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!
Ok so I've been moaning and groaning about my stupid camera spitting out blurry pictures when I photograph my bentos lately and I thought this would make for a great excuse to get a new camera. My plans were foiled when Mr. Pikko suggest I check for a smudge on the lens. Sure enough, there was a little fingerprint right across the front. I will blame Buddy, since he loves to take pictures, usually of people's chests and neck. Who knows, maybe he will be some weird modern art photographer.
The Art of the Neck!
So anyway, with my camera problems unfortunately solved, I still have a blurry bento picture for today, which fills me with complete and utter rage!! AUGH!!!
Just kidding. ^_^
This here is oven fried chicken and no, I have not fallen off the weight loss wagon just yet. I still have to lose 12 pounds before I'm considered "not fat" in scientific terms. Plus, my size 4 pants are no longer comfortable, a sure sign I need to control my eating again. I picked the smallest piece of chicken in the pan and then brought soy sauce for flavor so that I can pick all the breading off. I'll try my best not to eat all the rice.
Next to it I have broccoli and takuan in a little food cup. I tucked in one il/legal tomato for color and then wished I had more food to put in. I ended up only bringing one tier since the only fruit I had was a papaya and Baby Girl loves papaya so much if I had taken some there would have been some papaya riots in the kitchen this morning.
Alrighty so last weekend, as you all know, was my best friend's wedding. Much to everyone's shock, we left our kiddies at home. This however, turned out to be a very wise decision as I think I might have shown up at the wedding slightly demented if they'd come along. (more on that below) Traveling with toddlers is not fun. You have to rent carseats, their little bodies balloon your airfare no matter how much you tell the airline they can both fit in one seat, they are of course not used to sleeping in a strange place and therefore are really cranky at night, and ALL the bathrooms are not your house one therefore making the request to "go shishi at home" extremely unreasonable.
We stayed in Kona Saturday so that we could go to Kona Bowl to watch BJ Penn defend his title in UFC 84 and me not wanting to spend too much on a hotel we'd be barely staying at, chose to go with a cheapie condo. The place was pretty decent for the price so I can't really fault it, but it was definitely not a place I felt comfortable sleeping in. For one, it had a weird odor. Two, there was this HORRIBLE looking spider in the parking lot that gave me serious freaking nightmares (not kidding). There were lots of mysterious quarter sized holes in the ceiling. The comforter was dark green with lovely white stains on them. Later that night I ended up suggesting that we sleep without bathing so as to avoid getting any ickyness on our sleeping clothes. I slept with the sheets covering my feet because a part of me was afraid that yellow-assed demon was going to get off his web and crawl in to terrorize me. I woke up at least 4 times during the night checking my feet. I cannot imagine trying to get our kids to sleep in this place.
We had time to kill so we hung out napping in the Kona Bowl parking lot, then went to Macy's where I got the flipping deal of my life on a really great Eileen Fisher jacket. The price on the tag was $228 and I got it at 65% off with an extra 20% off for signing up for a Macy's card (which I got lectured about). I was supposed to get a total of 40% extra off, so if I'm feeling particularly stingy, I'll call them up to complain. But for now, getting a $228 jacket for $37 has me on Cloud Nine. Later, we met my Aunty C and Uncle L for lunch at Big Island Grille. That was fun, thanks for meeting us Aunty!!
UFC was freaking awesome! All the fights were pretty good with the exception (in my opinion anyway) of the Machida/Tito fight. That one just frustrated the hell out of me... I'd gone shopping at Pearlridge Friday and at Champs I found one woman's Extreme Couture shirt. I was really happy with it for the design obviously, but probably also because it was a size small and anything that says small and fits is a freaking great shirt. I had tried to blur our Mr. Pikko, but he ended up looking like a danged obake, so I just cropped him out.
Watching UFC with a lot of other people who actually like UFC is a heck of a lot better than watching at home by yourselves trying to convince the kids that UFC is just as fun as Curious George. I got some serious chicken skin when BJ entered the arena. He comes out to a mix of Hawaii 78 and E Ala E (you can listen to it below) by Eggman, which is what Baby Girl calls Bruddah Iz. We're still trying to figure out what the heck she's talking about. She gave us some spiel about how we showed her a video playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and a big dragon was chasing Iz or something... I think maybe one night I must have accidentally given her a lollipop before bed and then let her watch a YouTube video of Iz, causing her to have psychedelic sugar high dreams about the "Eggman". ?!?!?
