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.

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...

Star Spaghetti

I learned a lot of things this weekend. For one, it's a mega pain in the ass to have to do anti-fraud stuff to prevent identity theft. We changed bank accounts, called Social Security, put fraud alerts out, etc. Two, I learned that it's best to make completely sure that your friendly neighborhood burglar did actually take your social security cards because if you should find them later, you feel pretty stupid.

But we won't talk about that. Let's just say I'm relieved and leave it at that. The good news is there might be a lead on who did it. Hooray!

With our house in complete disorder (15% from burglar, 70% from kids, 15% from general messiness) I had to do some cleaning and this led me to start thoroughly cleaning out the kids' room, which has become a disastrous storage area that things get literally tossed into when guests come over. What I learned from this was that closet doors are very frustrating to put back in, so it's best not to accidently rip them off track. Then I learned that I still fit into my prom dress from 1996, which was frickin' awesome. I have to get that thing cleaned and preserved or something. Baby Girl was very upset and loudly demanded, "WHY DIDN'T YOU BUY ONE FOR ME, MOMMY???" I found pictures too and I thought about scanning them, but then decided my head was too fat. The last thing I learned was that when you drop a couple dozen child hangers into unraveled and tangled kite string, you are in for some hell and the people near you will have to cover their ears.

My MIL had a lot of leftover spaghetti from earlier in the week and I was more than happy to offer to take it home because then I didn't have to cook. Even after we ate, there was still a lot left so I brought some for lunch today. I didn't have much time because I was lazy this morning, so all I did to decorate it was to put some star shaped cheese and then a piece of parsley, which if you look carefully, is terribly wilted.

On Sunday we decided to eat cheap and had lunch from McDonald's. Happy Meal toys really aren't what they used to be...


If you look at this picture you will see this bizarre looking toy that came with the meal. Look at the instructions... I mean... what? Is it just a stencil and the weird looking creature holds it?? There is a little lever on the side and if you move it up and down, the freaky thing makes like he's manhandling his invisible alien peepee. Great toy, really.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (159)

Yesterday we finally got off our asses to go take the kiddies Christmas tree shopping. I figured Walmart was a good place to start since they always seem to have the short little trees we want so we headed out to the Mililani one because if they had none, City Mill and Star Market are right there. All three stores had no trees left! We headed back onto the freeway with Baby Girl asking us every 15 seconds why we didn't buy a tree yet and whether we thought the trees on the side of the road were nice. By the time we got to Home Depot I was ready to claw my eyes out at her non-stop questioning. Oh wait, I mean, my daughter is the most wonderfulest little person in the whole world!

We could see buttloads of trees in the back but there was a chain on the gate, so we went into the store and come to find out Home Depot's tree lot, which is open from 8 am to 8 pm, closed at 4 pm for a Christmas party. ON SUNDAY. There were at least 4 other customers with us in shock that they'd be this dumb. I hope Home Depot eats all their trees. Yeah, I'm bitter and full of scorn, so sue me.

We went to the Pearl City Walmart nearby, but they had no short trees either, so we went all the way to Waikele to Lowes where we found out that they had only 6-7 foot trees left but they were all 50% off! Woohoo! That's my kinda tree price! We chose a nice grand fir tree and had the guy cut all the love handles off to leave us with a nice 5 foot tree for $20. YaY!

Buddy was driving me insane, picking off all the glass balls and throwing them like fast balls into the middle of the tree, then picking them up as they fell out and throwing them again. On the bright side, he's got quite the throwing arm! I had to put each ornament on like 5 times, but eventually it got done. I tried to get them to take our Christmas photo but just couldn't get it done. I even busted out the puffs and that didn't work, so I'll have to try again another day. D:

We ate Costco chicken for lunch on Saturday so I used up some of the leftovers in today's bento. I chopped up the thigh meat into small pieces and added a tablespoon of light mayo to make it stick together then wrapped scoops of this mixture into romaine lettuce leaves. These leaves were pretty awesome for making what look like temaki sushi rolls. I ripped the stem out until about halfway, put the chicken mixture into the cup area at the top of the leaves, then wrapped the two strips of leaf at the bottom around to make this nice shape!


