scrambled eggs. She'd then save the rinsed out eggshells all year until finally Easter came around and she could use them to fill with Jell-O. I still remember helping crack the eggs under warm water. This freaking insane yet endearing technique must have done something to my head over the years because as it is now, I cannot have an Easter without Jell-O eggs. And I don't just make a dozen, I go crazy and make at least 50. My co-workers will find this out tomorrow. He he.

This year I made Cherry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, and Berry Blue. I made one box of Grape, but I ended up eating all of them with the kids on Saturday... hee. I still have tons of boxes of Strawberry, Raspberry, and Grape to make. Since Buddy had hidden a bunch of boxes around the house (I found one in the toy chest), I was missing some boxes and had to go to Foodland to round things out. I almost broke down crying when I saw that they didn't stock Peach flavored Jell-O anymore. Peach Jell-O was something I was addicted to while I was pregnant and I only have two boxes left. Hopefully they just don't stock it and it's not discontinued. My mom had a favorite Jell-O flavor: Blackberry. That got discontinued! D:


I had talked about my co-worker's cupcakes and how I was going to steal her idea. Well, there they are! They didn't come out quite as good as I had hoped. I should have gone for Jelly Bellys instead I think. I thought about using the little box of Bertie Botts I had here, but then thought that would be mean and that maybe eating a Booger flavored bean would make the cupcake experience a bit less than pleasant. They're topped with green dyed coconut and Smoothie flavor Skittles. Sadly the bag had very few purple Skittles and I found those made the cupcakes look the best.


I made a really huge ass Kim Chee Crab and Avocado Salad for the family and everyone liked it, so that was a good success again! I added sliced baby carrot this time for a bit more color since I forgot to buy grape tomatoes. Easter was really fun overall. My almost brother-in-law made scallop with mustard sauce appetizers and and a really, really good beef dish. We dyed eggs. Buddy dyed his legs yellow. I had a lot of fun with this Tye Dye set I bought. Yes, I dyed eggs. I'm still a kid at heart, so sue me. Sadly, no egg fights. I'd seen an oddly pointed egg while boiling them too. I had plans for that egg! Perhaps when the kids are older. It's just as well, they'd probably cry too much from Aunty Crystal owning them.

After that we played Rock Band and I finally gave it a try. It was fun and even Grandma J tried it out. Yay!


On Thursday, my boss mentioned I should grow some wheat grass as Easter grass for the kids. I had heard of wheatberries before but had no idea what they were or how completely dirt cheap they are. I headed to Down to Earth after work and bought 2 pounds of wheatberries for around $2. I soaked way too much and laid them out in one of my roasting pans on top of wet paper towels. The next day they had started to sprout already:


They're really fun to grow!! The only bad part is that like I said, I soaked way too much and so now they're all piled up on top of each other trying to grow. I transferred some of them to the bottoms of my flowerpots but there are literally thousands of them still needing transplanting. The really retarded part is that I'm doing it by hand, one at a time. LOL


These are the transplanted wheatberries on Day 3. They grow really fast!! Luckily I had a spray bottle and the kids have been having a ton of fun watering them by misting them. The grass is actually even taller now. Updates tomorrow!

We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who! again. It was Buddy's second time and Baby Girl's first. She chickened out the first time and this time was sobbing, asking if we could go home. I had to trick her back into the theater and eventually she started peeking and as soon as the credits rolled, she yelled, "NOW I LIKE IT!" When I was younger I used to watch movies like Aladdin and Lion King and wondered why the hell these little kiddie movies were so riddled with adult humor. Now that I am older, wiser, and nearly braindead from whining children I understand that the humor is there to make the movies bearable for parents. It really just wouldn't do to have a bunch of stupefied parents driving their children home. They no doubt already have that dead look in their eyes from one too many Barney's or Dora's. That being said, I really enjoyed seeing Horton twice. My son adores him. Now if I could just survive the 50 daily requests for the longest Horton video I could find on YouTube (7m 5s), things should be okay.

Two Jell-O eggs were consumed while writing this post.

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 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.

Sandwich Kit (151)

I wasn't going to make a bento this morning either because my two devils were giving me complete hell for refusing to give them Goldfish crackers for breakfast. Surround sound screaming with PMS on the side makes me go insane, but then I had a sudden inspiration for a bento and I found that making it really calmed me down.

I call this a sandwich kit, mostly because making it into a sandwich beforehand would have looked rather boring. I cut one slice of bread into two Christmas trees using a cookie cutter then arranged it on top of some chopped Romaine lettuce. To go into the sandwich I have the last of my kim chee crab and some sliced avocado. I added in some black olives and the last of my tomatoes (which I picked this morning) for snacking and to make it look more attractive.

I wish I had more to blog, but I'm still so busy I can't even think! I have to get a lot of stuff done to transition to my new job. Plus I am totally stressing about this weekend's game. GO BOWS!!!

Shoyu Chicken (150)

Sorry for the late posting, I've hit 9,999 posts on Allakhazam and I've been busy prepping what I'm revealing for my 10k ding. Today I had a three tier bento but don't let the pictures deceive you, this box is actually really small, maybe 5 inches long or less. It was a plain box that I got at Marukai this summer during E3 and I added a sticker to make it a little cuter.