There must have been over a hundred people at the bowling alley watching and so it was the perfect atmosphere. When BJ knocked Sean Sherk out the place just erupted, it was awesome. My only complaint was that the guy was giving away prizes on an obnoxiously loud mic, sometimes during prelim fights. I mean, those are interesting too...
When it comes to MMA, Mr. Pikko likes to accuse me of name dropping, which I fully admit to doing because while I can appreciate the meaning behind a term such as a "beautiful armbar" and can remember tons of fights, I still have no freaking clue what a "kimura" is other than my friend's last name. I know just enough to appear to be a hardcore MMA fan, but in reality I just live with an MMA freak and find it much more convenient and time-saving to have him relay to me the latest gossip from the sites and blogs.
I have however, moved on from name dropping to what I call "shirt dropping". I have this thing about buying shirts lately. I have like 8 UH shirts and then now have my Extreme Couture shirt, my BJ Penn tank top, etc. It's pretty effective too, I wore my BJ tank to the salon when I was getting ready for the wedding and the lady doing the nails of the bride next to me mentioned what a great fight it was. The man at the front desk of the salon asked me if BJ won. At the airport some guy wearing an Extreme Couture shirt saw mine and later at Kona Bowl told us about his MMA clothing store at Schofield. So now instead of asking someone with potential MMAphobia if they watch UFC, I just wear it and wait for people to talk to me. Good stuff!
After UFC we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was entertaining, but Last Crusade is still the best for me. "Water? No thank you, fish make love in it."
This is me and Lan just before her wedding. I'm kinda sad about the hair.. I should have had it down. I look like I just jumped out of that 80s music video Simply Irresistable only with less eyeliner. The back was really pretty with curls, but you can't see it. :( I loved Lan's hair and headpiece! Her wedding was loads of fun and their vows had everyone in tears. Best. Vows. Ever. Not joking. I wish I could have come up with something that beautiful. *romantic sigh*
Kahua Ranch had the most fantastic view. Mr. Pikko and I took this picture just after sunset. More to the right you had a clear view of Maui. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was up there. The road up was freakishly scary, so I was pretty relieved that we took a bus down in the dark later.
We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa Village and I got this for free from my HHonors points. The room was like a 500% improvement over the condo in Kona and I don't know if I've ever slept on a bed that comfortable in my life. It killed me to have to wake up at 4:30 AM to get to the airport for our 7 AM flight. I was most definitely on crack when I made those reservations. The Hilton has retardedly spaced out towers, so it's best to take their tram. Only the tram doesn't start up until 6, so we had to walk half a mile from our room to the parking lot. Not cool. Still, I really wish we could have enjoyed the hotel more. This is the hotel with buttloads of artwork, waterways for boats, pools, a lagoon, possibly waterslides, (I forget), and dolphins! Next time! ^_^
Hopefully I can have more pics later, I had camera brain farts and didn't take many. We got home and ate breakfast at Anna Miller's so that I could look up on the laptop symptoms of brain aneurysms, which I mentioned yesterday. Despite all my complaints, it was great to see the kids again. Buddy had a wet head from running around in circles a lot, which didn't surprise me. I just hope he didn't do that the entire weekend.
Edit:
I forgot to talk about LOST!! I guess I'll do that next week though, when people have safely watched the finale thus ensuring I do not spoil it for people.
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.
My apologies for the technical snafoo yesterday with my picture. I went to look at my Flickr and was like WTF?!? Where is my picture??? *sigh*
Grandma J made shoyu chicken the other night. It was still on the bone so I refrigerated it overnight so that it would be hard and then in the morning was able to pull it off the bone in one nice piece. I wanted it in one piece so that I could slice it nicely. When the meat is warm and soft it tends to flake and looks terrible. I laid the slices on top of some furikake rice and then poured some Mr. Yoshida's sauce onto the chicken since it was looking a little pale from refrigeration.
I added broccoli which I had let sit in some hot water heated up in the microwave in a Pyrex cup. I find this is much easier than boiling water in a pot and it cooks the broccoli just fine. I cut a slice of takuan into little wedges and tucked it into some empty space near the end of the box.
