Pork Chop!

YaY! Bentos are back! Well, only one for this week like I mentioned, but hey. Better than nothing!

My trip was ten kinds of awesome. I got to meet hundreds of people, signed 3 autographs, took pictures with Square Enix big wigs, and got to watch the UH vs. Nevada football game at the ESPN Zone restaurant in Downtown Disney with some random guy who JUST so happened to be from Mililani. He was even on the same plane ride home as me. Hawaii: too small! I don't know what his name was, but I thank him for being there. Watching those last two kicks wouldn't have been nearly as fun if he hadn't been there pacing around and jumping and screaming with me!


Today I'm having leftover pork chop with cabbage and rice. On the side I have a salad with some fancy pants greens that my MIL says she bought at Sam's Club. They're really yummy!! In the little blue container I have some Catalina Free dressing.

Tomorrow of course, is Thanksgiving. I'm going to try out a recipe for potato salad from the Harumi Kurihara book that I got. We're ordering from Zippy's this year, so I'll let all you Hawaii folks know how that turns out. Last year we ate from The Willows and not sure if I'm remembering right, but I didn't like their sides at all. I don't remember the turkey. That must be bad right? lol

Friday is Black Friday and although I was going to skip it for Wings of the Goddess, the PC version of the game got messed up and won't be here until tomorrow or Friday. I'm going to try my luck at CompUSA tomorrow night. If not, I will brave the BF crowds at Gamestop. I have no idea how their stores are on BF, but I guess I'll learn won't I??

A Quick Hello!

Hi bento fans!!

I'm just writing a quick note to say that I'm back home safe and sound, but haven't had the time to get back into the bento groove yet due to how much work I have left to do. My trip was awesome, I had a great time! If you want to check out my pictures you can do so here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pikkopots/sets/72157603237330925/

I may or may not have a bento tomorrow, but I have the day off Friday for football, so I'll have at the most only one bento this week. Yesterday I called in sick due to exhaustion and today I just didn't have time to do one. Check back soon!

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. :(

The Mog House

No bento for me today as I had a job interview (more on that in a bit) and then have to work on learning the broadcasting program for the radio show I'm starting tonight.

So I had a job interview at 10 am at UH. Yeah, had. I'm leaving the house when I slam the door and immediately I'm like OMFG my keys are in the house. *sigh* My MIL had to come drive out here with our spare house key to help me open the house had I rescheduled for tomorrow. Not a very good first impression...

Once again, tonight we're debuting our FFXI radio show, The Mog House, on Online Gaming Radio. To tune in simply go to the website at 6 PM PST and click on Listen Live! It's recommended you also join our chat as we tend to discuss what's going on in there during the broadcast. Wish us luck!

Tonkatsu (145)

Last night as predicted, I didn't feel like making a pumpkin pie. The good news though, is that I now have ground ginger! My mother in law lent me her bottle. I'm told I have two days to use the pumpkin before it goes bad, so we'll see what happens tonight.

We had tonkatsu for dinner and I took home two pieces for Mr. Pikko, who was home sick again. He didn't eat all of the second piece so I sliced it up and took his leftover rice as well.


In the little green container (which was a gift from one of my bento customers!!) is some tonkatsu sauce. I included the three tomatoes for color. I should have added some carrots too or used the orange sauce container instead, but I was in a hurry. I peeled some sections off the cucumber before I sliced it to give it that look.


In my second layer I have some sliced persimmon on the left. On the right side is a mixture of pomegranate seeds and blueberries. A very healthy fruit layer!! :D

Tomorrow I start off hosting a gaming radio show on the net at Online Gaming Radio. Yet another reason why I've been going cuckoo lately. The show is about Final Fantasy XI and is called "The Mog House". It will air live every Wednesday from 6 to 9 PM PST. My co-hosts are two of my fellow administrators at Allakhazam, ImperialNinja and Exodus. If you're into FFXI and are bored around this time, please tune in! Shows are available later as podcasts. To listen in just go to the Online Gaming Radio website and click on "Listen Live" at the specified time.

Teriyaki Pork and Pomegranate Salad (144)

Me and Baby Girl went to Costco on Saturday before the reeeeally soggy weekend kicked off and boy did me and her go fruit crazy. We bought a huge tub of big blueberries, persimmons (which we tried in store), a set of 4 pommelos, and a tray of gigantor pomegranates. Pomegranates are one of my favorite fruits to eat and each tray had 6 mega big ones. I was scared I'd waste a couple, but I ended up eating 3 this weekend alone, hahaha!! No need to worry about fiber now!

I'd seen a recipe by Nigella Lawson where she combined pulled pork and pomegranate seeds, so I thought I'd try something similar with the leftover teriyaki pork chop from last night's dinner.


