Wraps & Costco Fried Rice

Out of sheer laziness and busyness, I had a bento yesterday but didn't post about it. *gasp* In case you hadn't noticed, I can be somewhat of a desk potato. Rest assured though, it tasted just fine anyway.


We had quite a bit left of the Costco chicken we bought on Sunday. Even though these chickens are cheap, we never really seem to fully utilize the whole bird. I really should get more into using up the whole thing whether it's through fried rice or soup or what. It just seems like such a shame to have something so good go to waste. I will have to look up a really good chicken soup recipe and make a habit of making a batch every Sunday night or something.

I used a regular flour tortilla for this and spread out one wedge of Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese all over it. Next I covered it in lettuce, which stayed down pretty easily since it was sticking to the cheese. Next layer was chicken, peeled into strips. Finally I put in some strips of red bell pepper. I stuck food picks into three areas of the wrap so that it wouldn't fall apart as I cut it.

The apple was surprisingly easy to layer nicely. I just had to lay down some support pieces underneath before putting the top ones in. I hate empty space, so I tossed in some blueberries.


I decided last night that I have really been slacking off on being artful with my lunches lately, so I'm going to try to get back to doing the cute/pretty stuff instead of just shoving my food in a nice way into a bento box. This means I will have to definitely do my lunches at night because I am the consistent reason we are always late in the morning.

I used more of the Costco chicken to make this fried rice, which has a mix of brown and white rice. It was sticking to the pan, so I poured in some shoyu then added Nori Komi furikake. I made too much, so I gave the rest to Buddy for breakfast, which he loved. I know this because every time a spoonful went into his mouth he made me watch. "LOOK MOMMY!! LOOK! AWWMM!" He's such a cutie sometimes. ^_^

Next to the rice I tucked in a small piece of lettuce. I hate the dark green parts of romaine hearts so I usually pack it with some kind of salty meat so that I can eat it by just stuffing it in my mouth at the same time without having to taste it. That sounds so attractive, doesn't it? It works out quite well since it fills in empty spaces, looks great, and uses up food I don't really like.

For the red flowers I used red bell peppers with my veggie cutters. This was actually really difficult because the skin was so hard to cut through. Now that I think about it though, I really should have just peeled the skin off completely. The flowers are skin side down and I sliced off the bumpy inner sides of the pepper to create the smooth look. Oh well, bento and learn! The middles are made out of cheese. I got too frustrated cutting them out by hand so I ended up just balling it up and squishing it down. Usually I use a straw, but the kiddies are drawn to straws like I am to bento accessories. I'm lucky if I can hide one for 24 hours straight. The leaves are made out of romaine lettuce cut into the shape of leaves.


My second layer is simply sliced papaya and blueberries with a little mini fork to eat it with, since papaya can be so messy to eat sometimes. On the side I have sliced apple and a peach. Several of my peaches have bite marks on them because aside from being Tasmanian devils, my children are apparently peach vampire ninjas too. They slip in quickly when I'm not looking, bite one, then run off as if nothing happened. Sometimes I wonder about those two.

Kalbi Fried Rice (220)

Yesterday I did what I despise doing. I went to Costco to buy contact solution, spent almost $200 on food and stuff, then realized late last night that I'd forgotten to buy the contact solution. ARRRRGH!!!


While there, I fell prey to those damned food stands and bought a bag of pre-marinated kalbi or as the package called it, galbi. Ever since a former co-worker of mine explained to me how to easily clean my George Foreman grill (I had previously positioned it by the sink and poured water on it continually while cursing such a stupid invention) I am more eager to use it. I grilled the meat with it and it was pretty good. I've definitely had better at Korean restaurants, but it was still pretty good for Costco.

I cut up a piece really small and then added it to a pan to char a bit while I cut up the leftover grilled bell peppers (which were AWESOME!). There was very little rice left thankfully, so this isn't too bad of a lunch today. I got onto the scale the other day and was horrified to see the number 134.4 staring back at me. Way too much Pandas... This didn't seem to stop me from eating Pandas again on Saturday though, haha! It did motivate me to do more Tae-Bo though, which I did Saturday and Sunday, bringing me back down to 131.4 this morning. I think the approach I need to get to is eating what I like, just a lot less of it and keeping up the exercise. I'd love to dive headfirst back into Weight Watchers and all, but you've all seen me struggling to stick to that for a while now and it hasn't been working.

