Beef Broccoli (224)

The cutesy-ness continues today with usage of my new awesome animal food picks. I look at them and I think to myself, gosh, I should have bought a couple more!! I realize that I don't need more than those, but I still want them. Then I can lay them all out and count them and rub my hands together going "hehehhehehehhehehe preeeeciousssses". This is what new bento accessories do to me. Scary, huh?


I started off with a bunny onigiri. My Aunty K had sent me a while back some animal onigiri shapes and I never did get a chance to use it because I opened the box when the kids were around. Several OHHHHs and MINE, NO MINE! later they had claimed them and were soon all over the house. I only recently recovered them from the wild savages and now they happily sit in my utensils drawer doing whatever it is onigiri molds do. Knitting, perhaps?

I cut the ears out of my breakfast ham steak. I had thought they were too long at first so I cut them short, but now they look too short. Go figure. I made the nori face with my punch. It only took me 10 punches to get that one face to come out right. The rest of the mangled nori will have to be cut up for ghetto furikake or given to the monkeys for immediate consumption. The bunny rests on a lettuce leaf cause even though he's smiling, he's actually hungry too. Here's a closer picture:


Next I put in the beef, then cut the broccoli stems off and laid the tops down nicely (stems hidden underneath). If you're wondering why it's so clean, Grandma J leaves the broccoli separate so that it doesn't overcook, which is pure genius. The beef brocco comes out much healthier and brighter that way. I cut up two pieces of takuan and put them into a little orange food cup and tucked that next to the broccoli.

After that I started to fill in the parts around bunny. I cut up red bell pepper and sliced some baby carrots. He's a hungry, hungry bunny! After that I still had a lot of empty space so I used olives with food picks to finish things up.


This is one of the new boxes I got at Marukai. It's a bit thin even though the box seems thick but this is because there's space for chopsticks in the cover. It's also a great place to hide some Red Vines. ^_^

I am very close to 100k hits, people! Time is running out to enter in my 100k Bento Contest!! If you haven't done it yet, hurry!

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I just so happened to remember last night that it's JUNE!!! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

BON DANCE, BABY! First one is tomorrow! We'll see if I can twist Mr. Pikko's arm hard enough. Probably not since UFC 85 is tomorrow too. ^_^

Wraps & Costco Fried Rice

Out of sheer laziness and busyness, I had a bento yesterday but didn't post about it. *gasp* In case you hadn't noticed, I can be somewhat of a desk potato. Rest assured though, it tasted just fine anyway.


We had quite a bit left of the Costco chicken we bought on Sunday. Even though these chickens are cheap, we never really seem to fully utilize the whole bird. I really should get more into using up the whole thing whether it's through fried rice or soup or what. It just seems like such a shame to have something so good go to waste. I will have to look up a really good chicken soup recipe and make a habit of making a batch every Sunday night or something.

I used a regular flour tortilla for this and spread out one wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese all over it. Next I covered it in lettuce, which stayed down pretty easily since it was sticking to the cheese. Next layer was chicken, peeled into strips. Finally I put in some strips of red bell pepper. I stuck food picks into three areas of the wrap so that it wouldn't fall apart as I cut it.

The apple was surprisingly easy to layer nicely. I just had to lay down some support pieces underneath before putting the top ones in. I hate empty space, so I tossed in some blueberries.


I decided last night that I have really been slacking off on being artful with my lunches lately, so I'm going to try to get back to doing the cute/pretty stuff instead of just shoving my food in a nice way into a bento box. This means I will have to definitely do my lunches at night because I am the consistent reason we are always late in the morning.

I used more of the Costco chicken to make this fried rice, which has a mix of brown and white rice. It was sticking to the pan, so I poured in some shoyu then added Nori Komi furikake. I made too much, so I gave the rest to Buddy for breakfast, which he loved. I know this because every time a spoonful went into his mouth he made me watch. "LOOK MOMMY!! LOOK! AWWMM!" He's such a cutie sometimes. ^_^

Next to the rice I tucked in a small piece of lettuce. I hate the dark green parts of romaine hearts so I usually pack it with some kind of salty meat so that I can eat it by just stuffing it in my mouth at the same time without having to taste it. That sounds so attractive, doesn't it? It works out quite well since it fills in empty spaces, looks great, and uses up food I don't really like.