We have this wild tomato plant that is growing from a seed of an old tomato from our potted plants. It's growing under the AC unit and it's CRAZY huge. I wish we were allowed to grow plants in the ground, but we're not. I've been letting it grow just to see how many tomatoes it spits out. One was nicely ripe and we picked that one. I had told Baby Girl two other ones were only dark orange so we'd pick them in the morning for my bento. Then we went out to the yard and the two were gone!!! We think the birds got them. I'm really surprised she didn't blame it on the beavers.
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!
I had this recipe in some little Japanese food cookbook at home and had been eyeing it for a while. The recipe itself made little sense to me though, asking for 2 large eggs, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Do you have any idea how much salt and pepper that is?!?! Either the "large" eggs I buy at Foodland are like Japanese people to mainland people or this lady really loves pepper in her Japanese food. The recipe is called Sesame Omelet with Shrimp and I modified it a bit by cutting down the mayo. (it asked for 3 tablespoons)
I messed this up in many ways, as usual. First of all, I actually listened to what she said and added 1/4 tsp pepper. Maybe fresh ground pepper is less, but I added the already ground one and holy bob damn my mouth lit on fire when I tasted a piece. Then I used a pan that was too small, so my omelet was thicker and smaller than it was supposed to be. I also didn't have watercress, so I used broccoli, which turned out to be very difficult to roll.
I rolled it up, put it in the fridge to set, then sliced it into nice sushi-like rolls. I'll have to modify it and try again, maybe tomorrow since I still have lots of shrimp. I know it's weird to have a shrimp roll and then shrimp on the side, but I really wanted to eat some with cocktail sauce, which is in the little yellow container. It didn't look colorful enough to me, so I tucked in a couple slivers of carrot in the middle. The edamame was pre-cooked and frozen, so I just defrosted it in water and placed them in nicely.
With Mr. Pikko and Baby Girl off to a lesson on Saturday, I trucked Buddy off to the supermarket to buy vegetables for my soup. I ended up trying the first Garden Vegetable Soup recipe I found. Though I didn't need any, Buddy would not stop furiously pointing at the "brokko zee" until I picked up this one tiny little stalk that got broken off and gave it to him. This did not satisfy him because after I handed it to him, he demanded "BEEG WUN!" but then I put it in a bag and suddenly it was like, Magical Bagged Broccoli Extraordinnaire and we were able to move on.
Having not made a soup in quite a while, I opted for the whole head of cabbage instead of the conveniently cut-in-half ones. I figured, the recipe said "half a cabbage", so I just bought one, thinking I'd just go double.
I do not recommend this unless you want a pretty good vegetable soup with ASSLOADS of cabbage in it. No, seriously. It tastes pretty good, kinda like the Campbell's Vegetable Soup (which I love) but with enough cabbage to kill someone. I looked at other recipes this morning and found that you're supposed to use 2 cups cabbage. Great. Good thing cabbage is cheap. I used vegetable bullion and don't have nearly enough soup for the vegetables, so I'm kinda stuck eating mostly heaps of cabbage for the early part of this week so that at the end of the week, I can have a nice soupy soup. Next batch, I will use beef bullion, cause I had to add some extra salt this round.
I made Pork Tofu this past weekend. Grandma J makes a really good non-spicy Mapo Tofu and I use this recipe as a substitute for when I want some. It reminds me a lot of the Pork Tofu dish that Y's Lunch Shop used to make on occasion. Let me tell you, that dish was made in heaven. Whenever I saw they had it, I bought it. Mine totally pales in comparison, the only thing similar is the look. I think maybe when the wedding comes around, I should beg my friend to bring me some Y's before she drives over from Hilo side. The last time I went to my cousin's wedding in Kona my aunty did that, bringing us musubi and fish. I'm drooling right now just remembering it.
Anyway, this is Pork Tofu with some diced carrot on top for color and my brokko-zee.
