Yoshida's Sauce Chicken (211)

I got an e-mail this morning from someone at Chow.com telling me about a Food Discovery contest they have going on right now. I wrote up a quick entry about bentos and kim chee crab salads, so make sure you vote for it to keep it visible! There's no need to register! Any votes are appreciated!

Yesterday Grandma J made Yoshida's Sauce Chicken. I asked her for the recipe once. The words that came out of her mouth were basically, "I put chicken in some Mr. Yoshida's Sauce and a bit of water." LOL I think she thickens the sauce at the end, but other than that, the name of the recipe is pretty much the recipe itself. I'll have to clarify how long she cooks it and on what heat, but I assume it's cooked on low to get it really soft. It's by far one of my favorites of hers.

My rice looked really plain and white and I have had furikake on my rice a lot lately, so I added nori paste. Mr. Pikko finds this stuff disgusting, probably because it's wet and black and just all-around yucky looking but don't judge a paste by it's color! This stuff tastes GREAT! It makes a really tasty onigiri filling too.

Next to that I have corn with illegal tomatoes sitting on it. Illegal tomatoes?? Yes, illegal tomatoes. I think I've mentioned the wild cherry tomato plant in my yard. That thing is going wild and is giving tomatoes like crazy. We're not allowed to grow things in the ground at our place but I've let it go nuts for a couple of months now. There are a couple that even fell to the ground because I forgot to check it, so it's possible I'll have a serious tomato plant problem soon. I picked all of these this morning, so they're quite fresh. Aren't they so cute?? I wish I could grow a regular garden in the ground... that one plant is doing like 50x better than my potted ones did. Someday!

Beef Cutlet (180)

It's been miraculously sunny on Oahu for the past, I dunno, five days or so? It was getting to the point where on a day of sun you go out of the house and say, "Wait wait wait, what? IT'S NOT RAINING!?!" But then as soon as I'd go to fiscal or something, I'm about to go out the door when I hear roaring rain outside.

Someone mentioned an ice storm yesterday and I started joking that my brain couldn't process such a term. Ice is in your water or soda! Ice is what you eat when you go to Baldwin's or Waiola Shave Ice! It doesn't STORM ice!

Anyway, point is, the seasons we have in Hawaii are basically "Sunny" and "Rainy", but if I had to break it down into four pidgin seasons, I'd say:

Winter = "Stay Sum Cold Outside"
Spring = "Get Choke Rain"
Summer = "Frickin' Hot"
Fall = "I No Can Stop Sweating"


Today I have this three bowl contraption that I bought at Price Busters. I've used a green one before for my salad kit once long ago and have had this pink one sitting around in a cabinet for quite some time since. I finally busted it out to carry some soup to work. I have here some Chicken Long Rice, made by my MIL.


In the main dish bowl I have some green salad with grape tomatoes, which I dripped with 4 drops of Caesar Italian Lite. Then I have beef cutlet, rice, and corn. In the Hello Kitty bowl I put some katsu sauce.


In my last bowl I have fruits. I cut two kiwis, half an orange, blueberries, and raspberries. Adding the oranges really brought the other three fruit colors together. I was really happy with how it turned out. To cut the orange I sliced it in half, then made half moon slices, then cut those in half to make little triangles.

As most people know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I just got back into posting my lunches at LiveJournal and of course, the bento challenge for this week is a V-Day theme, so I have to think today how I want to do my entry tomorrow! My eggs expire tomorrow, so maybe I can implement tamagoyaki somehow...

Oven Baked Chicken (163)

Yesterday I started my new job at UH and it was a very nice first day! All the people that I met are great individuals and my boss is the greatest. Our office is just renovated (an old anatomy classroom that stored bodies, omg!) and my desk is brand spanking new. I'll try to take a picture of it today or something. I have increased responsibilities, which is something I've yearned for. 2008 is looking like it will be a good year work-wise.

My lunch today is an oven baked chicken thigh with rice and corn. On the side I have a small piece of banana cake I made earlier this week and some mega huge blueberries I got at Costco yesterday.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I had a pretty rough and emotional Christmas, but things are looking up now. I'd go into details, but I don't want to paint my blog in blue. I'm getting excited about the Sugar Bowl coming up in just 4 days!! GO WARRIORS!!

Shoyu Chicken (146)

Sorry for the late post folks! My computer at home is out of commission to help repair our poor sick Series 3 TiVo and then this morning I had training to do for work. This is actually a bento that Mr. Pikko packed for me last night!!! OMG OMG OMG! lol

Of course, I had to do some cosmetic rearranging because the corn was sprawled all over the rice and I ate a little bit of it for dinner and all and he put the cover on upside down and stacked the lower tier on top, but overall the food was very nicely packed. What a guy!