For the red flowers I used red bell peppers with my veggie cutters. This was actually really difficult because the skin was so hard to cut through. Now that I think about it though, I really should have just peeled the skin off completely. The flowers are skin side down and I sliced off the bumpy inner sides of the pepper to create the smooth look. Oh well, bento and learn! The middles are made out of cheese. I got too frustrated cutting them out by hand so I ended up just balling it up and squishing it down. Usually I use a straw, but the kiddies are drawn to straws like I am to bento accessories. I'm lucky if I can hide one for 24 hours straight. The leaves are made out of romaine lettuce cut into the shape of leaves.


My second layer is simply sliced papaya and blueberries with a little mini fork to eat it with, since papaya can be so messy to eat sometimes. On the side I have sliced apple and a peach. Several of my peaches have bite marks on them because aside from being Tasmanian devils, my children are apparently peach vampire ninjas too. They slip in quickly when I'm not looking, bite one, then run off as if nothing happened. Sometimes I wonder about those two.

Kalbi Fried Rice (220)

Yesterday I did what I despise doing. I went to Costco to buy contact solution, spent almost $200 on food and stuff, then realized late last night that I'd forgotten to buy the contact solution. ARRRRGH!!!


While there, I fell prey to those damned food stands and bought a bag of pre-marinated kalbi or as the package called it, galbi. Ever since a former co-worker of mine explained to me how to easily clean my George Foreman grill (I had previously positioned it by the sink and poured water on it continually while cursing such a stupid invention) I am more eager to use it. I grilled the meat with it and it was pretty good. I've definitely had better at Korean restaurants, but it was still pretty good for Costco.

I cut up a piece really small and then added it to a pan to char a bit while I cut up the leftover grilled bell peppers (which were AWESOME!). There was very little rice left thankfully, so this isn't too bad of a lunch today. I got onto the scale the other day and was horrified to see the number 134.4 staring back at me. Way too much Pandas... This didn't seem to stop me from eating Pandas again on Saturday though, haha! It did motivate me to do more Tae-Bo though, which I did Saturday and Sunday, bringing me back down to 131.4 this morning. I think the approach I need to get to is eating what I like, just a lot less of it and keeping up the exercise. I'd love to dive headfirst back into Weight Watchers and all, but you've all seen me struggling to stick to that for a while now and it hasn't been working.

So anyway, I'll keep up the exercise and stop freaking stuffing myself, which I've been doing a lot lately. Complete plan:

1. Better breakfast so that I snack less
2. Daily tae-bo
3. Controlled eating
4. Much more water drinking
5. No more freaking horrible desserts

For #5 I bought a box of Skinny Cows. This should keep my sweet tooth distracted. With the massive slew of birthdays we just got through, it's no wonder I'm always chowing down on sugary crap without a care in the world lately. >.<

Two Bentos

Okay, so yesterday I had my yearly wimminz exam and so when I was packing up my laptop and getting ready to make the longass trek down to the parking lot, I remembered I'd forgotten to post my lunch. HOW UTTERLY THOUGHTLESS OF ME. *sigh* I need to slap myself.

Maybe I forgot to post it cause I didn't like the look of it. It reeks "lazy". There's no color, too. Wrong box for brown food! And then I just toss edamame in there like that makes it all better. Well it doesn't! Yech!! Food tasted great, though. Grandma J made chicken tofu. LOVED it!

I asked her for her pork hash recipe and she kind of laughed and said she just mixes pork, mushrooms, a bit of oyster sauce, and green onions. She doesn't measure. She cooks it in a pot, but obviously like you saw, you can fry them in little patties. Yum yum!

Okay so anyway, back on topic. That was yesterday's lunch and it was le good.


Today I am having teriyaki hamburger patty. I had to think of yet another way of presenting this since last time I did hamburger fried rice and before that I did toddler style meat loaf. This time I opted to slice them into little wedges. They weren't really tall so I took one of the wedges and sliced that in half flat-wise to use as a little "platform" for the wedges. That worked out nicely!