This is shoyu chicken made by my MIL with some white rice decorated with mixed veggies. If you're thinking to yourself, "Geez I wonder if she placed those vegetables into her bento one by one", the answer is yes I did. I used chopsticks. In Allakhazam IRC yesterday we were all laughing at this guy who doesn't know how to use chopsticks. All in good fun, but I just wanted to mention how awesome chopsticks are. I even eat spaghetti with chopsticks; a habit I picked up from my friend Janis.

I packed more kim chee crab and avocado without lettuce. I found after forgetting the veggies that it's actually not too bad without it, especially if I don't have room in the box. I bought the avocado at Foodland on Sunday and I'm very proud to say that I chose perfectly. The next morning when I cut it open it was beautiful and the best possible texture for slicing. It looks exactly the same as yesterdays just with no tomatoes.

My tomato garden died while I was in Anaheim. Mr. Pikko claims, "Hey! I watered them!" but I have my doubts. The plants are all brown and I think they're unrecoverable. Not too bad though, I must have gotten like 200 tomatoes out of those plants and now I have the pot space to grow edamame!! Weeeee!

Finally I had pomegranate seeds for dessert. Actually I lied, I had some godly pumpkin pie for dessert. George at work brought by some pieces of this pumpkin pie that his wife made and holy omg it was divine. I asked for the recipe and hopefully I'll have that in my grubby little pumpkin pie loving hands soon. Yum yum!

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!

Whole Wheat Spaghetti (138)

Yesterday this really scary e-mail got sent out by Campus Security saying that some psycho was overheard talking to himself on a bus about how he was going to shoot 30 UH students, then he got off the bus at McCully, which is maybe a mile from campus. I work in a secure area, but Mr. Pikko didn't want to take any chances, so he asked me to leave work early (he was at home sick). So I did and was able to get some errands done, including returning $107 worth of merchandise to Sephora. Man, that felt good. I then went to Longs and bought mascara, eye makeup remover, and a foundation sponge for $17.00. All that cost less than the mascara I returned, hahaha!! My cheapo brain was positively beaming.

We ate Zippy's yesterday and I had to pick up this monstrous order for everyone. We discovered that their fried chicken is freakin' expensive!! 17 bucks for 10 pieces. I mean, it tastes really good but what the heck? Anyway, Zippy's now offers whole wheat noodles for their spaghetti, which I am of course a big fan of since WW noodles are a Core food. I've got some for lunch today with some fried bell peppers and sweet onion. I fry these in olive oil and pepper, so it's still a Core addition. Next to it I have a slice of toasted whole wheat bread topped lightly with spread and garlic salt to make some healthier garlic bread.

In my other layer I have the last of my kim chee crab and some avocado. The kim chee crab this time was a lil more expensive than usual, but I think it's because they used a better brand of imitation crab and you can really taste the difference. Hopefully Foodland will continue to use that one. Our avocado tree has reached the end of it's fruit season, so it's back to buying avocados for me. People seem to comment pretty frequently about how beautiful my avocados are and I'm a little confused by this. Are people admiring the way I cut them or are avocados just uglier on the mainland? Please fill this clueless Hawaii girl in please! :D

Halloween is coming... I must find somewhere or someone to dump all the Halloween candy on... I must also think of some appropriate thing for my kids to "buy" with their Halloween candy. A toy? A movie? Any suggestions on healthy alternatives?

Ham, Avocado, & Egg Salad Sandwich (122)

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but last weekend I attempted to use my Dreamland egg gadget. It did not end well. In true Pikko Egg Curse fashion, I completely mucked it up. I didn't take any photos because they were that horrible. The yolks were like edible sponges, a texture I did not even know yolks could attain. The problem lay in that I didn't know how to use the device properly and therefore seriously messed things up from the start. It's hard when you can't read the directions ya know!! I learned a lot though and hopefully I can do it right on my next round.


In this picture are the egg "space maker" attachments. It comes with this really fun yolk separator thing and you pour the egg whites into the cylinder then put one of these attachments into there to "make space" in the egg whites. At the bottom of the cylinders, there is a ring for the bottom and a flat coin shaped circle to cover the bottom.

My first mistake was that I was supposed to rub this thing down all over with oil but thinking it was the same thing, I sprayed the whole thing with Pam. Bad idea, but I didn't know this. You're supposed to fill up the cylinder enough so that the egg reaches the top (more on why later) but I had no idea so I just put one egg white inside and put the space makers in. That was my second mistake.

Once I put the whole contraption into the pot of water I knew something was wrong. The flat circles on the bottom had floated out and the space makers were bobbing around. This meant my precious egg whites were floundering around uncooked in the water!! I picked it up immediately and after a while, noticed little slots that allowed you to lock the space makers in place thus keeping the flat circles in place at the bottom and preventing water from coming in. Too clueless to start over and too cheap to waste 4 eggs, I proceeded with the boiling, water invasion and all.