I fit three in very nicely and added a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese plus some carrot sticks for a side and color. My bottom tier didn't look so great so I didn't post the photo. I have peeled tangerine slices and some fat free chocolate pudding. Mmm!!

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!!!

Hammy Sammy (133)

Last night we ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory at Ward Warehouse, which is... dun dun dun! right across the street from Marukai! Imagine my squealing when I finally saw what I've never seen at Marukai in like 10 trips so far: EGG MOLDS!!!!! Woohoo!! They were the star and heart shapes, which are coincidentally, the only egg molds I do not have. I was so thrilled! I bought one for myself and 6 to sell to people. I didn't get a chance to take a picture, but this is the one I'm talking about. If you want one, I'm selling them for $2.99 and I'd guess that with the lightness of the item, shipping/handling would be around $2.00 to the USA. I'm placing a limit of 1 per person on these as I don't want people buying them just to sell on eBay. E-mail me at pikkopots at gmail.com if interested. Also, don't forget to enter my 30k celebration drawing! See yesterday's post for details!


If I had been a good girl at dinner last night, I would have stopped eating halfway through the meal when I was full, leaving me with a yummy leftovers lunch today. Alas, the mizithra cheese grabbed a hold of my senses and shook me silly and I ate it all. I also could not resist and joked to my friend Doug that "mizithra" is like "mithra with zi!" and he was like, "Oh god, you had to Final Fantasy our dinner!!" Muahahaha!

Anyway, I made a ham sandwich for lunch today. I put in some swiss cheese, fat free Ranch (cause I couldn't find the mayo), sliced cucumbers, and lettuce. There was space on the side of this box, so I sliced 3 baby dills and tucked them into the side. I can't wait to eat this!! I bought these thick ham steaks at Foodland once and froze them and they taste really super in sandwiches. The last time I used one was for that Ham and Egg Salad sandwich and boy was that yummy!!

I also brought a box of more of the Greek pasta salad with a star shaped egg. I had wanted to take a picture, but Mr. Pikko snagged the camera for something at work.

Mochiko Chicken (114)

As I mentioned yesterday, I had Mochiko Chicken marinating. I'm going crazy with too much to do, so I'm going to keep today's blog short and sweet. Recipe from Jean Watanabe Hee's cook book, Hawaii's Best Local Recipes:

2 lb boneless chicken thighs
4 Tb Mochiko flour
4 Tb cornstarch
4 Tb sugar
5 Tb soy sauce
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Tb sesame seeds
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated ginger
2 eggs, beaten
oil for frying

Combine all ingredients except chicken and oil. Add chicken and marinate overnight or for at least 5 hours. Fry in oil until golden brown.

This tastes decent, but I wouldn't know just how good it is because I made the mistake of frying this while working on the Allakhazam website last night. As a result I have a whole lot of "overly golden brown" mochiko chicken, hahaha!


I ate this already and despite my hopes, it still tastes charred. I put in a bit of rice, some carrot and celery sticks, and in the bottom layer I put cheese, grapes, and banana flowers. That's all I have time for today! Bento orders were mailed out yesterday!

Ham & Turkey Wraps (112)

I'm posting late today due to a lot of work, a lot of online drama, a lot of online work, and to top it all off, an internets outage when I got to work. For two weeks in a row, I've lost weight on the weekend and I once again attribute this to my two twerps destroying the house several times a day out of boredom. At one point I told the kids to go play and Baby Girl said, "Come Buddy, let's go make a mess!" *glower*

With all of this going on, I had to just make some quick wraps and toss in olives. Not exciting, I know, but at least I still packed a lunch and didn't have to buy something. One roll holds ham and the other holds turkey. I spread Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese onto snack tortilla (and now that I think about it, I forgot a wedge of cheese on my computer desk, doh!), then put the cold cuts, then layered on leaves of spinach.