I made a ball onigiri and meant to put sesame seeds on it, but forgot it. I was in a hurry! I put in some sliced bell peppers and colorful tomatoes. Unfortunately, these are not illegal. I'm sure they taste good, just not illegal good. People back in Hilo have this saying that "Lichee tastes better when it's stolen." I know, you're thinking, what the hell kind of people does Pikko hang out with back home??? Stealing lichee isn't that big of a deal because even if you buy it down at the farmer's market, you know they must have stole that anyway. The same can be said for tangerines and some mangoes. Anyway, last of all, I have some julienned baby carrot and parsley.

When I recovered from the Flu of Death, I came back to work to find this amazing "award" on my desk:


Isn't that just about the COOLEST award you've ever seen!? She put everything in! Musubi with ume, sushi grass, fish, chicken, boiled egg, carrot, and even a lil soy sauce bottle. I was blown away, but hadn't had a chance to take a photo until yesterday. I don't know if she would want me to post her name, so I'll just say, you know who you are, thank you so so much! Of course I could just walk 20 steps to her desk to gush about it with her again but bento blog thanks are way cooler.

On to the Chibo pics!


This, obviously, is the entrance to the bathroom. I kid!


As I mentioned, I got a "special dinner" so it came with appetizers. This appetizer tray had beef tataki, tofu, and ahi poke.


The beef. VERY good. I love medium rare! Or rare if you're going to nitpick.


The tofu with bonito and green onion. Most of this went to Baby Girl, until I accidentally let a green onion about 1/2 millimeter in size get onto the piece I gave her. She has razor sharp green onion eyes.


This is the ahi poke. The first piece I ate was great, but the other two had a lot of tsuji, so I didn't like it overall.


My sister-in-law got the yakisoba crepe style and this is her crepe laid out to cook. I got to try some and though it was interesting, I didn't really like it.


The crepe being folded up! He basically dumps the yakisoba into the middle and folds it neatly. Then he adds the okonomiyaki sauce to the top and slices it into fourths.


This is someone'e else's food. I think it's a cabbage one. If you read the Wikipedia article on okonomiyaki that I linked the other day you can get a better description of it. It looked like they were frying cole slaw to me!


And finally we have here my yakisoba "Chibo". I asked for more shrimp instead of squid, but I guess that request didn't make it to the kitchen because I had squid in it. It worked out though, Buddy loved eating little donut shaped food thingers. It should be noted however, that he will eat practically anything. Except eggplant.

I got off my lazy ass and bought shoes for exercising at home and actually did Tae Bo last night. It didn't help that my legs were still rubbery from doing jumping squats, but at least I'm exercising again. I anticipate this lasting at LEAST 3 days. Wedding is less than two weeks away and I'm still at 128. At least I'm not at 132 though, which was where I was at a couple weeks ago.

This morning I was ready to rip my ears off and fling them at Mr. Pikko because I was so frustrated with my earrings. I bought new ones yesterday and for some reason my left ear decided it didn't WANT to have something going through it today. After like half an hour of trying and Mr. Pikko trying, I ended up with my stud in backwards cause that was the only way I could get it in. He tried really hard, but I really wanted to strangle him only because I was so mad at my ears and he was the closest breathing person. Who knew you could get so gosh darned MAD at your own body parts!

Hamburger Fried Rice? (208)

We had hamburger patties last night and this is something I've been finding increasingly hard to arrange nicely without repeating the same old things, so I decided to try making it into a fried rice. I don't recall ever eating a hamburger fried rice, so hopefully it turns out all right.


The first thing I did was heat some olive oil in a little pan. Then I crumbled up the hamburger patty into small pieces and separated the rice as best I could. It was a mixture of white and brown rice. I had some already chopped up bell pepper and added that into the mix. After it had been cooking for a bit, I poured about a tablespoon of Mr. Yoshida's sauce over it. I added the broccoli last, since I hadn't thought about putting it in until I noticed it was rather bland in color.