24 minutes later I removed the Dreamland from the pot and opened the thing up to find that there was nowhere near enough egg whites in each cylinder, causing the egg cylinder to be only about 3/4 way up. And in addition to that, my egg cylinders had bubbly holes in them, probably from the water. They didn't come off very well from the space makers, but I still managed to get them out. Now I had to fill in the yolks. I poured them in to the top of the egg cylinder and put the Dreamland back on the stove. I did not know that the space makers actually detached from the locking mechanism, so I did not put the locking mechanism back on. So eventually my 3/4 cylinder size eggs with yolks in them began to rise up like buoys at sea because they weren't locked down. And even if I did lock them down, then still floated up because they weren't tall enough to hold down the flat circle at the bottom. This let even more water in.

So as a result, I had eggs basically boiling directly in water. I couldn't even really cut them. You could still see the shape of the yolk so the concept of it worked fine and Baby Girl insisted they tasted fine. I let her eat some until I tasted one myself, then I just dumped the rest. Yech!! Now I just need to lick my wounds, apply what I learned, and try again.

Although I did horribly with eggs on Saturday, I am still able to boil eggs without looking like a complete noob. This morning I made myself a ham, avocado, and egg salad sandwich for lunch.


It didn't quite fit into the lunch box I picked so I had to trim the crusts off the sides. I've used Roman Meal Honey Oat bread, 2 boiled eggs, 1 Tb mayo, 1/4 avocado, a nice thick piece of ham steak, and some lettuce. I also added salt, pepper, and thinly sliced celery to the egg salad. I used my Banana Putifresh sandwich box, which I have available for $2.99 in my store. I've used these sandwich boxes twice so far and if you refrigerate the box it really doesn't do much for toasted sandwiches. Since it didn't work out so well the last two times, I didn't do anything to the bread this time. I would just leave it out, but its got egg in it and I don't want to get sick. The box:


I think I have 5 of these available. It's pretty small, but fits a nice thick sandwich cut into thirds very well. I ate the trimmed crusts with my breakfast. For fruits I brought some grapes and some fresh papapya. In the little bottle I put some lemon juice, which is what I usually eat papaya with. I don't know if people on the mainland get to eat fresh papaya, but I've eaten the dried stuff and the frozen stuff and boy is it nasty. I suppose its because I don't like overly sweet fruits and that's why I have to eat it with lemon.


I had told the OOTers at Allakhazam that I would try to make a 9000 bento for my 9k post ding, but I ended up falling asleep with the kiddos again so maybe with my 10k ding I'll give it a whirl.

Ham 'n Cheese Pizza (121)

Yesterday at the market we were strolling to the fruit section when I spied some pizza crusts. I decided to let the kids try making their own homemade pizzas for dinner. We have this cute book, which is currently AWOL in our house somewhere, that is a story about how to make pizza and so I picked up a packet of three 7" crusts, a bag of fat free mozzarella, and a jar of pizza sauce.

Baby Girl did surprisingly well in spreading the sauce all over and then putting the cheese on. She was putting a little too much cheese on her own, but just needed a little guidance. Then Godzilla Buddy came into the kitchen. He grabbed a handful of cheese from her pizza and threw it down on the floor! He grabbed another and shoved it in his mouth! Oh the horror! I kid, of course. It was cute. I chopped up some ham for them to sprinkle on and then promptly confiscated the tray to make some ham adjustments. Baby Girl thought she was being so clever by putting 1 or 2 pieces on her pizza and the rest on her brother's. Anyway, I guess the idea of pizza was more fun to them than eating it because as I suspected, they weren't really hungry yet. We'd eaten a really late lunch at 3:30 so I had a lot left to take today.


I have about 3/4 of a pizza stuffed into this box and then on the sides I have olives and carrots. I should have remembered the olives when I was making the pizza, but this is me we're talking about. I rarely remember things. My fruit layer:


On the left are some black grapes, which the market claimed was "seedless" but they most certainly are NOT seedless. I learned this the hard way after I chomped into one and bit into a ton of bitter seeds. They're still great grapes though. On the right are gala apple slices. And in the middle.... this is the highlight of my lunch today. Kookaburra licorice. My friend from Allakhazam, Kaolian, sent me 3 bags of this amazing stuff in thanks for sending him a copy of the FFXI Starter Pack and this is by far the best licorice I have ever eaten. I used to hate licorice when I was a kid but somewhere along the way to adulthood I tried it and love Red Vines.

These however, totally kick Red Vines into distant memories. They're soft and gummyish and taste so good. I cleaned out almost the entire bag this weekend and Baby Girl is addicted too. They're coming out with Mango and Raspberry flavors soon and I'll definitely have to try those. Anyway, thank you SO much Kao. It's a miracle these pieces survived the weekend, really.

There's still more to my lunch! I haven't posted a picture of a KCCA salad in a while, but since this one features my very own home grown tomatoes, I had to take a picture!


They're so cute and yummy! They don't turn completely red and some of them were starting to burst open on the vine, so now I just squeeze them and if they're a bit soft, I pick them. I had about a dozen tomatoes to use as of this morning. I'm quite the happy gardener today!

BBQ Beef (120)

Yesterday we ate food from Kim Chee 7 at Westridge and that is always a winner. I packed up some of the barbeque beef, which is really good at Kim Chee. Kim Chee restaurants have the best food hands down while the vegetables at Gina's are the best. Mr. Pikko was saying that if we could combine Gina's vegetables with Kim Chee food, ohh that would be heaven.