We bought champagne mangoes at Costco yesterday but I need to go get credit for it or something. I cut them open and they were black in the middle. These ones were the third mango I peeled and though it was still black, I just cut that part out. Added some strawberries in too, sliced up for easy eating. ^_^
I never did post more pictures of my wheat grass! It's dying by now and I had to toss most of it out due to mold, but I will try again and this time will harvest them as sprouts as they look in this stage here:
They were actually pretty sweet and tender at this stage. Right now my last tray of grass is really stringy and tastes like... well, grass. The sprouts were much better. I still have a huge bag of berries, so I think I'll just grow a batch, harvest sprouts fresh from my desk at work, and then start over. It's really quite fun!!
I bet a lot of you have been like, ZOMG, where the hell are the bentos?! Maybe Bento 200 KILLED PIKKO! Ahhhh!!!!
Nah.
I've just had a slew of lunches this week. As I mentioned, Tuesday we went to a Thai restaurant. I ended up not taking any pictures because we ate family style and I didn't know all of the people very well and I thought they might think I'm some kind of freak if I busted out my camera to take pictures of our food before they were allowed to eat it. Plus, the lighting in the restaurant was quite poor. The food was great though! Our waiter was very entertaining and at the end, he brought us out this heaping plate of ice cream on top of warm sticky rice. It was a truly wonderful dessert and we asked him what it was on the menu and he said he'd made it up right there, which I admit kind of disappointed me because I thought it would be a regular dessert I could get at any Thai restaurant. I was very happy that only a couple of the dishes were spicy. I can't handle things that make me want to call the fire department on my mouth.
Wednesday one of my co-workers took me to a birthday lunch, which was really nice. We walked up to Manoa Valley and ate at a little Chinese restaurant called Asia Manoa. I had a Chicken with Vegetable plate that tasted really good. I don't know why, but they served it with I swear, half a pot of rice. My eyes practically fell out of my head when they brought it to the table. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said it was around 4 cups cooked rice.
Thursday we had our monthly work potluck, which I have pictures for after my bento.
Last night we had meat loaf, which I've found to be one of the most difficult things to bento. Then I realized that I could do this food TODDLER STYLE! Toddler style means you chop the food up into little itty bitty bits and mix it all up together with rice. This isn't a bad idea for bento really, since you can mix it all up, add garnishes, and bing! Nicer lunch than you might have had with a hunk of hamburger. Though I dunno about eating the carrots to be honest. Carrots and ketchup just isn't something that sounds good to me. Maybe I can just lick the ketchup off and then eat the carrots? Anyway, that's what's in the main section.
On the side I have cucumber kim chee, takuan sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds, and pickled eggplant.
On to the potluck!
First up is salad from The Boss, made with I think Nalo greens, avocado, and a Costco chicken! With the chicken I didn't need any dressing, which is always a bonus in my opinion.
Next, we have some ham and turkey wraps, which were REALLY good. I love wraps, but the meat in these were the thin sliced deli kind and were really tasty. I had two. >.<
Here we have some pork tenderloin, which was really good! I love stuff with black pepper, that's one spice I really don't mind.
This is a wonderful Salmon and Egg salad with cheese sprinkled on top. Really tasty! Next to that is my bowl of Healthy Rice. I brought my rice cooker in to work so that I could make it fresh here before the potluck. I ate way too much of this stuff. >.<
Here's a veggie platter alongside a cabbage/celery/apple salad which I really liked, though I hope the mayo was light! Next to the veggies was another salad and then a chocolate cake in the back from Safeway. That was good stuff! :D
Lastly, we had some really good banana muffins. I'm not sure what the banana slice on the top meant, but I took one without and it had yummy bits of apple in the middle. Maybe the banana slice one had nuts! If so, I should have taken one, I love nuts.
This has been one heckuva bad eating week, but thankfully, I am still at around 130. This is still not good, but better than I thought. I've been thinking about making a gigantor batch of Cabbage Soup from the Cabbage Soup Diet to eat during the day to fill me up so I snack less.
Before people freak out, I realize that the Cabbage Soup Diet is only water weight loss and not fat. I did it once a few years ago and despite the need to use the bathroom every 15 minutes, I thought the soup tasted pretty decent and the recipe itself is basically all vegetables, so it's actually all Core anyway. I just have to tweak the seasonings enough where I like it a lot and I'll have a large supply of something to eat whenever I get salty tummy rumblings. Plus it's not like I'm giving up bentos, this is just something to eat on the side.