Since lacquer boxes cannot stand high heat, I lined the box with some lettuce to help protect it. I poured everything in and arranged the pieces as best I could with chopsticks. For snacks I have baby carrots, some of those new Brother's Potato Crisps (freeze dried, ZERO oil, ZERO fat, yahoo!!), salsa, and popcorn.

120 x 520

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

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


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

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


Baby carrots and edamame, carefully placed side by side.


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


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


My second layer has strawberries and green grapes again.

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

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

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!

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (178)

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



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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

Hamburger Patty (172)

Yesterday the office peeps forgot to do our exercises, so in a shocking turn of events, I did them at home on my own. Monday I participated twice, so I did a total of 120 squats and maybe 30 push-ups, cause I'm such a weeny when it comes to arm stuff. Yesterday I did 75 squats, 60 lunges, and 40 push-ups by myself at home. And I'm not sore! Yay!

After my bad eating yesterday I'm back up to 128, but since there are no more lunch meetings this week, hopefully I can get back on track. I had taken some of my MIL's corn chowder to eat, but I forgot to bring it in today. :( It's so cold here lately, which is really nice because when its hot on Oahu, sleeping is a pretty miserable experience. By the way, by cold I am talking about "Hawaii cold". This equals about 70 degrees or so. Yes, yes, laugh it up mainland people. I'm the one really laughing. Bwahaha!

Today I have one hamburger patty cut in half. There was empty space around it so I added some sliced up mini bell peppers for color and filler. On the other side I have a small star shaped onigiri with some chazuke sprinkles on it. I tucked in some leftover edamame that I'd defrosted the other day and then on top before I closed the box, I added a small yellow bear container full of ketchup.

It's been about a week and a half since I pierced my ears and my right lobe is a little swollen. I keep disinfecting it and am trying to sleep on the other side of my head, but it's still puffy and it's getting difficult to grab the stud to twist it now. Anyone have advice on how to get it to stop swelling? I clean it 3 times a day as I'm supposed to, but it's been like this for several days now. At least it doesn't hurt though!

I am returning to my FFXI radio show this Sunday. Although we had moved the show at the beginning of the year to Sundays, we never did get around to doing a Sunday show. After I announced it, I realized that this weekend is Superbowl Sunday, but we are going to do a show anyway. It'll be a little sad, since we will be short one host as our friend ImperialNinja has left us, but we'll try to make do without him as best we can. If you play FFXI and are interested, tune in on Sunday from 2 PM to 5 PM Pacific time by going to http://www.onlinegamingradio.com. It's been a really rough year and hopefully this radio show can bring some light back into 2008.

Rotisserie Chicken (171)

I had another uhh... interesting weekend this week. As I mentioned before, I drank alcohol for the first time in my life two weeks ago. All that was really left was to find out how much I needed to drink before I got drunk and so with a lot of leftover beer in the fridge from a UFC party forever ago, Mr. Pikko suggested we have an experiment.

We had some Budweiser Select and some Fire Rock Ale that our friend had left here. I drank the Budweiser first and it took me quite a while. The ale tasted better, but still didn't taste that great. The second ale went down quicker and by the time he gave me the last Bud, I drank that in like a minute. After that one, the crappy wine we had bought didn't taste so bad and I downed a little less than a glass all at once. I was ready for more, but thankfully I was drinking with my husband and he cut me off. So anyway, the lesson here is that anywhere else, I shouldn't drink more than two beers because after that I become a snowball slowly rolling down a hill.

All in all, I thought it was fun, but it's not something I'm going to do very often. The next morning I woke up really early and seriously hungry and I made a pan of fried rice (and ate half of it), drank like 3 glasses of water, then went back to bed. I woke up and weighed myself and was completely horrified to find that I weighed 129.3!!! As of this morning, I am 129.9!!! *sob* It was probably a combination of eating Korean food Friday, then sushi for dinner, plus all my leg exercises and walking, but still WTF... My pants are really freaking tight today and I've got to do some serious good eating for a while to get back to where I was. No more Sapporo Ichiban saimin or cinnamon bagel chips or ice cream...