Oh! And what is this next to my delicious pieces of beef? Could it be? YES! Tomatoes from my garden!!!!! They've been this color for several days now and I just couldn't take it already, so I picked five this morning. The reddest ones were starting to get little blemishes on them so I didn't want them to spoil or anything. They're so freakin' teeny tiny, but since I grew them myself I'm still so proud of them. I put them next to some slices of avocado and added some Kraft Free Ranch into the kitty cup for the tomatoes. They smell really great! :D

I mentioned Black Friday a couple days ago and someone commented advertising another black friday ads site, but I saw this other one that I liked too that I think I used last year for research. To those who don't know what Black Friday is, it's the day after Thanksgiving, which we all know to be the "busiest shopping day of the year". Being a last minute Amazon frenzy shopper, I'd never understood why that would be until I heard about Black Friday. It's the day all the crazy people ditch Thanksgiving dinner to go stand in line at Best Buy, Circuit City, Toys R Us, and KB Toys in order to get the smashingly good deals only available that day.

We did this last year and went to CompUSA, Toys R Us, KB Toys, and Office Depot. I had a plan too. I'd researched a whole day and made an entire excel sheet notating what toys to get and everything and what did I do? I took it to work to look at and then LEFT IT THERE. All my careful research, hosed. Anyway, we were going over the times we'd go to the store. Mr. Pikko would go to Office Depot for a monitor and tv and I would go to Toys R Us. It was 5 pm and we were headed to his MIL's house to eat Thanksgiving dinner. I told him we should drive by Best Buy and I bet there would be people there, to which he replied I was insane. We go there and there are at least 50 people waiting in line. Circuit City, same thing.

We ended up going to CompUSA first because they decided to hold their sale at 10 pm instead of 6 am like everyone else. We learned a few lessons right away. One: shop with a partner. The worst part about BF shopping is by far the checkout lines. One person should zoom around the store picking up things while the other stands in line. If you've ever been to the Pearl Highlands CompUSA you have an idea on the size of the store. Well, the line 15 minutes after they opened was wrapping around the store TWICE. Our shopping was done in 10 minutes and we didn't get out of CompUSA until midnight.

On the way back to his mom's house, I told him to stop by Toys R Us to check out the line. He told me there was no way people would stand in line for TOYS. Delusional man. *sigh* There were people there sleeping on the parking lot with their kids sleeping in shopping carts. We went home to nap and he brought me back out at 2 am and the line was looping all the way out to the road and curling back behind the store. I got in line, plopped my chair down, and ate my Zippy's spaghetti. Meanwhile, these people in front of me are joined by some of their family and they start talking really loud about how KB Toys is already open and there are NO LINES. I'm wondering if this is just a ploy to get me out of line, but then they were in front of me, so I didn't see why. After debating it for 10 minutes I finally ask one of the ladies in front of me and packed up my stuff, drove over to KB Toys at Pearlridge and sure enough. They were open at midnight and all the people at Toys R Us had no idea. I bought so many toys that I carried a bag of toys back to the car that went up past my waist. It was insane. And freakin' cheap too!

The adventure continued with me going to Office Depot with Mr. Pikko to stand in line since I was done with my shopping by 3 am and then later to Toys R Us which ended up being a BIG mistake because the lines were ridiculously stupid. They went all the way to the back of the store and people had shopping carts stacked up a few feet taller than themselves. This year I'm just beating the crowd, heading to KB Toys at midnight and then going home to sleep off my turkey and play Wings of the Goddess.

I've got it all figured out, so this basically guarantees something will go wrong!

Sushi Bento (118)

Today I'm breaking in a new box, my new Monokuro Boo box! This was one I bought a couple weeks ago but just haven't gotten around to using. It's a pretty small box and since I didn't have too much food to put in it, it seemed like the time was right for its debut.


I used two slices of the tamagoyaki I made yesterday and made me some tamago sushi along with a roll of ume maki to use up the last of my leftover rice. To add color I put in some sliced avocado and carrot sticks.


I forgot to sharpen the image this morning before uploading so the photo is a lil bit fuzzy. I have peeled rambutan and cigar mango in the bottom layer but didn't think it was exciting enough to photograph.

I do believe this is one of my very rare vegetarian bentos. I'll probably end up eating some Smart Pop today to help fill the meat void. I have heard about the whole popcorn lung thing, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop eating popcorn altogether. What I have decided is that eating a bag 3-4 times a week probably isn't a good idea anymore, so I'm limiting myself to one bag per week.

I've also got to somehow get my brain back onto the points system. I've been having difficulties ever since I dropped down past 130 because I guess part of me feels that this is the lightest I've been since 1997 so I'm really still way ahead of myself. I find myself still watching my portions but I no longer pay strict attention to how many points I'm eating. Still, I've been bouncing between 125 and 128 for the last month, so I suppose I haven't been all THAT naughty with my eating habits.

Chicken Parmigiana

Today's post is a bit late as the second I arrived at work this morning I got a call and had to go pick up Baby Girl. So now she's here at work with me driving me mad asking me 5 million questions an hour.