I am insanely busy today, but will be taking a bunch of bento orders to ship out this afternoon. Those waiting will get an invoice from me tonight or tomorrow. Sorry for the delay!!

Cheeseburger Macaroni

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

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

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


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


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


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

Soot Ball Onigiri

When I first started getting full on into doing bento every day, one of my favorite images was from Little Yuzu's blog in which she did some soot ball onigiri from Spirited Away. Since the bentochallenge this week is Hayao Miyazaki, I had to do one. It's been done quite a few times on other blogs I've seen such as Lunch in a Box and Kitchen Cow, but as I mentioned it's one of my favorite bentos ever so despite the unoriginality that's what I'm eating today.

Yesterday I went home with a bad stomach ache so Mr. Pikko brought me back some pork hash from dinner at his mom's and some kind of tofu carrot patty, which tasted really good. I decided to use that for the filling in my onigiri. The rice came out to just about 1 cup cooked rice, so this bento will be 4 points just like yesterday's. It may look like more, but the filling takes up a decent amount of space inside.


The eyes are made with swiss cheese and I had a hard time with it because I don't have anything circular to cut them out with that small. My first try, I used the bottom of one of my soy sauce bottles but that turned out to be too small so I used one of my thermos soy sauce bottles instead. The nori pupils were punched with my happy face punches from Japan. The stars are made from carrot, Okinawan sweet potato, and cucumbers.

I showed it to Baby Girl and she loved it but I showed it to Buddy and he immediately backed away whimpering with his scared face, so I guess big black onirigi with eyeballs staring at him is way too scary! lol

As you can see from today's and yesterday's photos I'm pretty bored with my plain white background and so have decided to put my numerous furoshiki cloths to use as prettier backgrounds. So far I am pretty happy with how it turns out. It adds more life to the photo, don't you think?

I didn't go jogging again last night because of my lingering stomachache plus my legs are so sore I can barely walk right. We'll see how I do tonight. No promises on that one since tonight I have to make #100, get more bento orders ready, and do the drawing.

Zebra Bento & Countdown

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

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

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

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

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


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


And now for the answer:









Take a guess!














Mr. Zebra by Tori Amos

Lyrics:

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

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

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

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

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

Brown Bag Meeting

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


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

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

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

3 Bento Day & Store

Today is Admissions Day, the day that Hawaii became the 50th state. It's also check-ins at UH Manoa which means that starting Monday, I'll be taking much longer naps on the way in to work. Muahaha! Anyway, while normally I'd be celebrating a long weekend, Mr. Pikko has to work so that means for the next two days I have to watch my two darlings by myself. In case it's lost in the interwebs, I say that with sarcasm. Somewhere along the way my children were replaced with Tazmanian devils. Today Baby Girl stripped and refused to put on clothes for 2 hours and Buddy spilled like 4 cups of water and 3 bowls of cheerios.


My bento today consists of all leftover things. Strawberry spinach salad on the right side topped with slivered almonds. In the strawberry bottle is some of my MIL's salad dressing that goes with this salad. On the left side I have two pieces of leftover Tiger Maki, which is basically a California roll with shrimp covering the top. Sadly, I did not make it, I bought it yesterday from Sushiman. Also on the left is edamame soaked in something that smells like Italian dressing and then in the little cup is the rest of my cucumber pickles and a grape tomato.


In the hopes that they'd calm down, I made the two little hurricanes spam musubis and put them into little bentos. Baby Girl did not do so well, eating only the sweet potatoes, cheese, and apples. I guess by the time she was done with that she wasn't hungry enough for the musubi. Though she claims she'll eat it later, I had to toss it out. She can eat one of the extras when she gets up from nap.


Buddy is very good with vegetables, so his bento is structured a bit differently. He's got spam musubi just like his sister but also has edamame sticks, chunks of apple, cucumber slices, and carrot fishies. Unfortunately since their goal for the weekend is to drive me insane, he ninja'd a sweet potato star from Baby Girl who then screeched to high heaven about it and when I convinced him to give it back to her, she then threw it back at him declaring it "Yucky!!" because "He SPIT on it!!" *sigh* Although he completely dismantled the musubi, he did eat it all. And he ate most of the veggies and all of the apples!