Costco chickens have got to be the best thing ever because 1) they're really cheap at $4.99 fully cooked and delicious 2) my kids actually EAT them and 3) they can last for two lunches, a dinner, and a bento. We ate at Arby's Saturday, thinking fast food was cheaper but that came out to around $23. We ate sushi for dinner and that was around $25. Zippy's can run around $18. With those numbers, Costco chickens win all around. I sliced this up after it had been refrigerated because when you slice it hot, it crumbles up.

Costco chicken goes really well with Nori Komi furikake, so I sprinkled some of that onto my rice. I've got about half a cup, so this bento is 2 points. I have some little carrot sticks and a tomato bottle with some soy sauce to put on the chicken. On the side there are chopped up mini bell peppers, which are really sweet. On top are three skewers of shelled edamame.


I bought myself a new bento box last year when I ordered an item from JList for my grandma. This one is a pale green Totoro box by Skater, who makes awesome boxes.

A Ninja Sushi just opened by where we live and I've eaten there twice already. They have really beautiful sushi pictures and so far I've had their Osaka Maki and their Tiger Maki. Once again, I forgot to take pictures. :(


I had Mr. Pikko take a picture of me for some ZAM marketing thing, but I'm posting it here to show off my BJ Penn tank top. Too bad you can't really see much of it, lol. The front has his face and his signature. The back says "Just Scrap Sexy".

Teriyaki Chicken (170)

Today is a day that represents a fresh start to 2008 for me and so from now on I will try my best to keep my chin up and make the best of things. I was at home sick yesterday so I had no bento, but I did get a lot done at home.

For a while now my kids' bedroom has been a real mess, full of boxes of things, toys, old clothes, my scrapbooking desk, etc. I cleaned it all out, moved the crib from our bedroom into theirs so they can sleep in there, moved my scrapbooking desk into my own bedroom, and fixed up the bed so that the two kids can start sleeping in there. Baby Girl was incredibly happy about it when she came home and thanked me over and over for it, claiming that if it ever gets messy again, she promises that SHE will clean it up. Guess the pigs are still flying outside...

This is some baked teriyaki chicken from Wednesday that I had intended to make for bento yesterday. I have a small bit of rice, some mixed veggies, and some sliced mini bell pepper. Yesterday Buddy asked for a red bell pepper for breakfast. I have no idea why. He stared at it for a couple minutes, then demanded Cheerios and proceeded to eat three full bowls. Lucky for me I actually had Cheerios.

On the side I have blueberries and a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese. I have a Fuji apple the size of Pluto to snack on. I was 123.7 yesterday, so I'm slowly going down in weight. I think as long as I keep up my good portioning, I should be able to reach my goal weight by the time May and the wedding comes around. Which reminds me, I have to measure myself so my friend can buy my dress...

Veggies Bento (142)

Last night's trick or treating was so much fun! We left work early to take the kids out and it was still pouring rain all the way home, but when we got to MIL's house, the rain was just drizzling here and there. We ate dinner and got the kiddos dressed. Buddy was very resistant, protesting the entire time I took off his clothes and then finally took off running in just his diaper and I had to chase him around for a bit. He had some serious issues with wearing his costume and kept crying, "Nooooo! Nooooo!" whenever I tried to put it on until finally I said, "You want puffs??" (those star shaped Gerber things) and his eyes glazed over and he said, "Puff." He let me put it on no problem! Yay, problem solved right?

Everyone is dressed and standing against the wall except him, who his looking at the camera going, "Nooooo! Nooooo!", going limp, etc. I tell him, "Please just stand by your sister!" He is fussing fussing fussing then suddenly goes, "Puff?" As soon as the word "yes" escaped my lips he stood over by them and grinned ear to ear saying, "Eez!" Not even two and a negotiator already. :(

I had nothing but fruits and vegetables to put into a bento today, so that's what I ended up with. I've got a bunch of cucumber slices, which I will sprinkle with salt before I eat, then three colors of bell peppers with some fat free Ranch dressing in the little cup. It's oh so healthy, no??