This morning Buddy woke up at 4:45 am and an hour later I got pulled in to take my turn with him. I caught him scribbling down his plans for an experiment titled, "How Hard One Has To Pull On Mommy's Pants While She's Cooking To Make Them Fall Down". He's been nearly successful and I'm positive that soon he'll come up with a strategy to achieve victory. My bento will no doubt have crooked elements on that day.

Today I have leftovers from the weekend which is Chicken Parmigiana from Costco. I've gotten one before and it tastes good but I've never understood why the instructions say to cook it in the plastic pan. This time I didn't transfer it to a metal pan and used it as the instructions said to and it turned out fine. I guess it's a hardy plastic or something. I still find it odd to cook something in the oven with a plastic container.


I put some egg noodles under it and then a cup of cucumber kim chee on one side and then another cup of blueberries on the other. Unfortunately I didn't eat much of this bento. Baby Girl wanted the blueberries and then after that insisted that she NEEDED to eat the cheese on the chicken. So I ate the cucumbers and avocado and just abandoned the chicken.


This is the box I packed it in. I finally found the fork, spoon, and cover for it. It was hidden in a little area under a table. Woot! I have a garden update from last week too. My tomato plants all have varying amounts of tomatoes and I'm very happy at the rate at which they're growing. Soon I'll be including lots of tomatoes in my bentos! ^_^


A close-up photo:


The only problem I see is suddenly having a crapload of ripe tomatoes to use and not enough bentos to use them in. I will have to get really creative with my tomato usage!

Mochi with Chickie Egg (105)

We ate yummy lasagna last night but I actually FORGOT to pack some for lunch. *sob* The one my MIL makes is the Stouffer's Meat and Sauce lasagna and it is sooooo yummy. I like to make turkey lasagna but this one is just so good I can never get enough of it. Too bad it's like 6 points a piece, haha! Maybe it's best I didn't take any...

Anyway, I had to start from scratch for today's bento and so I took from a recipe I saw on Kitchen Cow since I had leftover peas to use. I was freaking AMAZED. For once I fried some eggs and they turned out ok. They did not stick to the pan like Baby Girl to my legs and came out nice and crumbly. The only change I made to her recipe is that I added a bit of pepper as I like to have pepper in my scrambled eggs.


The eggs are in a baking cup in the top left. Going clockwise I have some vegetable fishcake, avocado, mochi, an egg chickie, and some imitation crab sticks. In the orange container I put some sugar, which I will use to eat the mochi. I bought a pack of frozen mochi last night and chopped it up into fourths. I'll microwave it until it's soft and gooey then eat it with soy sauce and sugar. This is different from chichidango; it's the kind of mochi that you eat at New Year's time. I'm going to guess that this one mochi is at least 4 points because a lot of rice goes into each one. That makes this bento around 5-6 points with the sugar and the fishcake.

I have been trying without much success to import my blog to WordPress so I can finally move this thing to my own domain. It's very frustrating, but hopefully soon I'll be able to post without having to worry too much about losing everything, which apparently Blogger likes to do sometimes. Scaryyyyy!!

Cheeseburger Macaroni

We went to the zoo yesterday and it was OMFGHOT when we got there at 12:30. First we stopped to eat at Genki Sushi on Kapahulu and we thankfully got there just before the rush. I did nicely on control, only eating 3 1/2 plates and then a bowl of somen (which was really good!). After that nice lunch, we headed off nice and hopeful for the zoo parking lot.

Of course, hoping to park in the zoo lot was wishful thinking. We saw how many cars were hovering and then we decided I should take the kids in by myself while Mr. Pikko parked the car. This was a good idea because lately Baby Girl seems to have the attention span of a gnat, constantly whining that, "I don know what to doooo, Mommy." Drives me 10 kinds of crazy, too. So anyway, we go in and after slopping on the sunscreen (the $11.99 bottle we bought on the last trip to the zoo) we of course look at the whooping cranes first. I let Buddy loose and this led to us getting stuck at the flamingos for a good ten minutes. The sun was out to murder me and my kiddies so Baby Girl and I kept trying to convince him that the elephants were just down the walkway. He seems to love elephants so you'd think he'd take the bait. But no, he'd run off about 10 feet, point into the gift shop and scream, "ELLA!!" and then go back and look at the flamingos more. I found out as we were leaving the zoo it was because there were two little toy statues of elephants at the door. So he thought he'd seen the elephants and then went back to the birds.

It took Mr. Pikko at least 30 minutes to find parking and by that time I was so beaten down by the sun I caved in and bought a wallet ravaging Dippin' Dots for $4.00. This cooled us down enough to be able to walk again and finally Mr. Pikko arrived. Long story short, we cut the zoo trip short and went straight to the Keiki Zoo because of the heat. When we got home I was so beat that I ended up just making Hamburger Helper, which I keep in the house for emergencies such as these.


I added in peas to make it pop out a bit more and to make it healthier. I used my green Putifresh box today to match the peas and used one of my new furoshiki cloths to take the picture. On the bottom layer I have cucumber and carrot slices pickled with some rock salt, a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss, and sliced avocado.


