Gyoza (175)

I don't really have a full fledged bento today as I ran out of time in the morning and decided to buy lunch at the little shop in my building at work. They usually always have spaghetti and pasta sounds like a good thing to eat today. I'll probably microwave it though, as I like to have my food on the verge of singing the skin off my mouth.

I made 3 pork gyozas with furikake rice for a little "filler" bento today. I desperately need to go to the market as I have basically no fruits and just carrots and bell peppers for veggies. I need lettuce (I'd have put some under the gyoza), parsley, broccoli, berries, and maybe some shrimp.

Usually what I do for the lettuce is buy romaine lettuce. The inner, lighter colored leaves taste better, so I use those for salad. The more bitter outer leaves I keep to line my bentos. This works out really well as I don't like to eat them, but I don't waste them either! They make great liners for bento boxes and add so much flair to a lunch. :)

The Mog House went well yesterday, especially since it was Superbowl Sunday! I have to admit, I was really disappointed in the commercials. Other than the E-Trade baby ones, I didn't really like any of the others. Some made me laugh, but they were only marginally funny imo. I didn't really care who won since I don't follow pro football anymore, but I'm sure once Colt is drafted, I'll have more interest then. :D

Mapo Tofu

It was the strangest thing this morning. Pigs were flying around in the sky in droves! I was confused for a bit, then I realized that they were out because the University of Hawaii announced this morning that Greg McMackin is our new head football coach, meaning that UH... ***UH*** hired someone in 9 days. This my friends, is a miracle!!

The flying pigs make my bento today very fitting because 1) it's got pork in it and 2) it went flying.

I love my MIL's mapo tofu because it's tasty, moist, and not spicy. I added shelled edamame and grated carrot for color so that put together with the pink container, it would make the food look more attractive. Unfortunately, when I took it out to the car, I made the fatal mistake of placing the bento box onto the top of the car where I ALWAYS forget things.

We didn't hear it fly off so I don't know where it is, but this box is presumed lost which makes me so sad because it was a wonderfully shaped box and one of my matching Putifresh containers. I'm hoping that it is just sitting nicely in our parking stall at home, but I won't kid myself. **sigh** I didn't even figure it out until I got to work. Clearly I accidentally packed my head into my lunch this morning along with the food.

I think to console myself I will have to go down to Marukai and buy myself some new bento goodies. Bwahahaha!

Roast Chicken (165)

Every day this year so far has been a unique mixture of shit and today is no different, but somehow I feel a little better about things. I'm not sure why. The situation I'm in is just as crappy or worse now, but my head is clear and my emotions in check. Maybe I'm just numb already, which is probably bad.


My lunch today is sliced Sam's Club rotisserie chicken with furikake rice. On the side I have some green salad and tomato. There is French dressing in the little orange container. The green shamrock bottle has some soy sauce for the chicken.

In my crappy 2008 year I do have something awesome and win to look at with glee. Something to look at and squeal, "EEEEEE!!" whenever I feel like I need a picker-upper.



OH YEAH, BABY! That's right!! A pic of me with Colt Brennan!! I was walking through campus to meet Mr. Pikko to go to a UH rally at Bachman Hall when I see Colt standing on the lawn in front of Hawaii Hall. I kinda hung around then went to meet the Mr. I told him we should go back and we waited with two other women until he was done filming the promo. The other ladies got his autograph and I walked behind until he noticed I was there. Mr. Pikko took the pic really quick and my hair got in the way, but it's still a good pic with great lighting! He's really freaking tall, lol! (ie I'm really short)

So yeah, that made my day yesterday.

The highlight of today will be the canning of Herman Frazier. I will have to pinch myself. Someone at UH actually has half a brain for once?! How is this even possible??

SUGAR BOWL

The ending of the first quarter at Saturday's game had us all stunned. We sat there in muted horror, unable to grasp what was going on. DOWN 21 to nothing? Was the scoreboard wrong? WERE THE WHITE JERSEYS A JINX??!?!?! (I seriously thought this at least 50 times)

And it rained. It was as if Hawaii was weeping and we were all bathed in its tears. We couldn't seem to get the ball past the 50 yard line. I took Buddy walking down to the other side and I talked him through the next drive. Colt will pass and the ball will go there. It happened. Again and again Buddy and I walked down and I whispered in his ear each time where the ball would go and that this was the drive we'd finally score on. And we did! He got a real kick out of me screaming and hoisting him up. He'd grin ear to ear and laugh and laugh and laugh.