The store has been updated with most of the new items I have available, most notably the boxes. I have a few more accessories I have to put up, but aren't those Hello Kitty boxes adorable?!? Click the link in the sidebar to take a look!

Sun, Moon, & Stars Bento

Last night I figured I'd make my bento ahead of time so that we could leave early this morning. Since I wanted to do a low point lunch I decided to make fried rice with brown rice and the leftover Costco chicken from the weekend. I started cooking my rice at 9:45 pm and the darned rice cooker was still puffing away at quarter to midnight. This was for ONE cup of brown rice!! Finally I gave up and went to bed and just as we're falling asleep Mr. Pikko is like, "What was that??" It's the rice cooker beeping. *mumble grumble*

This week's bento challenge is a Space theme, so though when I started making my bento this morning I didn't intend to have a space theme, the ideas for it came into my head as I was arranging things and as a result, I have a Sun, Moon, and Stars bento. They're going to start offering prizes too! I'll have to work harder on my bentos!


Underneath on the bottom left is my fried rice which is brown rice, olive oil, green onions (snipped from my garden this morning!), Costco chicken, peas from dinner last night, and some Aloha Hawaiian Honey BBQ sauce. On the right is one diced fishcake, which is 1 point I think. At the top are some sugar snap peas that I lightly blanched. In the Hello Kitty mini bowl I have some Kraft Free Ranch. On top I have ham stars, a mini Babybel sliced in half for a moon, a bell pepper sun, and two grape tomatoes to give some red in the middle. Extreme close-up! Total points: 2!

I would have taken a picture of the box, but I made the mistake of letting the kids play with this box so now I'm missing the little sliding bar that holds in the fork and spoon. It's really a miracle that I still have the utensils!

My bento store has really taken off nicely! I've made 4 rather big sales so far. Hooray! Now I can tell fellow bento nuts that I'm a "bento personal shopper". Bwahaha!

Pot Roast Sandwich

I was feeling inventive this morning and turned my pot roast leftovers lunch (courtesy of MIL) into a pot roast sandwich! I'd taken a piece of meat, a carrot, and a potato so I had plenty to work with.


I cut the crust off of two slices of Roman Meal Honey Oat bread and toasted them til they were crispy. I cut them into two pieces and then mashed up the potato and the carrot, using them as spreads on opposite sides of the bread. I pulled the meat apart (which was great for getting all the veins of fat out) and squished it together, securing it with a food pick. Let's hope it tastes as good as it looks! That is, if you think it looks good... I like it. I added some leftover edamame and a mini Babybel. This lighting issue is killing me. I have to go buy a lamp soon. It could also be some setting on my camera that appeared and I don't know how to shut off...


For my fruits layer I have a chopped mango and some red grapes, which thankfully are grown in the USA. With all the food scares lately we are trying as much as possible to buy only USA or local produce.

Ok.. so I was feeling so inventive that I completely forgot about the Sanrio theme for bentochallenge, *sob*. Maybe I'll try a simple nori Bad Batz Maru onigiri tomorrow for my breakfast bento at the airport.

I totally pigged out yesterday. My lunch ended up being a whole lotta food and my tummy was ready to burst, which is really bad. Part of Core means to never eat until that point. ; ; Then when I was shopping for travel knickknacks I made the mistake of walking past the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory booth in Pearlridge and ended up getting a Dark Chocolate Macadamia Nut Bear. It cost me almost 4 freakin' dollars but damn that was one good hunk of candy!! I ate the whole thing too, haha! Two days from now my weight will show for it. But despite all the rice and candy, I weighed in at 128.2 this morning. I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with me. Either that or all my stairclimbing has just really helped upped my metabolism.