I sliced up the chop cold this morning and arranged it on top of an entire romaine heart head of lettuce. I added some of my tomatoes (which are backing up) and then sprinkled pomegranate seeds on top. It added a nice bit of color and I was pretty happy with the way it looks. I didn't pack any dressing as I don't think it'll be necessary.

It rained and rained and rained and on Saturday night it was thundering like crazy. I just so happened to peek out at my plants and saw that the rain was coming down so hard that my green onions had been uprooted and were floating around in rain water 3 inches thick. lol I'll have to make some tamagoyaki to save them from being wasted.

Being rained in, we decided to clean house, which meant I had finally run out of excuses to start folding the laundry in the crib, where we have been dumping clean clothes for the last 3 months or so. After at least an hour, I still hadn't dented it, probably because I was folding like 200 little shirts and onesies which took up very little space. I did learn that we could forget to do laundry for the kids for a month and they'd still have enough clothes to wear.

I also baked two pumpkins in order to make fresh pumpkin pie. I went to Foodland to buy some pie crusts, came home, baked the pumpkins, then realized that I did not have ground ginger. Cursing myself, I put the pumpkin pulp away where it will probably rot before I have the motivation to make it into a pie again. I had used another Allakhazam admin's blog post about roasting the pumpkin and there's this one part where she mentions that cutting the pumpkin in half is "hard". This is apparently the way Alaskan people say, "You need a freakin' AXE to get this pumpkin open." Really, I'm surprised I have all my fingers today.

Fan Fest is next. freakin'. week. After working all day Sunday on my costume, I realized that I wasn't going to have enough time to finish it. *SIGH* I have to work on something else for everyone and the briault is just not going very well, so I have to abandon it. *sob*

Shoyu Chicken (136)

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? ^_-

Chinese Leftovers (135)

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.

Curry w/ Cream Corn Croquette

Wow!! It looks like I will be hitting 30k visitors very very soon!! I think to celebrate I will give away another bento box. :D I'm not sure which one it'll be, I guess I'll just let the winner pick from the Hello Kitty ones I have left or some of the newer 2 tier ones I've been too lazy to put up on the store. In any case, if you're interested in my latest drawing, email me at pikkopots at gmail.com the following info:

Name:
Address:
Your favorite bento ingredient:

If you submit this please know that I will probably eventually put up a page showcasing all of these answers. I will only include your first name and country.

In a stunning turn of events, I fell asleep early with Buddy last night so this morning instead of making a nice healthy bento I was glued to the couch trying to watch Heroes before everyone else woke up. The result is a bento of hastily prepared curry, which I just squeezed out of the bag onto some rice. I fried the croquette in about 5 minutes although it doesn't look very appetizing because obviously I wasn't babysitting it while it was cooking. I always keep a thick carrot ready for slicing and shaping in the fridge so that I can make flowers really quickly. You guys already know my love for parsley decorations too.


I've tried to grow my own parsley but for some reason the seeds I've tried to plant twice don't even germinate. I guess something is wrong with the packet I bought. Even the shiso seeds I planted didn't sprout up! :(

Tonight we're meeting some old college friends for dinner, so we'll see how good I am about restaurant food. Last week at PF Chang's I didn't really hold back to well!

I LOVE that people commented yesterday with COTTAGE CHEESE and THREE FOR NOTHING! lol

I have a couple of bento orders that I have been procrastinating on and will hopefully get out tomorrow. I updated my cosplay blog recently if the FFXI folks want to see an update on my costume.

Oven Baked Chicken (128)

The great thing about sleeping early, not doing cutesy bentos, and being lazy is that I've actually been able to put together my bentos a lot faster now. I seem to have fallen into a groove where I just plop things in and bingo I have my lunch in about 20 minutes. It may not be my best work, but I end up with a decent looking lunch in a small amount of time. Lately, this has been important with things at work.


I took one of the oven baked chicken thighs my MIL made last night and cut it in half for easier display. I'm not 100% sure I'll eat it because I forgot to put it into the fridge when we got home last night. I had a little discussion with a few other Allakhazam admins on the safety of this chicken thigh and got two thumbs up and one veto from a former butcher. I think perhaps I will eat the other stuff and then go down to this lunch cart that I've never seen before just outside the office building. They sell ham sandwiches and such. When I made the bento, I'd decided I was going to eat it after all, but now I'm on the fence again!

Fan Fest is now 36 days away! I reeeeally have to get cracking on my costume again. *sigh* I'll probably be going to Disneyland on Thursday, yay! Will be a short day as I have to help set up our Allakhazam booth, but fun anyway I'm sure! I haven't been there since I was like 12 or something. If any of you are going to FF, please be sure to find me and say hi. ^_^

Spare Ribs (125)

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!!!