So anyway, I'll keep up the exercise and stop freaking stuffing myself, which I've been doing a lot lately. Complete plan:

1. Better breakfast so that I snack less
2. Daily tae-bo
3. Controlled eating
4. Much more water drinking
5. No more freaking horrible desserts

For #5 I bought a box of Skinny Cows. This should keep my sweet tooth distracted. With the massive slew of birthdays we just got through, it's no wonder I'm always chowing down on sugary crap without a care in the world lately. >.<

Hamburger Fried Rice? (208)

We had hamburger patties last night and this is something I've been finding increasingly hard to arrange nicely without repeating the same old things, so I decided to try making it into a fried rice. I don't recall ever eating a hamburger fried rice, so hopefully it turns out all right.


The first thing I did was heat some olive oil in a little pan. Then I crumbled up the hamburger patty into small pieces and separated the rice as best I could. It was a mixture of white and brown rice. I had some already chopped up bell pepper and added that into the mix. After it had been cooking for a bit, I poured about a tablespoon of Mr. Yoshida's sauce over it. I added the broccoli last, since I hadn't thought about putting it in until I noticed it was rather bland in color.

Since lacquer boxes cannot stand high heat, I lined the box with some lettuce to help protect it. I poured everything in and arranged the pieces as best I could with chopsticks. For snacks I have baby carrots, some of those new Brother's Potato Crisps (freeze dried, ZERO oil, ZERO fat, yahoo!!), salsa, and popcorn.

Teri Hamburger Patty (179)

Today I'm using a new bento box but I forgot to take a picture of the outside of it. It's a two tier box with a cute froggy on the outside. It even comes with a matching fork! ^_^

Today I'm eating a teriyaki hamburger patty with leftover shrimp fried rice. I was trying to eat this for lunch during my radio show on Sunday but didn't get much eaten for fear of making too much noise. I really have to remember to eat before showtimes. The rice looked great with the peas so I decided to leave the shrimps on the side next to the patties. The piggy bottle has soy sauce in it for the rice because it wasn't the tastiest of fried rices and I'm one of those people that thinks soy sauce makes everything taste better. The little food dividers were a gift from one of my blog readers, Stephanie. I finally got a chance to use them! So cute! Thank you again!

I'm a little upset that I didn't notice that open space next to the piggy. I hate having open spaces like that. ; ;


In my bottom tier I packed a lot of fruit. I have two sliced kiwis, some raspberries, and then a little silicone cup of blueberries. The cup is from a set of cups that I got from Nizdaar in the Allakhazam Secret Santa exchange we did. They're so tiny and a perfect size for the shallower bento containers I have. I have the regular sized silicone cups and they're only useful in my taller boxes. This set came from Amazon and the set contained lots of different colors. A great bento item since you can use them over and over!

I noticed yesterday that the Hawaii Chair video got removed, so I edited the post to display a new video!

Halloween Bento (141)

Last night I had a whole lot of stuff to do and so when I laid down with the kiddos to put them to sleep, I told Mr. Pikko that I *had* to get up again to work on that stuff, so he *had* to wake me up. I distinctly remember him eventually resorting to kicking me and I never did wake up, so I must have been dead tired. It all worked out though as when I woke up to set my alarm, I set it for 4:00 am, but I ended up waking up earlier than that anyway. This actually turned out really well for me and I think I may end up doing that whenever I fall asleep early. It gives me a ton of time to work on things.

All that time still didn't help us leave early though. I had so much crap to load up into the van this morning that I made no less than 6 trips to the car. I baked cupcakes for Baby Girl to take to her Halloween party today. I had white frosting that I divided into three bowls and then dyed it with food coloring to make purple, green, and orange frosting. I was quite happy with them and Baby Girl asked me 50 times whether she could eat them before we got to school and then Mr. Pikko pulls out this note from her backpack. It was from the teacher, asking parents to please tell her what they're bringing because last year they ended up with a TON of cupcakes. So I was like, damn it!! Oh well. :(


I suspect my daughter has a little child crush on a boy in her class. She's been telling us that her favorite boy at school is Ryan. One day when we picked her up, the two of them were sitting together on the floor outside their classroom. Yesterday on the way to school she told us that "Ryan is going to be Thomas the Train for Halloween." I asked her if she told him what she was going to be and she said, "No..." so I asked if she talks to him at all and she said, "Not yet." lol! They sat together at the Halloween program. lolol! This morning when I showed her the cupcakes, the first thing she blurted out was, "Can I give one to Ryan?" lololol! It cracks me up!!