Living in Hawaii you tend to get used to the whole "small town, small state" thing where everyone seems to have a friend who knows this person who is related to this person who is real good friends with your next door neighbor or something like that. Hilo is especially notorious for this because it's such a small town but it happens here in Honolulu as well. Take for example the fact that one of my readers works at the same campus as me or that one of my FFXI linkshell members is a mere 10 minute walk from my office. A real shining example showed itself today though!
One of my co-workers here calls me over to her desk to show me an e-mail from her sister and it's got the picture of me and Colt in it. I was looking at it thinking, Err... HUH?! Turns out she found my blog, figured out I work at UH, realized her sister also works at UH, thought to ask whether she knows me, and turns out she sits right here in this office with me. We were all cracking up about it. Hi Cindy! Thanks for reading! ^_^
Today I have for lunch the turkey croquette bento I mentioned yesterday. I cut it in half so that it would fit into the box nicer, shoved a tiny bit of white/brown rice into the corner, and added broccoli, sweet potato, carrots, and cucumber kim chee. The cucumbers were being really stubborn because they're big fat pieces, so I sliced it thinly to make them more cooperative and that worked out pretty well.
There are times when my kids drive me completely insane and I blame this for the evil mommy that comes out of me occasionally. I don't know if it's just me and my parents goggles, but sometimes my kids make the most hilarious frickin' faces when they're sad and I crack up laughing. Sometimes when I'm thinking straight I try to hide it, but most of the time I burst into giggles or cackles about it.
Take for instance dessert the other day. Grandma J bought a box of these Skinny Cow fudge bars (which, at 50 calories per, rock by the way) that my kids are now addicted to. Buddy loves them and shared one with me. He couldn't bite it very well so would only come away with little nibbles. When Baby Girl had one to herself, he of course wanted some. Since he was only skimming the surface of the pops, I told her to let him have some since he can't bite off much anyway. She holds it out and he comes over and CHOMPS off a good 1/3 of the bar, leaving her with this look on her face which I think was a mixture of shock and being on the verge of tears. I'm still getting the giggles picturing it now.
Anyway, I told him he should give some back, kind of as a joke. But kids sometimes listen in a very literal sense and so he spits it out, nibbles off a bit, and gives it back to her, melted chocolate and spit and all. Of course, she took it and ate it immediately. lol
Yesterday I had a birthday party to attend at On On on McCully. I ate a whole lot of food, but was able to control myself in that I ate a TON of the salad then did not eat anything of the last two courses. (there were EIGHT!!) I thought the food was great, especially the salad! It was probably doused in fistfuls ajinomoto (MSG) but still tasted yummy!
I don't think I've ever had an 8 course meal at a Chinese restaurant, so it was quite an experience. I didn't know that we were getting this much food so of course I ate a ton of salad, then downed a lot of soup, then quickly ate up the kids' discarded "duck in buns" before I realized that I should have been saving room for all the other things. Roast chicken came out, then a seafood medley in a fried taro bowl, next came mongolian beef with asparagus, then stuffed tofu, and finally cake noodles with duck meat. The duck noodles was by far the best dish so naturally I was upset that it came out last when I'd already stopped eating. I tried a small piece of meat and it was so yummy, that's why my bento is kinda overflowing with it! lol
Last week Friday I can't even remember why I didn't blog my bento, which shows how the holidays are taking a toll on my sanity in addition to the transition to the new job and a Fan Festival writeup that is now over 3 weeks overdue. I had leftover Beef Brocolli.
It didn't have much color so I just put a few star shaped carrot slices onto the middle of it. It's a very easy way to brighten up a bento and so quick too! I have some Christmas shaped mini cookie cutters I'd like to try out on my bentos in the coming weeks, but I'm not sure what I'll cut out just yet.
Yesterday we went to my cousin's son's birthday party and they had food catered from a place called Tanioka's in Waipahu. The food was really good!! I totally snarfed down about 3 meals worth of food like the horrible WW cheater that I am lately. I bounce between 125 and 128 all week and at the end I can usually end up right back at 127. If I were to finally go back to my diet I think I'd have no problem getting to 120 at last, but I've just been so lalala lately that maintaining this way just seems a great way to have fun with food.
Anyway, we had leftovers to take home and I packed a lot into my bento because I didn't want it to go to waste.