Mochiko Chicken Again! (117)

When it was game time last Saturday I kind of forgot all about my poor mochiko chicken waiting patiently in the freezer, so I took pity on it this morning and nuked a piece for lunch today. It still looks rather burnt, but smelled great. Also, since I fell asleep really early with the kids last night, I woke up at 5 am. With all that time on my hands I decided to try out Harumi's tamagoyaki recipe. I may have misread the directions and added way too much mirin because it came out incredibly sweet and tastes like the kind you eat at sushi bars, which isn't a bad thing, but I'll definitely have to use the rest of it to make me some tamago sushi. Maybe tomorrow!


Miraculously, this round of tamagoyaki cooked rather nicely. I'm not sure if it's something in her recipe, but for once my egg actually looked like a roll by the second round of egg. Could be some kind of magical egg powers her book gives me. I nuked the chicken straight out of the freezer for 1:11 and it turned out just right and good for slicing. I usually microwave things at 1:11 or 2:22 or something like that because Mr. Pikko is a pro at simplicity and efficiency (ie laziness) and taught me to microwave 1/2 of a second faster than I could before! I made some Costco fried rice from leftover rice, leftover rotisserie chicken, olive oil, soy sauce, and Seto Fumi furikake. The edamame as I've mentioned, is the pre-cooked, frozen kind from Costco so I just defrost some in water and it's ready. Baby Girl helped me to string the yellow pick and she was so proud to have helped me make my bento! I added the carrot flowers and parsley for color and garnish.

Square Enix just recently announced the release date for their new expansion Wings of the Goddess and it will ship November 20th, just a few days after the Fan Festival. Content will be released on Thanksgiving Day. AUUUGH. Maybe they thought everyone would be at home and would be happy to play right after they stuff themselves silly, but last year we ended up trying Black Friday shopping. I can't play Wings of the Goddess if I'm camped out at Toys R Us and Office Depot!! *sad*

New Box, No Bento

No bento for me today as I took the day off so that I could drop the in-laws off at the airport and so that I can pick up the kids this afternoon. I have a lot of stuff to do today including stops at Fabric Mart so that I can find more material for my White Mage costume I'm making for the FFXI Fan Festival in November, the post office to mail out orders, Costco to buy fruits, Foodland or Marukai to buy food, and maybe the post office in town if I feel like going all the way down there to pick up my newest eBay purchases. What I'm looking forward to the most though is lunch.

Before I get to that though, I went to Marukai yesterday since Mr. Pikko was held up at work and said I was free to go if I wanted to so of course I had to go. They had new inventory in and had tons of this box similar to the Fine Will one everyone wanted:


I realize it doesn't look as stunning as the Fine Will one, but I still think it's a great color and a great box in general. This box is in the AIB store right now, so if you want to purchase one better grab it up soon! I don't have that many. (4) +_+ The good news of this new arrival at Marukai is that it means Marukai is buying the junk discontinued stuff from Skater, who makes awesome boxes. At least, that's what I assume happens with dollar store merchandise... I guess green isn't a very popular color in Japan? That's great news for me because I do think green is my favorite color bento box!

I had mentioned I was going to sell my Fine Will one on eBay to hopefully make a bit more money and I finally got around to doing so today. The listing can be found here.

Anyway, I mentioned lunch. Since I'm going to be at the airport, that's just a bit away from Kalihi so I'm definitely going to make a stop at Monarch Seafood. A few years ago I used to work in Kalihi and though as a little Japanese girly I was at first scared of working in what I'd only heard of as a "rough" neighborhood, I found that the plus of working there is all the great places you can eat lunch. There are tons of okazuya shops there. To the people who haven't heard of it, okazuya places are basically bento food stores where you go in and pick individual items to build your own bento lunch. You can read an article about it here.

If you look at the list at the bottom, there are 4 places in Kalihi! I've eaten at Gulick Deli and it's a bit oily for my tastes and I went to Mitsuba once but I got there at the tail end of lunch so there wasn't much left. I tried on several occasions to get the infamous Garlic Chicken from Mitsu-ken across the street from Mitsuba but since my tightass boss then was under the impression that lunch could be inhaled in 15 minutes and the line outside that place is always ten kinds of nuts, I never did get to eat there. In fact, that's how I ended up eating at Mitsuba.

Anyway, I'm not eating at any of these places though. Monarch Seafood is this small little fish market on a corner right across from the Kalihi Bank of Hawaii that sells the most awesome plate lunches. And while you're waiting of course you drool over their big selection of poke. I haven't eaten there in several years, so that's where I'm going today. The part that sucks is that their parking is as great as Waiola Shave Ice by the zoo: they have none. I'll post pics later or tomorrow!