She sits next to a different boy in class and one day when she went into the room, I saw him pull out her chair for her to sit down. I thought it was so adorable so I asked her about it and she goes, "He shouldn't have touched it, that's MY chair!" O. M. G. Women's lib starting in preschool, hahaha!!

Ok anyway, my bento. I still had a lot of fried rice left, so I used it as "dirt" for a carrot pumpkin patch and also as a bed for my witch. I had intended to chop the chicken up into bite size pieces for easy eating but then when I nuked it and took it out, it looked like a face, so I sliced off the excess and used it as a witch face. The hat is made out of baked Okinawan sweet potato and a slice of cheese makes the ribbon on it. The eyes and mouth are made out of swiss cheese and nori. I couldn't figure out how to make her a nose, so let's just say she looks pissed because someone stole it or something.


This is a very high points bento because of the rice, so I probably won't eat all of it. With the chicken being fried in vegetable oil and not olive, I can't just pass that off either, so I'll have to estimate this bento at maybe 8 points. D:

It was pouring this morning. How lame is that? Raining in Hawaii on Halloween. Boo!

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.

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. ^_^

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!

Pineapple Chicken w/ No Face

The title sounds kinda weird/gross no? Haha! Well I have done another みやざき (Miyazaki) themed bento for bentochallenge. It's not terribly creative since it's just nori and cheese cutouts, but I still wanted to do it as he's another of my favorite characters from Spirited Away. When I think about it though, what character from Spirited Away couldn't qualify as a favorite?? ^_^


As you can see I've used my leftover blue rice from yesterday's 100 bento to make my fried rice. In it I put some chopped up imitation crab, my carrot fishies, sliced kamaboko, my bell pepper corals all chopped up, and the okra sliced up. I cracked an egg into it, but that didn't go so well. My egg curse continues. As I mentioned, I only ate the sushi and hot dogs yesterday and with this bento today I've used up almost everything that was left. There's just a bit of rice left.

On the right I have some leftover pineapple chicken which was a new recipe my MIL tried last night from one of her friends. It tasted great! It's very soft, has a teriyaki flavor with a slight sweet taste. There are chopped up green bell peppers as well as chunks of pineapple.

As I said, No Face is made out of nori and cheese. His face was quite a challenge to cut out, especially his eyes. I had to cut three versions of those before I got them right. Here is a closer picture of him:

All this Miyazaki bento has made me want to watch the movie again. Unfortunately my DVD is damaged and the PS2 doesn't read it anymore so I have to watch it on my computer, which I don't like much. Though maybe it'll be better now that I have a widescreen monitor!

I started up a Guestbook yesterday, so feel free to sign it! It's on the right sidebar. I had a lot of wonderful comments yesterday both here and on Live Journal and I want to thank all of you for the lovely things you all said. It was definitely worth the work!

Tamagoyaki Attempt #3

Last night my mommy in law made her shoyu chicken wings, which are really good, but really high in points. The taste outweighed my points conservation though, so I packed 2 of them to eat for today's lunch. That would have been awesome except I forgot it on her kitchen counter! Very typical of me.

So anyway, I had to come up with something from scratch again, which I seem to be doing rather often. Unfortunately I am nowhere near as fast as the Queen of Speed bentos over at Lunch in a Box. In fact, considering the time it takes me to do these, I'm the polar opposite. I don't consider that a good thing. Okay, so I decided to try some tamagoyaki again with my expensive ass tamagoyaki pan from the local Japanese ripoff store, Shirokiya. I'd seen a cool video on YouTube and that woman's recipe included potato starch to make it roll nicer. Well, I forgot to buy potato starch last time I was at the market, so I ended up trying Biggie's recipe. She's got a super awesome tutorial here.

I read that and thought, well hey now, that's precisely what I needed, a "Tamagoyaki for Dummies" page with pictures. My first attempt came out ok, I'd done it in a frying pan and it tasted good. My second attempt was frustrating because I wasn't aware of the oiling I was supposed to do with a regular pan. I was hoping my third would land me with a standard recipe I'd use all the time. So I started things going and went out to pick (at 11 pm) green onions from my little potted stalks. (I'm running out!!)