In the back is some sliced steak. On top of that are two mochiko chicken wings, which though I know are so horrible for you, tasted oh so good. In the middle I have rice with little slices of baby carrot decorating them. Tucked next to that is a piece of lumpia and then a salmon patty. In the little yellow tulip bottle I put some soy sauce for the lumpia. I added the tomato and celery for additional color!
I went to Sephora yesterday to get a makeover and this nice pregnant lady named Maria helped me with a makeover then took me shopping. By the time I got to the register, the bill was a heart attack inducing $254!!! I got back down to earth when I got home and picked out three things that I'm going to return, which brings my purchase price down to a more reasonable $170. Still enough to cause my wallet to burst into tears, but I've been feeling for the last 6 months or so that I'm too plain and wanted to at least learn how. So... I'm happy. I just have to practice application now. -_-
My life has been consumed with Fan Fest and my bentos have been made in auto mode lately. I can't wait til this is finally over, then I can think about things other than FFXI and databases and websites and booth promotions and costumes etc etc. I've been slacking so badly on bento orders and for that I sincerely apologize. Fan Fest is just 3 weeks out, hopefully I survive until then.
Today's bento took me a shockingly quick 15 minutes to make. I had rice leftover for the onigiri but the nori face was frustrating me. I guess certain brands of nori just don't cut well. The chicken I let cook in Yoshida's sauce overnight on low, so it was pretty difficult to cut and still get them in nice pieces, they kept falling apart! My MIL usually cooks them in the sauce, adds a little water, then thickens the sauce, but I didn't have time to thicken the sauce so I ended up with what just looks like Shoyu Chicken. Still tastes good tho! The broccoli I heated up water in a pyrex and then let them sit in the hot water for a few minutes and the carrots and tomatoes were put in for color.
My second layer picture is terribly blurry and not very exciting, but it will taste great and give me a nice spicy boost after lunch!
Total points for this bento is 1 for the onigiri. The chicken is made from boneless skinless, trimmed thighs so I didn't count it, though I suppose I should. 2 points? ^_-
So as you all know, I had a very good girl Core lunch yesterday and everything was going quite well and then suddenly, the CHINESE TAKEOUT DINNER OF DOOM struck! Before I saw an article in the paper about the intense calorie content of Chinese cuisine I'd always looked at Chinese food as one of the more healthier types of foods. Now that I know better I get so scared because not only is it full of calories, but it's so damned good too!
But fear not, I was good. I ate very little noodles and focused on broccoli and ong choi. I ate only until I wasn't hungry too, rather than stuffing myself until I felt full. So hopefully day 1 is not completely lost. There was a ton of leftovers so I felt obligated to take some. I took all veggies and a little bit of the noodles then added some rice that I cooked this morning. I've gone back to my old WW Core breakfast of scrambled eggs with sweet onion, bell pepper, and lean turkey slices and it was nice to be back to eating a hot breakfast again. I've been eating cereal every morning for about a month now and at least this way I'm fuller longer and it doesn't cost very many points.
From left to right I have white rice, broccoli, ong choi, and then the noodles in a cup on the right side. On the bottom layer I have:
This is the last of the shrimp I bought on Sunday. I have to use it up before it goes bad! The cocktail sauce is in the pink Hello Kitty cup. I have more tofu and then some edamame topped with a carrot flower. There's a little soy sauce bottle for the tofu. :D
I really really have to find the time to do my Dreamland again. I've been working so hard on Allakhazam while at home plus I've been trying to do more Pikko Pots updates so that by the time Fan Fest rolls around, I have a nicely updated site to show off. Then there's my costume and booth work... ugh. I really don't think I'll be able to find time to use all my spiffy tools and toys until after Fan Fest. This is just sucking so much of my time.
This morning on the way to work we executed our super smart football parking plan for the second week in a row. I don't need to go into details but I would like to boast that there will be no more parking at Radford and beyond for us! Tomorrow we play Utah State and I hope Colt's foot is better because I cringed hard during each of his career high 5 interceptions last week against Idaho. I'll try my football food thing again, but this time I'll make much less.