Hahaha!! Second layer: NOT! I've got some Halloween munching to do and so I picked out one of my favorites, peanut M&Ms! I figure this is a much better portion than if I were to go buy a regular sized bag from the vending machine. I've also got this lil packet of sour apples and then some sakura shaped banana slices. There's also a little hidden Laughing Cow Light Swiss wedge in there.


Today is November 1st, I leave for Fan Fest in less than two weeks! Ahhhhh!! Panic panic panic!!!

Costco Fried Rice (139)

Today's bento is simple Costco Fried Rice, which I cooked this morning with bell peppers, sweet onion, and parsley. Buddy claimed he wanted some for breakfast, but it turned out he just wanted to fling it all over the kitchen when I was using the bathroom. Little twerp!!


I've only brought a small bento today since I've got this Costco thing of cashews to nibble on in addition to an orange and a bosc pear.

This weekend was the homecoming game for the UH Football team and what a fun game it was. We won 50-13 and it was windy, making for great confetti entertainment, plus it rained so Baby Girl was thrilled to use her poncho. We're ranked 14 in the BCS poll, which is of course going to make for 2 long weeks of speculation by UH fans until the Fresno State game in November. I'll be at Fan Fest when Hawaii goes away to their last road game in Nevada. I will have to find some way to watch that game!

We went pumpkin picking yesterday at Aloun Farms in Ewa and boy was that a dirty affair. It was completely dry and the dirt flew everywhere, but mostly into my poor contact covered eyes. I was crying almost the whole time and whenever I could manage to open my eyes again, more dirt would fly in. I'm amazed I didn't come home with a rotten pumpkin. The kids loved it, which was really cute. I told them to enjoy having so much dirt on them because that was probably the only time all year Mr. Pikko would let them get so filthy.

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?

Spaghetti & 20k! (108)

It looks like today I will be hitting the 20k mark, which is really something for me since I've only had this counter up since May, making it 20,000 visits in just over 4 months! Thank you to everyone for reading and I hope you keep coming back!

Yesterday Baby Girl was adamant about eating spaghetti for dinner so we headed to Foodland to do the week's grocery shopping and I picked up a McCormick packet of spaghetti this time instead of the usual ready made sauce jars. I had wanted to try something new but apparently before I do things like this I should be made to go back to elementary school for reading lessons as I cooked it totally wrong. I read "tomato sauce" instead of "tomato paste" and added 3/4 cup too much water. +_+ Pure genius. I figured the kids wouldn't care so I just fed it to them kinda watery and I was right, they ate it all up. Probably because I added the magic ingredient, Kraft cheese. I was told once that this is a Big Island habit and that elsewhere it's considered really weird. Mr. Pikko had to wait an extra hour for the sauce to burn off the extra water. *sigh*


This spaghetti is all Core because I used extra extra lean meat, olive oil, a seasoning packet, tomato sauce, and whole wheat pasta. I have some extra and will likely freeze them tomorrow into cups as Biggie has suggested on her blog. To top the spaghetti I have half a small red bell pepper thinly sliced and then topped with parsley. On the side I have the last remaining butt of garlic bread, which will count as 2 points all by itself.


On my bottom layer I have a small cup full of blueberries. Ever since I started eating them I've felt that they have a very familiar taste and last night I finally realized what it is. They taste just like waiwi (pronounced why-vee), which is a small guava that grows here in Hawaii. The picture on that page shows a red guava, but the ones that are more common on the Big Island are the yellow variety. I loooooooooooove waiwi. My dad knows that if he ever sees a big cluster of green ones that he should pick it for me and send it over. When I first met Mr. Pikko he took me to meet his grandpa and he had a yellow waiwi tree in his backyard. Unfortunately the dumb plant was growing into his water line so he had to chop it down. *sob*

I am a serious fruit fan and the best part about growing up on the Big Island is that we have all kinds of awesome weird fruits to eat including waiwi, guava, rambutan, lychee, starfruit, etc. What I miss the most though is hands down: mountain apple. Ohhh man. My grandma had a bigass tree in her yard and my dad used to climb the tree to pick it riddled with spiders and all kinds of gross crap. Lots of times they had worms in them but when you did get one that was free of stings and ripe... ohhhhh. It's times like this I really miss Hilo. Take a look at this page to see some farmer's market pictures and maybe you'll see what I mean. Hilo may have been a dumpy town to grow up in but it sure does have it's moments.