It was truly a wonderful and memorable experience. I'll carry the memories of that game with me forever, just as I still carry the memories of that last catch of the Fresno State game years ago. When we scored to finally bring ourselves up we were screaming so much and so excited. Then to see the Huskies down at their own 4 yard line... it was too much. The thought of having to suffer through overtime was horrible!! Everyone was screaming "DEFENSE" but I was screaming, "PLEEEEEASE!" I really thought they caught that last pass, then to see it just bounce out of his arms and into the hands of Mouton... I thought I was dreaming.

I know the black box over her eyes is creepy, but Mr. Pikko is a privacy stickler. Just pretend they're sunglasses!

The kids were a real handful at this game and the monster sized Disneyland lollipop I bought for Baby Girl reeeeally came in handy, but we know that 10, 15 years from now our kids can happily say they attended that football game. And we have proof too! We watched the ESPN broadcast later and we're in a crowd shot at the end of the game. YaY! I look grouchy, but this is due to having to carry Baby Girl for almost the entire 4th quarter. That will make any person sour, trust me.

And the Warriors are bound for the SUGAR BOWL!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!! GO WARRIORS!!!!

My mom came over to attend the game with my brother and they were in yellow CC, which I think was a good view even if they were in the nosebleeds. She dragged my brother down to Chinatown to get some char siu and spare ribs from her favorite place for Chinese food, Nam Fong. If you've never been to Nam Fong it's a little shocking at first. It's a really gross, bare place and the guy just takes it off the hook in the window and chops it for you right there. The char siu is SO good tho, I tend to nibble on the way home and that's a bad idea. It's possible to just stand at the container and just eat and eat. Anyway, I have some for lunch!

I have with it a flower shaped onigiri with ume in the middle, then a small piece of corn, char siu, spare ribs, and some sakura carrots. And in case anyone is still curious about my weight, I'm still maintaining at 127! :D

Game Day!!

Tonight the University of Hawaii Warriors play what is arguably the most important game in the history of the school. Washington has a terrible record, but we have so much to lose. I've been walking around with my head on backwards since yesterday because of the anticipation for this game. This morning Buddy shocked me by picking up a football and yelling, "GO BOW!!!" I was so stunned! Anyway, it's almost lunch and naptime, then it's off to the game for us. GO WARRIORS!!!!!!

Sandwich Kit (151)

I wasn't going to make a bento this morning either because my two devils were giving me complete hell for refusing to give them Goldfish crackers for breakfast. Surround sound screaming with PMS on the side makes me go insane, but then I had a sudden inspiration for a bento and I found that making it really calmed me down.

I call this a sandwich kit, mostly because making it into a sandwich beforehand would have looked rather boring. I cut one slice of bread into two Christmas trees using a cookie cutter then arranged it on top of some chopped Romaine lettuce. To go into the sandwich I have the last of my kim chee crab and some sliced avocado. I added in some black olives and the last of my tomatoes (which I picked this morning) for snacking and to make it look more attractive.

I wish I had more to blog, but I'm still so busy I can't even think! I have to get a lot of stuff done to transition to my new job. Plus I am totally stressing about this weekend's game. GO BOWS!!!

Pork Tofu

As any Hawaii resident knows by now, the University of Hawaii Warriors are the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) Champions!!!! The game against Boise was last Friday and it overtook the Fresno State game I attended years ago as the most adrenaline pumped game I've ever attended at Aloha Stadium. There was a point during the game when the stands were just electric and the shouts and screams were deafening. It was truly magical to be there. This picture will be too big for my blog, but I wanted to put it up anyway:



We started chanting B-C-S and that gave me chicken skin! I feel so good for Colt and so happy that he came back. The season was looking kinda bleak with the injuries and all but now it just seems like this was all he could have hoped for. Baby Girl got into it too. I'd hoist her up and her job was to scream and wave the shredded ti-leaves we had. I can't wait for this week's game. GO BOWS!!!!

Last night I had to make something that I thought Buddy would gobble up because he's sick and hasn't been eating much so I made pork tofu. It was a lil lacking in taste so I think next time I'll use Kikkoman instead of Aloha. I'm also out of onion powder so I need more of that... It's the only way I can sneak the taste of onions into food because Mr. Pikko has the Ultra Onion Detector 3000 built into his tongue.


It looked real plain, so I picked some of my last green onions and cut them up with my scissors. When we had severe rains a couple weeks ago I looked out at my plants to see my poor green onions floating in a pot of water. They're still alive though, miraculously.


A KCCA salad, yay. This was all nice and good until I realized that I forgot to pack LETTUCE. hahahaha! So I guess I'm having this as sides instead of a salad. Good job, me!

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??