Our FFXI radio show debut last night was riddled with audio issues but overall I was happy with how things went. We had a few weird silences here and there but I still got a lot of good feedback and people seemed to enjoy the show. Next week I will only have one bento as I am taking Wednesday-Friday off for Fan Fest and Monday is a holiday.

I might end up working something out with the people that have orders open with me as I have had zero time lately to do the bento store. :(

Teriyaki "Butt" Chicken (115)

I am now on Day 5 of wild and crazy busy week. I can barely find the time to think lately, I'm even forgetting to blog! D: Last night we ate May's Teriyaki Chicken thighs, which I think is a Hawaii brand of foods. They make wicked teriyaki burgers too! Anyway, I packed some up and put it on the dashboard when we were putting the kids in the car. I forgot we were on a slope and the tupperware came skateboarding down onto my seat and crash landed in a violent frenzy of rice, corn, and chicken. I screeched and picked it up immediately, but Mr. Pikko still felt the need to say, "Don't worry, the only thing that goes there is my ass." Well, gee, thanks dear! Anyway, that's why I put the "Butt" in the title. It fell under the 5 second rule, so it's all good, right?!?


I added in some edamame and an umeboshi. The box I used is actually quite ugly, I bought it simply for the nice food separations inside the box. Not that it mattered today since in my haste to get into the car this morning I dropped my bento bag, causing it to land upside down. *sigh*

Curry & Veggie Croquette

I'm one of those market shoppers that go with a list but then grab things that look good or things that are on sale and as a result I have a freezer that requires grunting to close because it's so full of frozen foods that I may one day use. This morning I decided to actually USE some of it and fried up one curry croquette and one veggie croquette. These are quite yummy and easy to make. All you do is deep fry them, I like to use a tiny little pot so that it covers the whole patty yet doesn't use up a ton of oil.


Last night I made teriyaki beef for dinner and we ate it all, but still had a lot of rice left so I was a bit generous with my rice portion this morning. I topped it with Seto Fumi furikake then put the croquettes cut in half on top of it. To add color I put some little carrot sticks and some corn.


Yesterday I mentioned that I would be mailing orders out, but as we were driving to the post office Mr. Pikko asked me if I wanted him to try picking the three Hayden mangoes that he had seen at his gramps' house the other day. Dangle Hayden mangoes in front of me and I lose all rational thought, so we went to try to pick them. Turns out the mango tree hates short Japanese people and we couldn't get the picking stick high enough to get them. By the time we were done with this futile attempt, we had to just hele onto the freeway to pick up the kids in time. My in-laws come back today though, so I will be able to go this afternoon for sure. I apologize for the delay. ; ;

Too bad for me that this morning I started cooking dinner for tonight, not realizing that we weren't even going to be eating at home. So now I have mochiko chicken marinating and we're not going to eat it. What I'll do is fry it tonight, freeze it, then defrost for the Charleston Southern game on Saturday. This will go along great with the plan I have for the onigiri. You'll see what it is! I'm terribly excited to do it!!

In my hasty post yesterday I forgot to mention that the UH football team won against UNLV Saturday. We're now 3-0! It was pretty hilarious to see the big Hawaii crowd because they were mostly old Japanese people retired in Vegas. Someone even had an old Rainbows banner! If you didn't know, Vegas is the Florida for Hawaii. That's where people retire to.

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.

Spaghetti & Drawing!

Bento #97 for today is a bit plain as I fell asleep early and didn't have any time this morning to do much else than boil the noodles and top it with some veggies. Last night I ate this with regular spaghetti as I was hungry but when I took some for my lunch I only took the sauce because whole wheat pasta (which I have at home) is a Core food while regular pasta is not.


I topped it with corn and bell peppers to give it better color. I was tempted to take garlic bread, but that would have been 2 whole points right there so I thankfully resisted.

Guess what! Our season tickets finally arrived in the mail today! Woohoo! First game is next week Saturday and I cannot wait to start planning our food for those games! Last night I took video of Baby Girl doing all her cheers and I'll get around to posting it before the season starts. I really hope her UH cheerleader outfit still fits cause that sucker was like $50. I have to get down to the Rainbotique and find Buddy a mini football jersey. There's this cute one with the number "1/2" on the back for little boys. It's very awww.

Since I was at the post office today shipping out bento orders, the idea came to me to have a little drawing in celebration of the big #100. So to mark the occasion, I am offering up a prize packet of one Hello Kitty bento box (I'll discuss with you color), some soy sauce bottles, and sushi grass as a prize for a drawing. All you have to do to enter is e-mail me at pikkopots gmail dot com with the following information:

Name:
Country:
E-mail:
Why you like bento:

Don't worry, I won't post anything except your first name, country, and why you like bento when you win. On the night I'm making #100 I will write everyone's name on a piece of paper and then have Baby Girl pick one from a bag. Hopefully she won't produce a fist full of papers and proclaim everyone winners, cause I'd go broke sending that out!