Ok so back to the bento, haha. I also have green grapes which we bought yesterday. Thankfully, most places seem to be stocking more and more USA produce. YaY! Next to that I have some diet horrors. A brownie cut in half so that it fit into the box on it's side and then half of a sugar cookie. My sister-in-law baked these and brought them over, claiming they didn't taste very good but of course she was lying, they taste like heaven. The cookies are a bit odd as they are spongy, but the best part is they taste exactly like pancakes soaked in maple syrup. I wish I could have fit a whole one in there... On the side I also have a KCCA salad and a white peach.

On the menu for tonight: teriyaki ahi with fried tofu steak! Mmmm..

Teriyaki Meatballs (107)

My two kids are going through a tornado phase right now and I'm still getting used to it. So when I asked Mr. Pikko to watch them so I could take a nap Saturday morning, I was a bit... unnerved to wake up and find that the big Costco pack of Kirkland toilet paper we had bought was busted open and used in a toilet paper fight. Also, the books on the shelf were thrown out, the mail on the table tossed about like confetti, there were tiny little papers all over the floor because Baby Girl was "playing with scissors", and lego blocks were all mixed in between for color.

All this mess was of course enough to make my brain explode, but I think there is a good side to me having to clean the house on a daily basis. For some reason this weekend I lost a lot of weight. I was 125.7 this morning! Or maybe it's more sleep? Well, whatever it is, I'm happy. Carry on kids!

I'm really unhappy with my bento today as it was done in a rush and simply don't like the way it's put together. Mr. Pikko was all cranky with me this morning for taking a long time so I'll definitely have to do this at night all the time now. I'm sick of rushing in the morning anyway.


On the left I have a dog shaped onigiri with a dog shaped slice of turkey with a nori face on top. I have the onigiri mold and cutter to make both these shapes along with the bunny and bear shape available in the store right now. Under the doggie I have two slices of fish cake made by my MIL and given to us before she left. Next to that I have two Aidel's teriyaki pineapple chicken meatballs cooked in Mr. Yoshida's sauce. Then I have corn in a Miffy cup and an orange bell pepper stuffed with Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese, something I've seen others do that I've wanted to do for a while.


I'm not sure why this pic came out so blurry but this is my fruit layer, which has slices of white peach, grapes, and some blueberries. It's a funny thing about these blueberries. I am not a blueberry fan. I love all berries but have never really taken to these much. So when I took the kids to Costco on Friday, for some reason Baby Girl wanted them in the worst way. She asked me I swear, at least 50 times to buy her a pack of blueberries, insisting she loved them and that she promised to eat them. Since her word as a toddler is about as good as a year-old-expired coupon, I said no at least 50 times.

Finally though, she cracked me and I bought one. I figured I could give them a try again and lo and behold, I did like them.

And I would eat them in a box.
And I would eat them with a fox.

Yeah, it's like Green Eggs and Ham in real life. Scary stuff. I'm eating them in a box but thank goodness I don't really have a fox to eat them with. Or I do, but he always eats at work. Anyway, that's why they're in my bento today. I haven't been able to stop eating them all weekend.


I used my pink Feel at Ease box today with the matching side container that I found in Little Tokyo in July. I have edamame in that container. The fruits were bulging out so I had to use the furoshiki in the background to tie it up tight.

I am happy to report that Hawaii won against Louisiana Tech last Saturday. It was a nervewracking game that I had such a hard time watching because I was sooooooo nervous. So much hangs on every game and to have it be that close and have so many mess-ups was very hard for a fan to watch. UNLV this weekend will probably be even harder to watch. I have a great idea for our next football bento, so stay tuned next home game for that.