UH Spam Musubis

Since I had no bento today due to the holiday, I'll be posting about my food for Saturday's football game. The Warriors played Fresno State and the stadium was almost sold out due to UH having a "rivalry" with FSU. The game was going really good until the second half when they changed their strategy. Then in the 4th quarter, Colt Brennan was knocked unconscious, which scared 48k people silly for quite some time. We're all still very concerned as preliminary reports had him with a "grade 3 concussion", which everyone was googling and returning back with phrases like "out for 6-8 weeks" and "career over" and "possible permanent brain damage". Colt's concussion has been downgraded to a "mild" concussion, but all UH fans are of course still concerned for his safety. I really do hope that he's as well as the University and Coach Jones say he is.

Me and my MIL got drenched in beer, so that was... interesting.

Okay so onto the food... this is the "something" that I've been mentioning for weeks that I have been trying out for football and finally I ended up giving up on what I'd originally planned, which was green musubis with the Hawaii H logo cut out of nori and put onto a plain triangle musubi. I found out that plain musubis don't taste that great at games. So anyway, this time I just went for the green look in a spam musubi!


I achieved this with simple food coloring added to the rice before cooking. You guys have seen my coloring rice in my 100 bento, but that time I had added the coloring to the rice after it was cooked. I made 10 musubis from 1 can and cooked 3 cups of rice (3 cups raw, 6 cups cooked) with 5 drops of green food coloring. This comes out to the perfect amount of rice for 10 musubis. (at least, the way I make it)

We went to the zoo today and I was wiped out and ready to leave by the time we hit the reptile house. Unfortunately for me we ended up staying there 3 hours. Still, it was fun. I'm packing up the remaining bento orders tonight plus burning the midnight oil finishing some hats for the ZAM people to wear at the festival. I leave in two days!!

Costco Fried Rice (139)

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


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

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

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

Costco Bento (131)

I had a rather busy and calorie filled weekend, so I'm back up to 129.5 lbs this morning, which is soooo bad. I had thought walking around at two WalMarts plus Costco would provide me with enough exercise to help balance things out but eeps! When I saw the number on the scale this morning I was freaked out. I'd already made my bento from the night before though, so I didn't want to waste things.


Everything except the tomatoes and parsley are from Costco! We'd gone to get a rotisserie chicken but they were sadly all gone and Costco was closing, so I bought a box of their turkey wraps, some Greek pasta salad, a spinach salad, and fruits. I have one black grape tucked in between the two rolls and even that is from Costco. The raspberries were pretty cheap, so I bought a box of those.


The pasta salad was pretty good, but the olives were horrifying, so I avoided taking any of those.

The UH football team is now 7-0 and undefeated in the WAC. The game was on Friday and boy was that a heart stopper! Our first ESPN game of the season and the field was a mud pit, Colt was throwing terribly, passes were getting dropped, we were down by 14 in the last 5 minutes... I was so down. Colt threw his 4th interception late in the game and drooped his shoulders down in defeat and I thought it was over. I had such a hard time watching. But then a miraculous fumble, an insane catch, Colt ran into the endzone to tie it, we scored in OT, then intercepted on San Jose's OT turn. It was so storybook and me and Mr. Pikko were yelling at our place like crazy people. I even saw someone taking their dog for a walk looking peculiarly into our place.

It still brings a grin to my face. There's a good recap video here.

THREE FOR NOTHING!!!

Rice with Shrimp & Peas (126)

Last night we ate at Kim Chee for dinner and I overate a little, so I suggested we go to Foodland so that I could buy some things to cook for bento this week and so that I could walk off the food a bit. I find that this helps get rid of that overate feeling quite quickly and pushing a wagon of two kids around for over half an hour has to be decent exercise right?

Since I had no shopping list I ended up buying some shrimp for fried rice. This morning I cooked rice according to a recipe from Harumi's book simply called "Rice with Peas". The picture shows a bento box filled with this simple but yummy rice (I tasted while packing) so I decided with the shrimp I put in, I didn't need to pack anything else with it. After I cooked the rice according to her instructions, I fried it together with sliced snow peas, frozen green peas, and chopped shrimp.


Along with this I brought carrot sticks, sliced strawberries, and an apple banana. I'm porking up again, so I won't be eating any rice for dinner tonight. With the Fan Festival only 38 days away, I've got to start shaving pounds again, not gaining them. Sadly, no new progress on my costume this weekend.

My tomato plants have gone crazy! I pick like 10 tomatoes a day. I don't even know how they're all producing this many but I have a container here with me at work today with about 50 tomatoes so that I can take them to my MIL's house for salad consumption. It's awesome!!