Spare Ribs

Last night my MIL made my personal favorite of all her dishes, spare ribs. It stinks something awful due to the vinegar she puts in to soften the meat, but man is it the tastiest, most tender thing ever! As soon as we walked in the door yesterday we were like *gag*, but it was an odd mixed feeling because we knew dinner would totally rock. Unfortunately, as much as the food rocks, I was in a complete rush this morning and so the colors in this one are rather drab.


I took a medium sized rib that had a little chunk of meat stuck to it so that it would arrange nicely. In a food cup next to it I have some corn and then tucked into the sides are some Okinawan sweet potato.

I've taken the day off to take Baby Girl to a doctor appointment and will be going to Price Busters to buy some Hello Kitty bento boxes to add to the store. Once I get back, I'll take pictures and add them to the store! YaY!

Fukushima Ondo! (& Mochiko Chicken)

Ever since I moved to Oahu in 1997, I've longed for that old feeling of excitement and fun from a bon dance song that us Hilo hicks only ever refer to as "becho". I'd been to a couple during summers when I'd go home and last year I went to one in Wahiawa, one in Manoa Valley, and another at Pearl City Hongwanji. The Wahiawa one was a wash, no becho to be found. Same with the Manoa one, which turned out to be more of a little Japanese carnival in which they got you to pay incredibly ridiculous amounts of money on scrips for food or neon fans or towels. I called up my dad and asked him to call up his friend Reverend Bruce and see if these silly Oahu folk simply don't do becho, but apparently they do. It's just they either play it after I leave or simply don't, I dunno. We finally went through the hassle of parking in a really dark and muddy area under the freeway to go to the Pearl City Hongwanji dance and they played a version of becho and I was somewhat happy.

Final Fantasy began their Sunbreeze Festival today and it means Tarutarus dancing around in their yukatas with music playing at night. This led me to YouTube where I found the following:



THAT my friends, is the becho I know from a decade ago. And now I finally know the name of the song, Fukushima ondo! Oh I feel so good today! :D If you've never been to one, I urge you to go. You don't have to be Japanese. You don't have to know how to dance. You can just go to watch, to eat the good food, to hang out, to watch people honor the dead. It's a great experience!

Ok so on to the bento. I totally pigged out at our Korean food luncheon so I weighed almost 129 today. Gah! I took home vegetables and packed them into today's lunch. The bean sprouts namul was really really good, but it's probably really bad for a WW dieter cause it's like, laced with sesame oil. Hee. Extreme close-up!


We had mochiko chicken last night, so that is what is in the middle. I've included furikake rice, corn, and some kim chee. My veggies below are the sprouts I mentioned and some cabbage:


I may end up listening to this song all day... it brings back so many great memories. Also reminds me that times change. Last year my aunty told me Hilo Hongwanji held their bon dance indoors. What the... Half the fun is when you get rained on dancing becho. Oi yoi yoi!

Shoyu Chicken Rice

Dinner was very yummy last night and I got to peek at the recipe card my mother-in-law had out on the counter. It was such a simple recipe yet such a nice comfort food! Unfortunately my limited brain power has already forgotten the measurement of one ingredient so that recipe will need to wait until I've finally gotten around to building up adventuresinbentomaking.com with a recipe section.

While I was packing up lunch I got a little bored with the regular kind of arrangement, so I decided to save me some hassle of keeping the food all separate and just mush it all together like a toddler meal. I chopped up the chicken then squished it all together with the rice and corn then added some furikake and voila! Shoyu chicken rice. This morning I added some garnish to make it prettier. Extreme close-up!


In my botton layer I added some sliced kiwi and mango. I liked Nexa's idea of storing food in the cover too, so I snuck some Honey Nut Cheerios into a baggie and tucked them under the lid.

Yesterday Mr. Pikko sent me a "kinda cool" link as he called it. I took the test, putting in what info I knew that was optional and filling in all the required stuff. The result?

Your healthy weight range is 99-121 lbs.

You are overweight.

You can suck my ass, Joanne Larsen. Anyway... this guilt tripped me into going back to the Core diet. I am 7 pounds away from being healthy and I think my WW vacation has gone on long enough. *sigh* Today's lunch is 1 point because of the rice. YaY! This morning I also returned to my Core breakfast of eggs with sauteed bell peppers and onions. Usually I use egg beaters but today I actually read the container and it said to use it "within 7 days of opening". The rest of my cartons were frozen, so I had to use regular eggs. Boy did I royally mess that up. I don't know what it is about me, but I just cannot seem to cook eggs nicely. They always end up brown or black or crunchy.