Last night I fully intended to have a small, healthy dinner again but when we got there it was spare ribs. My mother in law's spare ribs are by far the most onolicious things you ever tasted. For the mainlanders, "onolicious" (oh-no-licious) is the Hawaii way of saying delicious. The word "ono" by itself means delicious, but onolicious is just one of those words that people here have merged together and become common after a while.
Since there are tons of bones and I love this stuff, I took a stupid amount of meat. There was a lot left in the pot, so I used that excuse as a justification to pig out two meals in a row. To try to make up for it, I packed very little rice and a lot of broccoli. Boy, did I have an adventure trying to smash the cover onto this bento! There's a little area in the middle of the cover for the utensils and this means there's this long thing that goes into the box when you cover it. A bit frustrating design wise, but its still a really pretty box. I added takuan and carrot flowers to add color.
Voting for the Bloggers Choice Awards ends on October 19th and while I am very grateful for the 90 votes I've gotten from kind readers, the highest bento blogger on the Food Blog list is still Biggie. The vegan blogs are all still tops, so let's band together and boost her up! This is our last chance to get a bento blogger in the top 5 and I can't think of any other bento blogger out there who deserves the recognition more than her. You have to register, but its very quick. If you've already registered to vote for me, it's even easier because you can vote for more than one blog! Vote for Biggie!
Also, I got more work done on my costume last night! I'll update my LJ in a bit. Fan Festival is already next month!!!
As I mentioned yesterday, we had teri ahi and tofu steak for dinner last night. I set aside a small piece for me to cook for my bento. It turned out pretty good even though I wasn't going by any recipe or anything. I simply cooked the tofu steaks and fish fillets in olive oil and then added Mr. Yoshida's sauce to the pan.
I have furikake rice underneath the tofu and broccoli on the side. The little fish bottle contains extra teri sauce for me to pour on the rice when I eat it today. With the small amount of rice, this bento is about 2 points. I packed this into my newest bento box that I got on eBay, a blue Doraemon box. It's a great size and has a food divider, so of course I love it! A picture of the box:
I forgot to freeze my spaghetti last night and I'm not even sure I'll be able to because my freezer is ridiculously packed with stuff. This morning Mr. Pikko called me over to it and said, "You hear that? That's the ice machine breaking." Apparently it's not good to shove packs of frozen gyoza and bagels into the ice tray. Who knew!? ^_-
I had a very stressful night last night as I had to make my bento for today ahead of time so that we could leave on time today and then I had to pack up the many bento packages for the store. I ended up going to bed at 2 am because my bento was giving me such a hard time! The colors were so drab in one layer yet vibrant in another. Eventually I just gave up and settled on one brown themed layer and one bright layer.
From left to right I have rice, beef broccoli, mapo tofu, and then a boiled egg bear. I soaked him in soy sauce for a bit to make him brown and then gave him a little brother to snuggle with. (more soy sauce)
This layer is thankfully healthier than the top layer, though not by much. I have leftover yakisoba in a food cup, sliced cucumbers (which I will eat with plain salt), carrot flowers, a grape tomato, and then my dessert. The dessert is in the cute little animal cup. There are 3 little strawberry Whoppers hidden in there. Hee!
Yesterday I tried to go down to Satellite City Hall to pay my van registration and I got lost in the Ala Moana parking lot and when I finally got there, lo and behold they'd just closed the door. So typical of me. Not wanting to let that get me down, I drove over to Marukai, heehee. I picked up a bunch of new things for the store but unfortunately, still no new bento boxes. :( I'll probably go to Price Busters today to get some of the Hello Kitty stuff.
I'm at home sick today but since I will be venturing out to get a safety check on my van at a place nearby, I decided to go during lunchtime so that I can still do a bento today. This morning Baby Girl was really whimpery and sad about going back to school for some reason, so I took her in to school instead of her going with Daddy. She started screaming as soon as we got to the classroom and the aide had to pry her off my leg. Hopefully it really is just the dropping off part she doesn't like and this afternoon she'll be all smiles again.
I mentioned that I'd bought some packet to make Ebi Curry Spaghetti (ebi meaning shrimp) and I tried it out today. I ate what didn't fit in the box and it was pretty good!