BBQ Chicken

This week's bento challenge is a 'stars' theme so I made two star shaped onigiri this morning. Unfortunately I topped it with furikake so you can't even tell they're stars, so I'm not going to submit this one. I'll think of some other way to make a starry bento! My brother-in-law-to-be made us BBQ chicken last night and it was very yummy so I happily took some for my lunch today. We'd also had some stuffed chicken breasts from Costco but I didn't take that since it has shiitake mushrooms in it. (I'm allergic to mushrooms, *sob*) That tasted pretty good too though, I'd tried a piece with no stuffing on it and surprisingly, it had very little fat and calories.


Pic is a bit blurry cause I guess I forgot to sharpen the image. I can fix that later tonight. I added some sliced baby carrots and a mini Babybel, which have grown on me quite a bit. I think the yellow ones taste better, but the reds are good too. 4 point lunch today with the rice and cheese, but I had only a 3 point day yesterday, so I can afford it!

Veggie Chicken Nuggets

Buddy is still sick with fever but Baby Girl is not, so she was kinda bummed not being able to go do anything. To help make the day more fun I made her a bento and set her up next to the sliding door with her little dollies so that she could have a little picnic lunch with her "babies". I found these things at Foodland that said frozen chik'n nuggets but the smaller print said they were actually made out of vegetables. Since my niece has so kindly taught my daughter that "vegetables are stinky" I bought them right away. She ended up eating three of em, which is really good!


I added in two shaped onigiri sprinkled with pink furikake, some steamed corn, and a mini Babybel. The Babybel turned out to be a bad idea as she decided 1 bite into the first nugget that the cheese was where the fun was at. It took a deal with Daddy, a lot of glaring, reasoning, pouting, scolding, and finally feeding to get her to eat the nuggets. Next time I put carrots in there!!!

Salad kit

No bentos yesterday as I simply didn't have the time. At 9 am Baby Girl saw hubby watching "Mittsbusters" and since it involved a pool, she suddenly wanted to go swimming. Took us like an hour and a half to get ready and when we finally go there and get into the water the first thing out of her mouth was, "Ok, let's go home now." O_O

Poor Buddy had been completely heartbroken that we left him home (hubby can't go outside because of an eye infection) and so I let them play in the yard with the water pool while I pulled weeds. I am slowly but surely winning the war against those deeply rooted suckers! There's a whole 3' x 2' plot of gravel completely weed-free now! Before I knew it, it was 11:45 so I just defrosted some of the leftover turkey lasagna from Saturday night and they all ate that. I had some chicken salad.

For dinner I made Chinese style steamed fish and though it was the first time I'd done the sizzling peanut oil thing and the first time I'd used my fish poacher thing that had been hibernating on top of the fridge for two years, it turned out great! I'd planned on taking some for today's lunch, but the kids enjoyed the fish so much that they ate half a side of the fish by themselves! :D So after some thinking during Amazing Race (yay my team won!) and Sopranos I decided on what I'm calling a salad kit.


The lettuce bowl looked pretty zzZz so I put some momi nori on it. The back of the package says to put it on salad, so I'll see how that tastes. Seems wierd, but you never know! For toppings I went kinda nuts, adding chicken, tomatoes, and carrots. I also finally found the leftover avocado after almost needing to put out an APB on it. If Baby Girl had been awake while I searched the fridge, I guarantee she'd have said "I tink the avocado ran away from home, Mommy." She says that about everything I can't find. It may be a sign of things to come so I must note this down onto my "things I must remember when my daughter turns 13" list along with "bar her windows". Anyway, not sure I'll eat the Babybel as that would add 2 whole points to my all Core lunch.


Fruit bowl has blackberries, mango, strawberries, and kiwi. The goal of the salad kit was to fill it with lots of tasty things that would negate the need for salad dressing. I've tried all the Kraft Free ones like Ranch, Catalina, and Italian Caesar. They taste like how you'd expect fat free salad dressings to taste like: ass. They're so bad I'd much rather go without em.