Yes, I said crunchy.

Long story short, they came out black and gross but I ate it anyway. I remember once a couple years ago I cooked some scrambled eggs for my daughter at my grandma's house and she looked into the pan while I wasn't there and commented to my mother that I make "interesting eggs". She is such a kind woman. I really need a "Frying Eggs for Dummies" book.

Teriyaki Chicken

My plans for a soup and salad lunch were nixed when I stepped on the scale this morning and found that I'd lost almost 2 whole pounds overnight. Hooray for increased metabolism! That'll teach me to shovel rice into my mouth like crazy! Or wait, that makes no sense. Haha! I <3 and miss rice.


I made teriyaki chicken last night and we had a lot of leftovers so I froze 3 portions and took some for lunch today. The rice really isn't much because these musubi are so small, so I'll count it as 1 point. I'd count it as two if I'd packed more rice in, but I didn't so there! My veggie layer:


Foodland was finally stocking cucumber kim chee that didn't look brownish, so I bought some. Most of the time I go and it doesn't look so good and the cover is bulging up and ready to pop. Eww! The corn is from those Steam Fresh packets that you microwave. I love that brand! I brought along cherries, grapes, and a KCCA salad as well. The only thing counting for points today is the rice, so that keeps me nicely on track. My friend's wedding has been pushed back to May, so I now have a whole 11 months to lose those last 10 pounds. The pressure is officially off, haha!

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!!!

Big Bambucha Bento

Since today's bento contents pale so much in comparison to my onolicious steak stir fry yesterday, I tried to make up for it's lameness in size. There's no way I can eat this all for lunch, so I'll probably just snack on it occasionally all day.


In the top right corner I put some slices of baked Okinawan Sweet Potato. Next to that are rows of broccoli and cauliflower, leftover from Monday's dinner. Baby carrots and half an ear of corn surround the main part of my meal, lomi lomi salmon. If you've never heard of it or never eaten it, you really should! It's an all Core dish, very easy to make, and is full of taste! Do a Google search on it and you'll find tons of recipes. You basically just chop up salted salmon, tomatoes, sweet onion, and green onions then massage all the ingredients together. Extreme close-up!

In addition to all of this I'm taking a small bento of chopped watermelon. They were finally on sale for 19c a pound at Foodland and I was able to get a nice big seedless Sugarland watermelon for about $3.50! Too bad the darned thing comes with bazillions of little white underdeveloped seeds, which apparently qualify the melon as being "seedless". Wuteva!

Meatballs & Spam Won Ton

Today we had quite the adventure attempting to go to the beach with the family. We ate at Outback last night and decided on an attempted arrival time at Ko Olina of 8:30 am. Running late, we got there at 8:45 only to find out that all the beaches were full and were turned around at the guard shack. The other half of our party had managed to get in only to find car lines at the parking lots of at least 10 cars. Last time we had 4 cars ahead of us and waited over 45 minutes for a spot and that was at 10:30 when it was actually possible people might leave the beach.

We headed out onto the freeway looking for a possible alternate beach but eventually decided that we did not want to end up on the 6 o'clock news as "Local Japanese family of noobs killed on deserted beach in Nanakuli". Eventually we got an "in" at Ko Olina and headed back for some free parking goodness. This picnic was a great excuse to finally use my big 3-tiered bento box!

My contribution to our way too huge spread of food was corn, Aidell's chicken meatballs, watermelon, and some old pupu type food that my mom used to make years and years ago. I'd read about the meatballs on Lunch in a Box and had seen them at Costco before. When I went to buy them yesterday it just so happened that they were giving out samples of them and though I didn't get to try them, I'd gone specifically to get some. Due to the sampling almost every box was gone and I got the second to the last one. Go me! They were super easy to prepare. All I did was dump them into a bowl and microwave on high for 5 minutes!


These lovely things are probably on the Top Five Foods You Should Never Eat list for Weight Watchers: deep fried won ton with spam and kamaboko! Oh so good though. Unfortunately I was unable to keep them crispy until lunchtime. I'd eaten one in the morning and wow they were full of win. Despite the sogginess, everyone loved them!


Overall it was an okay beach trip, even with two kids afraid of the water and one afraid of sand. It rained. A lot. I pigged out on spam musubi, fried chicken, a huge onigiri, meatballs, won ton, corn, and watermelon. I'll have to be really good all week and exercise cause man did I eat like 30 points today. I lost .5 lb last week! A good slow-down rate that I am perfectly fine with!