The whole package according to the back is 2 servings at 140 calories and 1 gram of fat, which strikes me as a little odd but I guess since the serving of noodles is so small, that would be why. Whatever, something that low fat I can definitely live with!! Still, it comes out to 4 points for lunch. Not too bad, but it means I'll have to eat a pretty strict Core dinner tonight.
It was pretty easy to make, took about I dunno 10 minutes? That was probably because I sliced and cut the carrot flowers though. As you can see, there's broccoli to go with it. It looked pretty plain so I chopped up some carrot really fine to sprinkle on top. I have one more package in the fridge along with the rest of the shrimp, so maybe I'll try it out on the kids this weekend. ^_^
I had put this bento into the same Bonnie Bear box from yesterday but then decided that with the broccoli, I'd do one more green entry for bentochallenge and so moved it into the same kind of box, only green. The box is rather amusing, the saying on the front is, "Classy Croaky... is funniest and dedicated, his the best player on the team." lol!
I added a drop of green food coloring to a bit of water and then mixed the rice in. Doesn't it look so freaky?!? I added a packet of green furikake but it turns out it's not that green. Not a very exciting bento, but you can't deny it's very green!! Extreme close-up!
I put soy sauce in the little bottle but I'm unsure whether I'll use it. If anything I'll add it to the broccoli for a bit of taste. I'm so bad about shoyu like that. And here my cousin was just telling me how it's so great that I eat healthy, then I add shoyu to a bento just for the container. D: I may end up going to Marukai tonight as I have to leave early to go get screwed over by my car registration fees at Satellite City Hall today. Hopefully they're not so bare anymore!!
Having just returned last night at 9:15 pm from my trip home to Hilo for my class reunion, I was too exhausted to make a bento last night. The reunion was fun, I got to see two of my good friends from high school and got my hilarious time capsule which contained letters to myself, $21 in cash, and a report card with two Ds that I obviously never gave to my parents. I wanted to go take a picture in front of BJ Penn's gym, but didn't have time. :(
So anyway, this morning I nabbed some of my freezer food, nuked it, and woot, a quickie bento. I love this freezing food thing, it's so convenient and efficient!
I threw in a lot of edamame for more veggies and packed a box of mango, cherry, and grapes. I had planned on going back on my 5 points a day Core diet again this week, but with the Fourth coming up, I know that won't fly. I'll probably try to stick to 5 on the days I can, but do 9 on days I don't feel like it. I was 129.5 this morning, so maintenance is going quite well. ^_^
My photos are getting rather bad, so I'll need to go look into getting better lighting somehow. The stove lights are just not cutting it anymore!
My ultimate mother-in-law (she'd kick your MIL's ass in a cooking contest for sure) made us beef broccoli and her version of non-spicy mapo tofu yesterday. Her mapo tofu is one of my favorite dishes of hers, behind her spare ribs, which completely own me. I decided to take only some of the tofu because I needed a lower point lunch today to help me get back on track.
Due to my husband's claim that onions are responsible for everything from cancer to blindness, she chops green onions and then banishes them to one side of the pan. I felt bad because I know what a pain it can be to chop them so fine and with the green onions put in time-out, no one took them. I ate a bunch of them and was happy to take more to accent my lunch.
To help me make it through the day I packed a veggie bento. The top layer has asparagus fried in olive oil and garlic salt. I made too much so Mr. Pikko and I had a few of the extras. Pan frying is the best way imo. I've done them in the oven before but I get bored standing around then forget about it and by the time I get back they're past the point of no return and I end up with olive green limp stalks instead of bright green spears of goodness. With pan frying I stand there constantly flipping it around and can pick them out as they're done.
On the bottom is a small KCCA Salad. I just realized that it sounds like a radio station, haha! Speaking of radio, if any of my Hawaii readers happened to be listening to the Leaheys on Kumu yesterday, I was the Crystal that called in asking if they were going to interview BJ Penn. I get so nervous calling radio stations, but luckily didn't stutter more than once this time.
I want to thank all of the people that have been rallying and voting for me at Allakhazam. You guys have gotten me over 50 votes in just one day!! <3
I'm a 28 year old mom to two, who I lovingly refer to as Baby Girl and Buddy. I am married to Mr. Pikko. We live in Hawaii with invisible pets and a colony of ants. I lost 22 pounds in 3 months on Weight Watchers and now I just follow their Core diet "when I feel like it".