I don't know how many points this lunch is but it's definitely high considering what it is. I'm still maintaining steadily at 128 so lately I've just been making sure that I eat well enough to keep that up. I weigh myself twice a day every day.


Having a new hobby that costs money, even one that can be supplied cheaply at stores like Marukai, I need ways to make money. While I was looking around at the Blogger's Choice Awards when I first saw it, I saw a link to PayPerPost and it looked interesting. I got rejected at first because my blog was too young (you have to be at least 3 months old) but finally I remembered to re-apply and I just got approved last week so I'm trying it out now. From what I understand you pick opportunities and then as long as you meet the posting requirements, they pay you for mentioning certain things. I don't intend to talk about things I wouldn't normally talk about so don't worry that I'll be turning into a walking food advertisement blog. I'm still very new to it so I guess I'll write more about it if it turns out to be really something I enjoy. And hey, making money for more bento boxes is totally my kind of deal. If you haven't guessed already, me talking about PayPerPost is my first money opportunity. If you have a blog that's at least 3 months old I'd say give it a try.

Bento #100!!!!!

After long, tiring, endless, painful hours of planning (2 hours this afternoon) and a quick tossing together in the kitchen tonight (3 1/2 hours) I have finally completed my 100th bento! It's a sealife theme featuring some creatures that I've seen before on the crazy Japanese bento site e-obento.com.


The corners each hold 3 pieces of maki: 1 cucumber, 1 ume, and 1 avocado. Tucked inside the three pieces is a piece of okra. I have no idea what it tastes like, but it looks cute. heh. The ocean water in the middle is made of white rice dyed blue and green to give it a more aqua look. Click this close-up picture to enlarge.


At the bottom I have some furikake "sand" with a crab hotdog on it with cheese/nori eyes. I learned tonight that Redondo Hawaiian Winners, though nice and bright red, do not make for good bento hot dogs. They're very difficult to cut due to the little balls of fat. Plus, finding little balls of fat is gross in itself. I'll stick with turkey hot dogs!

The coral is cut with an exacto knife out of bell peppers. The fishies are carved out of carrots and bell peppers. The starfish is made out of kamaboko (fishcake) and has sesame seed eyes and a nori mouth. The squid in the middle is made from a Redondo hot dog and the head is a thin slice of turkey hot dog.

Since this is an obscene amount of rice, I doubt I will be eating the ocean. The 12 pieces of maki and the two hot dog pieces are more than enough to fill me up for lunch. It sure doesn't feel like I've done 100 bentos!

Many of you know that I'm giving away some bento items in celebration of today's lunch. I wrote everyone's name on a piece of paper and folded them all up and put them into a little lacquer bento box. Baby Girl picked one out and the winner is...

Jennie from the US!

Why Jennie loves bento:

Because I need and want my children to eat healthy well balanced meals. Plus sometimes it is just cool!

Congratulations Jennie! Funnily enough, I shook those little papers around like crazy and yet the person who won was the last person to enter. ^_^ I'll be in touch for address info and what not!

My regular readers may remember that I mentioned a certain okazuya shop a couple weeks ago in Hilo called Y's Lunch Shop. My Aunty K did in fact deliver me some of their awesome fried fish and musubi and it tasted exactly as I remembered it. Having just relived the old taste memories of high school so recently, I was very sad to receive an e-mail informing me that the "Pop" of this little "Mom and Pop" okazuya store had passed away. Frustratingly, I don't remember his first name; I only knew him as "Mr. Miyamoto".

He was a very kind old man, I remember going next door to buy something to eat and sometimes he'd give me a couple extra potatoes. (probably cause he'd seen me scrounging in the car for any little coins to use) I remember sitting on the back steps watching him bring back bags of food from the downtown KTA, wondering how it was possible for him to buy ingredients at the same market we shop at and yet produce such amazing fried chicken, egg, fish, and spam musubi. They'd be there at I swear, 3 or 4 am to start cooking their addictive food. Sometimes at the end of the day when they hadn't sold everything, he'd pack it all up and give it to me or my brother. I had this massive crush on his oldest grandson who I never did get the courage to talk to during the summers he was in Hilo.

I dedicate my 100th bento to Mr. Miyamoto, who smiled a lot and gave to us whenever he could. May Y's Lunch Shop always be there on Keawe Street. Hilo just wouldn't be the same without it.

California Roll & The Dreaded Ex

I have a lot to write about today but first order of business: the bento. I had a pretty wild and rampant calorie weekend, eating a total of 5 Pizza Hut slices (3 Veggie Lovers and 2 Pepperoni) as well as having some very yummy Nabeyaki Udon from Kabuki Waimalu last night. Plus Milano Freezer and cheesecake afterwards, eeps! Anyway, I have to let myself down slowly, so today I have a 4 point bento all from the rice in the sushi.

This bento has some imitation crab that I bought at Don Quijote and I've made a note never to buy their imitation crab again as it was quite smelly and some pieces were a bit slimy. I picked the best looking and best feeling one and threw the rest away. It's not even crab of a good consistency, being very rubbery and hard. I've seen the kind at Foodland which is the one that is pretty soft and you can peel the layers off. They're covered in a plastic wrap and freeze well too. I bought it from Don Quijote because I went there to get something else and was too lazy to go to two markets just for imitation crab. Though now I have to go to two anyway to get more crabso good job me!