As I mentioned last week, I started my Live Journal documenting my costume making effort for the Final Fantasy XI Festival coming up in November. Doing this has really got me interested in sewing again and this weekend I bought a pattern for a blouse and some materials to make my own shirts. If anyone else out there likes sewing or scrapping, I found some good coupons for shipping at Joann.com from CouponChief. They also have a good one for free shipping on baby and maternity clothes from Old Navy. I always forget to check coupon sites before I go shopping so I definitely need to make a better effort in that area. "Free shipping" are magical words to a cheapass like me.



I really wish I could stop the outlines from appearing around every single image but bleh, if that's the price I have to pay for the nice green border, so be it.

Furikake Wasabi Salmon (102)

A few months ago my mother in law had brought back from one of her sorority group meetings a recipe book that contained all of their best recipes. She's been trying recipes from this book this week and last night tried an easy microwavable Furikake Wasabi Salmon. The salmon steaks are topped with mayonnaise, wasabi, drizzled with Mr. Yoshida's sauce (this is a brand of sauce), and then sprinkled with Aji Nori furikake. I did not eat this last night as they'd also bought some pork eggplant and beef with black beans that I couldn't resist. I just love eggplant dishes so I ate mostly that for dinner!


I didn't take much rice, so this will only count as 1 point. On the right side I have more of the above-mentioned eggplant and some of the bell peppers from the beef dish. The eggplant was rather oily from the pork, so I'll add another point on for that. The salmon was a bit oily too, but since this oil came from the salmon itself, I count that as a healthy oil. The mayo I will add another point, which brings this to a 3 point lunch. By the way, the (102) is the number of my bento. I need to keep better track!

I went to Marukai yesterday and learned it pays to scour every aisle up and down for things. Their bento accessories section has been lacking for the past 3 trips I've made down there but this time I was able to score on some really cuuuute bento boxes!! I've used it in today's lunch and here it is all covered up:


Isn't it beautiful!? A complete steal at $1.99! And best of all, it's made in Japan. With all the China recalls lately even I am getting paranoid about all China products. I saw a lonely four boxes hiding in between stacks of silly useless looking plasticware. I snatched them all up! I will sell one on eBay and have two to sell for $2.99 in my store, though I haven't taken a picture. Actually, if you're interested in it, you can simply e-mail me at pikkopots at gmail.com and place a reserve on it, then pay with PayPal once I confirm I still have it available. I have a matching drawstring bag for both of them, also $2.99. I took the photo on a matching furoshiki that I found buried under a box. It was only $.99 because it was out of the package and dirty and gross. I figured I can always wash it...

I also got another good cheap find yesterday. Today Baby Girl needed to wear a certain color and she didn't have it, so we went to Ross after leaving the in-laws. I found a set of red and blue silicon baking cups for $3.99! That's a lot cheaper than the $8.99 ones I saw at Walmart and at least this one had two colors! So yeah... very happy. I also bought a walking at home exercise DVD because Mr. Pikko has expressed concern about me running in the dark.

Speaking of the store, I added in more of the Hello Kitty stuff again as well as some additional accessories. I have a crapton of bento supples to sell in the store at home but am just too lazy to put a lot of it up. Amazingly, Mr. Pikko, who calls everything to do with any of my hobbies my "junks" refers to my bento stuff as "bento stuffs". Maybe he silently approves??

Tomorrow is the big day! Our first football game of the season! I bought Buddy a #15 toddler shirt and Baby Girl a UH windbreaker jacket so that she wouldn't get cold wearing the cheerleader outfit. This is our first year with season tickets so I really hope that we are sitting in a family friendly area. We bought staff tickets which should up the chances of getting seats by old timer football fans. I just hope they don't mind kids. So while I'm talking about football, I should mention the horrifying new haircut that Colt Brennan has.


Dude, we get you love Hawaii, but who got you drunk and took you to the barber? I suppose it's still better than the dreadlocks though... Also, unless he plans on looking at his feet everywhere he goes, when he puts his head upright the Hawaiian islands are upside down... Oi ya yoi!

I'm looking forward to our first football bento. I think I will pack cone sushi, dashimaki tamago, spam musubi, and hash patties. There will be 6 of us there with the two kids. We'll see if we actually get to watch the game or if this will be another season of "I want to go walking." and "I want a smoothie." Hopefully they have andagi this year!

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.