I didn't have the energy to do my football food and it was just as well since the football game was a total soaker. We were lucky we decided to buy ponchos before the game because it was on and off pouring all night. I was pretty sad to see Colt off yet again after someone stepped on his foot early on and then even sadder to see him down on the field after a tackle. On the other hand, it was wonderful to see Tyler Graunke step up and show all the people that had booed him previously that he was more than worthly of playing for Hawaii. I hope that shut them all up for good. We're now 6-0!

Keep voting for Biggie!

Meatball w/ Onigiri (116)

People have been asking me WHERE I got my nori punches and the Dreamland egg thinger from and the answer is that I found it on this website. Don't ask me how I found that link because frankly, I don't remember. I clicked around randomly until I saw the Dreamland item, then I asked my friend in Japan to tell me if they shipped to the US. They don't, so he offered to buy it for me and ship it to me. Each item cost 12USD. Unfortunately, I didn't know that he was able to send it via USPS so I was afraid of how much the shipping would be if I bought more to sell, so I don't have any extras. :( I was too afraid that I'd get stuck with an item that I would end up having to charge like 20 bucks for.


Today I have two onigiri using the face punches. One looks like he's ROFLing and the other looks like a girlie wondering what he's laughing at! I have 3 Aidell's meatballs along with sliced tomato and rolled up Canadian bacon cut into 3 sections.


For my bottom layer I packed blueberries, some peeled and sliced cigar mango, and some peeled and cored rambutan. My dad brought me all of this plus two fresh coconuts. Unfortunately, some Big Island wildlife came along for the ride so now I have kobais in the house. I have no idea how to spell "kobai" but that's what we call those irritating little fat fruit flies. The Big Island way of getting rid of them is to leave out a bottle of shoyu cause those stupid bugs love to fly into the bottle and then they drown in the sauce. My brother once told me that he told his roommate this and that he was given odd looks all around. Those ceased the next morning when his roomies saw that the flies had indeed done a little suicide mission into the bottle.

The box I used to pack it can be viewed here. I found a bunch of these at Marukai and they were only 99 cents for once, so if people are interested, I'll be putting them up on the store soon for $1.99. I have different designs on blue, green, yellow, and pink boxes. Another update on my tomato garden, they're turning orange already!!


I'm so excited!!!

I received my copy of Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking last Thursday and will be trying out several of her recipes over the coming weeks and tagging those entries with "harumi". She's got a lot of great looking pictures in there and even a small chapter on bento! This excited me a lot so I'll have to try those out first for sure.

I mentioned that I had something special planned for the football game but it didn't turn out quite like how I wanted so I'm going to revise my plan and post pictures once I've settled on something I like.

The newspapers had all been saying that Colt Brennan was going to play, but shockingly, the game starts and Tyler Graunke is the starting quarterback. His first toss, interception. We were all very disappointed but then something unthinkable happened. The HOME CROWD at Aloha Stadium begins to boo him. Mistake after mistake people keep on booing him. I simply couldn't believe it. I mean, I'm of the opinion myself that he was doing terrible, but I wasn't going to freakin' abandon him and BOO him. WTF Hawaii? He kept messing up and I knew after a while people were going to start chanting for Colt and sure enough, despite a decent lead in points, the crowd starts to chant, "WE WANT COLT! WE WANT COLT! WE WANT COLT!" It was mind boggling. Heaven forbid we actually SUPPORT him. I wonder if anyone booing thought that maybe the booing was what kept him slipping up? And then to make things even worse for Tyler, the third string QB Inoki Funaki plays the last quarter and makes him look like a chump. I felt so bad for him. =\ He looked a lot better last year.

I blame the papers. They all reported Colt was playing as of Friday and I'm guessing this was to get high attendance without Colt Brennan playing. Maybe that was just what they were told, but I'm pretty sure it ticked people off. It's sad because it means people come to see him and not the team itself, but how can you not want to see history in the making?

UH's record: 4-0!

New Bento Toys!

I'm at home sick today with the King of Headaches. I must say, he's quite the grumpy guy. With no bento, I thought I would show my spiffy new bento toys, which arrived yesterday from Mr. Pikko's friend in Japan. Thank you thank you thank you, Carl! I also would like to thank Susperia from FFXI for helping me with the instructions!


First of all, I have a new set of nori punches. I'm sure Bento Investigators out there have found images of this item before. Aren't they adorable?? I can't wait to do onigiri with them.


As exciting as the punches are though, this was what I was most looking forward to. It's called a "Dreamland" or something. It's a spiffy Japanese contraption that lets you cook eggs with shaped yolks. Isn't that just awesome?? I can't wait to try it out! It can be used for Jell-O too, wheeeeeeee.