On the side I have edamame and soy sauce in a tomato bottle. I totally love the already-cooked edamame they sell at Costco, but it freezer burns very quickly, so you kinda have to eat it fast.

Next up is the garden! I have some new pictures of my brand new tomatoes, which have finally shown themselves!! First up, a general picture of the plants now:


I had larger versions of these pictures but I forgot to upload them to my domain so I'll fix that up later tonight if I remember. Next is a picture of my corn plants:


And finally we have my little babies:


I have like around 10. I had 11 until I accidentally broke one off. :( They're growing pretty quickly as this morning when I went to check on them, they were noticeably bigger!

Ok and last but not least, the dreaded ex. No, I did not run into an ex-boyfriend! I was lying on the couch watching something when I realized that I'm having a hard time sticking to the 5 points a day Core diet so the only thing left for me is to... ugh... exercise. Apparently I mean business too because I went out last night and jogged. An entire mile. A little factoid about me: I despise jogging. I mean what's not to hate? You get tired as heck, your legs hurt, your face turns red, you sweat like mad, you feel like crap. Or at least, I do anyway. I know people who love to run feel good while doing it but I don't run, therefore I don't feel good while doing it. When I came back in last night and went to shower the person looking back from the mirror said, "Don't you ever freakin' do that to me again!" But hopefully I will keep it up. I sure do need it with my jelly belly.

And speaking of jelly belly as a result of pregnancy, I had a sudden surge of hits yesterday, over 500 on a Sunday! I guess someone posted my link on a baby board and now loads of new mamas came here to read and look at my interesting hotdogs. Welcome ladies!! Hope you're all having great healthy pregnancies!! ^_^

One last thing, the bentochallenge poll is up, so if you liked my

Zebra Bento & Countdown

Yet another reason why I am mental, I dragged the family to Don Quijote (formerly Daiei, formerly Holiday Mart) to look for good items to use in my bento #100, which I thought was going to be today's one. Well lucky thing I came home and triple counted my bentos cause this is actually bento #96! Oh well... the things I bought should hold up fine until then. But from today I will do a countdown. Three actually.

Bento Countdown to 100: 4!
Days until UH Football: 9!
Days until UFC 74: 2!

Granted our opening game is like the joke of all college football but hey, I'm still excited to see Colt throwing again and to see how the team is shaping up this year. A game against a seriously outmatched underdog makes me worry a lot less than opening against Alabama like last year. So, this is at the very least good for my nerves. I'm still nervous since losing to this team would ruin everything, but it's just a little teeny nervousness. What I am nervous about is our season tickets. Where the hell are they??

And yes, we're having another UFC party this weekend, so I'll have to watch what I eat tomorrow because I know I'll probably end up overeating Saturday night.

On to the bento! Today I have made an entry for bentochallenge! The theme this week is favorite song and although I don't have any one single favorite song, this one that I did is definitely high up there. The sandwich the zebra rests on is a turkey and avocado sandwich on Roman Meal Honey Oat bread, so that will count as 3 points. (since I cut off the crusts) The zebra is made out of Swiss cheese and nori cutouts. I'm quite proud of him as I did all the cutting freehand. No printouts this time! His eyes and nostrils are made out of black sesame seeds.


He's wearing a red bell pepper sweater. I wasn't sure this would be clear so that's why I added in the yellow zig zag. At the top are the letters HELLO carved out of bell peppers as well. This word is part of the hint to the song, so pay attention to that too! On the right side I put a KCCA salad for Mr. Zebra to eat. A close up view:


And now for the answer:









Take a guess!














Mr. Zebra by Tori Amos

Lyrics:

Hello Mr. Zebra
Can I have you sweater
Cause it's cold cold cold
In my hole hole hole
Ratatouille Strychnine
Sometimes she's a friend of mine
With a gigantic whirlpool
That will blow your mind

Hello Mr. Zebra
Ran into some confusion with a Mrs. Crocodile
Furry mussels marching on
She thinks she's Kaiser Wilhelm
Or a civiliaes syllabub
To blow your mind
Figure it out
She's a goodtime fella
She got a little fund to fight for Moneypenny's rights
Figure it out
She's a goodtime fella
Too bad the burial was premature she said
And smiled

So you see, he's Mr. Zebra and he's wearing a sweater which Ms. Amos wants. :D

If you've never heard the song of course you'll think I'm nutters for liking it and that Tori Amos is clearly singing more than two bricks short of a full load, but if you listen to it, it's a really cute and chipper song. It's very short and is old school Tori back when she still sang with only her piano.

One last thing, a friend from Allakhazam is a finalist on Hunt for the Hunter so that she can be a guest star on the Sci-Fi show Ghost Hunters. Please vote for her! She is the first video displayed, Brittany Beaulac!

Brown Bag Meeting

Today at work we're having a "brown bag meeting" where we meet over lunch we bring. We ate chili last night and that doesn't make for a very pretty lunch so I started from scratch this morning and made a pretty decent Core bento.