Forgot to mention, one of the things I did today with Baby Girl was to start a tomato garden (obviously Nexa wishes to infect me with another hobby as revenge for getting her into bentos). Of course me being me, I did first and read instructions after and found out I'd done it completely backwards. We'll see how it goes. I couldn't find a good pot variety of tomato anyway, so maybe it's best this way and I can have another go next week. While at Lowes we ate shave ice with ice cream. *gleep* Since it's pretty much syrup and ice cream, that's probably like a 15 point item or something ridiculous. I weigh in tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers.

Children's Day!

Today is Children's Day! Excuse me... Boy's Day. I'm not sure when Boy's Day became Children's Day, but the poor guys got their holiday sniped from them, no idea when. When I was growing up I only knew of Girl's Day and Boy's Day. Anyway, as a treat for the kiddies I made them each a bento. I started off making the same one for both of them, which featured peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but as I was pbing the third slice of bread I remembered that Buddy isn't supposed to eat nuts until he's 3. (wtf 3)

Realizing I had to make two completely different lunches, I decided to make them very specific to each of their likes. Baby Girl got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into circles, then cut in half. One half looked ugly so I ate it. (ha!) Four pieces weren't going to fit anyway, so that worked out. There was some empty space, so I filled that with Okinawan sweet potato. The other side had cubed mango, a cheese wedge, and 4 reduced fat Triscuit. I tried to find her tiny little toy food knife to pack, but I couldn't find it. I even looked under the couch and in the process I discovered 5 books, miscellaneous toy utensils, a watercolor set, a packet of cooking chopsticks I really could have been using before today, and one icky roach. :(

Anyway, she loved it and miraculously ate everything. She especially loved using the pick to eat the mango!


For Buddy's lunch I sliced up the last piece of leftover teri beef and added julienned carrots. I had bought some onigiri flavor packets and so I made him some little onigiri with the salmon flavored one. The other side had sweet potato and the cutest tiny strawberries, which I found in the boxes of strawberries I bought the other day. They were so adorable, just like the ones you grow in your backyard! He ate everything in his lunch too, so both were very successful with the kids. ^_^


We stopped at Windward Mall and I managed to drag us all to the Marukai store there. I found some $1.49 2-tier bento boxes, veggie shaped soy sauce bottles, and more food picks. I was going to pack a salad for myself so I could have a Core lunch, but then I weighed myself and I'd dropped over half a pound from yesterday. So I ate at Arby's! *gasp* But I was good, ate a grilled chicken sandwich and when I saw there was mayo on the bun, I stopped eating the top half.

Meat loaf garden

MIL made some really yummy meat loaf last night but I found myself thinking for more than 20 minutes on how the heck I was going to make meat loaf look pretty in a bento. Much to my delight, she had a container that looked just like a bento box, so I happily borrowed it for lunch. After much thought, I settled upon making little foil dividers under the food and separated the rice, corn, and meat into neat little thirds. It still looked rather bland and colorless though, so I kept thinking more on the way home and nothing came to me until I got home and looked at it again. I needed to add more color, so the obvious choices in the fridge were green beans, edamame, peppers, or carrot flowers that I'd simmered last week.

In the end, I chopped some french green beans to look like grass, stems, and leaves and added the carrot flowers on top. It looked really cute and hubby once again proclaimed my insanity, then mentioned that I should have laid it out so that the meat loaf was the dirt, the rice was in the middle, and the corn was in the corner as a little sun. It was a great idea, but unfortunately I wasn't about to take it all apart and rearrange it for another 15 minutes. So cute that he is coming up with suggestions for me though. ^_^

Since OOT was talking about fruit salad yesterday and I didn't use the usual Hello Kitty bento box for food, I decided to make a larger fruit bowl for today. Chopped up and entire Fuji apple, a mango (which baby girl ate almost half of), a kiwi, and blackberries. Added a cheese wedge and done!

This comes out to around I dunno, a 4 point meal with the cheese? I was a little lax with the meat loaf because I took a really small slice and there really weren't that many un-Core ingredients in it. Later this week I'm being taken out to lunch for Administrative Professionals Day, so I'll be missing a pretty lunch. Hopefully I will have some leftover to be creative with!