Things finally seem to be settling down, thank goodness. I wanted to start prepwork for my football musubis tomorrow, but if his Majesty doesn't go away, I'll have to do it tomorrow morning. I have a new batch of bento orders that need packaging up to take care of too. My dad is coming to visit for the football game and he requested that I take him on an errand to... Marukai dollar store. Hahahahaha! He has to buy some kind of plastic tray and he was like, "If you cannot take me that's ok..." Hehe, no worries Daddy-O, I'll make me some time to go!

More good news: My tomatoes are ripening!!! They're quite small, which I'm guessing is due to me being too lazy to go buy fertilizer. But who cares!! They're small and cute and I grew them myself!! *beam*


And more on another plant!


YaY!!

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.

Hawaii vs. Northern Colorado (103)

Our first football game went reasonably well, I was able to watch at least half of the game successfully, though the kids were a bit alarmed at the noise. Apparently sitting in the staff section means you get put right by the Manoa Maniacs and student section. This means all the crazies go walking up and down the stairs past us. You know, all the guys with painted bodies that make psycho faces for tv down at the bottom. Anyway, the seats are thankfully decent and I lost about a pound carrying one of the kids from Radford to the stadium.

My in laws couldn't make the game so I ended up going with just spam musubi, fishcake, egg, and hotdogs. Even this ended up being too much and sadly, no one ate the tamagoyaki but me. Mr. Pikko says it's cause the egg is a bit gross to eat by hand. The kids didn't like it either for some odd reason. Anyway, I ate maybe half of it myself. I was able to snugly fit in all but one half of my spam musubis into my black and gold lacquer box.


The egg and hotdog I packed into Baby Girl's Hello Kitty box. I added foil so that the soy sauce wouldn't leak into the egg part. The egg gave me a bit of trouble while cooking but seemed to fold much better than last time.


I didn't really care for how the hotdog came out. It's Redondo's Hawaiian Winners and I guess they're best left for bbqs and what not. Maybe we'll use them today as we may have a little pool party for Labor Day.


This is a picture of the top cover of the box I mentioned. I really like this one and I got it at a really good price at Marukai. It's a 3 tier box and the same one that I used for my 100 bento, but I still don't know how big it is. I had thought it was 500 due to the label that was on it, but now that I think about it, it can't be that small.

I have a picture of Colt throwing his first touchdown pass of the season but unfortunately he's so blurry you can't tell his number. You can see the football mid-air though! We won the game 63-6. And now I will take the time to talk about bachi. Anyone who grew up in Hawaii knows what bachi means, which is basically karma coming back to bite you in the ass. Michigan got their bachi by losing to Appalachian State. Those turds got lawyers and threw a hissy fit to get out of their game with us, getting the ball rolling for us to have the crappiest football schedule ever.

We have two away games coming up next so I have a couple weeks to plan what other kinds of food I want to bring. I don't want to end up bringing the same old things over and over and there is no way I'm going to buy food at the stadium this year. It's not like you're supporting the school by buying food and who the hell wants to pay $3.75 for one slice of Papa John's or $4.00 for a regular soda?

Furikake Wasabi Salmon (102)

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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*

Yakitori chicken

Went to Marukai 99 Superstore in Waipahu today in search of some cheap bento accessories only to find out those bastards closed the store! GRR! Very sad..

I ended up going to Don Quijote again and bought a bunch of bento things I needed such as more nori, vinegar, sushi seasoning, sauces, etc. Since we were planning on going to the UH Football Ohana Festival at Aloha Stadium, I packed a bento for all of us and hid it deep in the bottom of the diaper bag in order to sneak it past the guards. We didn't think we would make it in, but the lady barely looked into the bag.

I didn't get to marinate the chicken for very long, so most of the taste was on the outside. We ate it cold, because we were waiting in line for Colt Brennan for almost 2 hours. We were one of the last people to get an autograph and picture, getting to him in the final minute of his autograph session! The beans did not hold up well at all, they were all shriveled and uneatable by the time we sat down to watch the practice. I made some extra chicken for tomorrow because we're going to the zoo and I'm going to fry some yakisoba tomorrow and the chicken will go nicely with it. I didn't have any appropriate container, so I just used one of my Tupperwares.


The onigiri I made didn't look so good presentation wise because I didn't have a good container. I forgot to salt them, so hubby made a face when he ate his. Oops!

Tomorrow's zoo lunch menu:

Spam musubi
Shoyu hotdog
Chicken yakisoba
Pickled veggies
Edamame
Fishcake