On the left side I have some small shrimps that I bought at Foodland on Saturday. Inside the little orange dog is some cocktail sauce to go with it. On the right side starting from the top left going clockwise there is: Carrot sticks wrapped in turkey, kim chee crab, avocado, two slices of boiled egg, a mini Babybell cheese, grape tomatoes, and cucumber kim chee.

In total it comes out to 2 points for the cheese. Lately my weakness has been in desserts. We had two birthdays last week which meant I kept eating cake day after day (leftovers) and plus I tend to excuse eating candy too. I've decided that I have to limit myself to 2 desserts per week and I eat a small chocolate Riesen candy to appease my sweet tooth on days I'm not eating any dessert at all. This morning I was 127.8 lbs so hopefully I can keep up with my Core bentos and stick to small dinner portions. That's another bad habit I've been feeling myself falling back into: larger portions simply for the taste. I can feel my stomach being full and yet I still eat, which is totally against what Core is about!

We're now 11 days away from the start of the UH Football season and still no season tickets in the mail! WTF? We'll go to the post office tomorrow probably (since I have a bunch of orders to send out) and see if they're waiting. They freakin' better be! Regardless, I'm really excited. Baby Girl has all her football cheers down too, maybe I'll try to take video of her doing them. So far she's got "DEE FENS!" "GO BOWS!" and "TOUCHDOWN!" all ready. I'm so proud. *sniff*

Oven Baked Chicken

Just in case the media on the mainland has failed to report that Flossie is now a Wussie, I live on Oahu and am fine. I did not even feel the earthquake. Heck, I didn't even know there was one! It was gusty yesterday morning but it had died down quite a bit by the time I left work. Still, I am very happy we dodged a bullet. How demeaning would it have been to get owned by someone named Flossie??

Yesterday my MIL made us oven baked chicken and it tasted oh so greasy and oh so good! I took a piece along with some white/brown rice and topped it with some kewpie mayo. After I oozed it on I kinda regretted it because I didn't do so well on the design of it. Maybe next time I'll draw a flower. Next to the chicken are two tomato slices and the last two pieces of tamagoyaki.


On my bottom layer I have some hastily pickled cucumbers (chopped and tossed with salt), carrot flowers, grape tomatoes, sliced avocado, and underneath that there is a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss. I estimate this as a 4 point lunch: 1 for the rice, 1 for the cheese, 1 for the mayo, and 1 for the cornflake breading.

As promised, here is my Yeah! Bon Dance video from last Saturday!



That just kills me. Halfway through Mr. Pikko says something like, "Next up is It's Getting Hot in Here." Anyway, enjoy!

Shrimp & Avocado Salad

As I mentioned last week, we took a trip to Kona this weekend. It broke the wallet to be sure, but was definitely worth it to take a vacation and see all the family I haven't seen in forever. It probably would have been nicer if my little Buddy wasn't such a ball of terror at night, but I can't blame him for having what appeared to be a hard time sleeping in a strange place. Plus, I dragged everyone up into the boonies of Kona to go to a bon dance, so that likely didn't help, haha.

Since I wasn't home all weekend I didn't get a chance to shop for food so I ended up making a salad for today. It's just as well since I ate a whole lot of cookies and bad foods over the weekend. (we went to Mrs. Barry's Cookies) I did discover that I sure stock a whole lot of salad foods in my fridge.


On the bottom where you can't see I have finely chopped romaine lettuce, celery, and edamame. On top I have cucumber slices, radish slices, sakura shaped ham, shrimp, avocado, grape tomatoes, and sakura carrots. This is a pretty big bento box so it's a nicely sized salad and with the 3 fruits (1 plum, 1 nectarine, 1 banana) I brought along with a bag of Smart Pop popcorn, that should be more than enough to tide me over for today. All Core salad, so I'm on the right track for this week!

The bon dance we went to was at this temple called Kona Koyasan Daishinji Mission (in Holualoa, up on the mountain, basically) and it was a nice, cute bon dance. We got there when they were taking a break for dinner, which oddly appeared to be free for all attendees. Mr. Pikko says he saw some lamers leaving with plates of food. We had just eaten so we didn't take anything. Their towels were free though, so I took two of those as I like to sort of collect those. They had a small yagura tower and the drummers were at the foot of it rather than inside it. They played some great songs and the drummers usually beat to each one, making them all pretty entertaining.

I took video of a lot of it and it was a good thing too because I was able to capture on camera one of the most hilarious and hip dances I've ever seen. They had a man announcing each song and he goes, "Next up we have "Yeaaaah!" and I thought eh? Then they start up "Yeah!" by Usher and all the old ladies in kimonos are dancing to Usher and saying, "Yeah!" Once I find my Adobe Premiere cd I am so putting that up for people to see. It was their favorite song, they played it three times!

Their last song was Fukushima Ondo and sadly, there was no one there to play the flute for it. Still, I got in and danced (once again carrying Baby Girl). There was a small group of kids there that were trying to get a "betcho" started, but didn't do so well since there weren't too many people. It died out right after the first "Betcho, betcho, betcho! Yo, yo, yokoisho!". Still, I was still happy to hear them trying! My dad says he saw a special on tv about the betcho and I was kinda bummed I missed it. Hopefully I can figure out who made it and find it online somewhere.