I've mentioned before that I'm cursed when it comes to cooking eggs. This time was no exception. I followed the tutorial exactly and was getting so upset because the darned eggs were so soft and jelly like that every time I folded it over, it would simply crack and I had 3 layers of egg instead of a rolled egg. It took me a good 40 minutes to finally cook the stupid thing and shockingly, AMAZINGLY, it came out fine. Seriously, what a lot of stress. At least now I know that no matter how much I screw it up, it'll turn out okay as long as I can make it though the entire omelette without chucking it in a furious rage.


I put in more of the leftover brown fried rice. Although it has taste and the chicken is good, the ham stars I had them with previously were really good so this time I added ham flowers with a little cheese center cut out with a straw. In the middle is some microwaved pipi kaula. On the right side is half a boiled egg (though I forgot to pack soy sauce) and two wedges of above-mentioned tamagoyaki. On the left side I put some veggies: three cucumber slices, some carrot chopped into little triangles, and a grape tomato.

My cousin informed me yesterday that when I get to Kona, something totally frakin' amazing will be waiting for me: FOOD FROM Y'S LUNCH SHOP. OMG OMG OMG! To give some background, my parents used to run the family floral shop in downtown Hilo and it was right next door to this holy shrine of good food called Y's Lunch Shop. Whenever I go home and I want okazuya, my mom will take me to Hilo Lunch Shop or something across from the tennis stadium and I'm sorry, but it's just not the same. My old time favorites from Y's:

- Spam musubi!!
- Fried fish!!
- Fishcake (thin little circles, lol)
- Fried chicken!! (to die for, no joke)
- Egg (I used to just call it "egg", obviously I now know it's "tamagoyaki")
- the tiny potato fritters!! (10 cents each back then)
- Okinawan Donut (or as my husband will curtly correct me, "It's called andagi.")

Once in a blue moon Mrs. Miyamoto would cook this pork tofu dish. Broke da mouth just thinking about it. I was lucky enough to eat the food when she was still cooking it, but the recipes are still the same so the only thing that would be missing is the love that she obviously put into her dishes. Needless to say, my mouth is watering over it already. I haven't eaten there in at least 8-10 years or something crazy like that. The only problem with Y's was that they were only open whenever they felt like opening. I remember all too well the many times I ran out the front door of the florist and was greeted with their door, closed. It's probably better now, but since my aunty always refers to "calling Y's to see if they open" I'm guessing not much has changed schedule wise. Hahaha!

Sun, Moon, & Stars Bento

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

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


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

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

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

Fried Poke & Costco Fried Rice

We had a UFC 73 party at our place on Saturday so to make lunch easy Mr. Pikko bought a Costco chicken for the kids while he was buying food and supplies. The food was great, in addition to the edamame and pipi kaula, we grilled 3 kinds of hotdogs (1 pack of monstrous dogs courtesy of teh Gonz) on my Foreman grill and thanks to a tip from a co-worker, I was actually able to clean it easily this time. Teh Gonz also brought this awesome crab dip, Phil brought mochi rice, Sean brought some Popeye's, and Shawn brought ahi limu poke. Obviously no one knows who Gonz, Phil, Sean, and Shawn are but I mention them as a thanks for bringing foods. The fights were not bad, though they could have been better.


Anyway, Shawn's leftover poke is what I made for lunch today so that it wouldn't go to waste. I've never tried the limu one from Foodland before so I'll find out today what fried limu tastes like. (limu is string seaweed) I cut up the leftover Costco chicken this morning and fried it with the rice I'd made for the curry Sean brought from Popeye's and furikake. I added the shoyu bottle in case I didn't season it enough but since Buddy ate it for breakfast no problem, maybe I won't have to use it.

I will likely only be posting 3 bentos this week as I'm going on a trip to LA on Wednesday for E3. I'm not technically *attending* E3, but it's why I'm going. It will be the first time I miss a weekday bento I think!! Oh noes! ; ; This trip should be a test for me to see how well I hold up to my diet without a fridge full of food that I've bought or cooked or portioned. Maintenance is still going quite well, I was 129.5 this morning. I don't even really count points anymore, I just try to stay conscious of how much rice and fat I take in and it seems to work quite well. I've been well trained it seems!

I Would Do Anything for Loaf

Last night we had meat loaf and though it is a bit hard to arrange nicely in a bento, it tastes really really good. Still, it's not nearly as good as my ingenius title pun. Right? I hope you get it, though it helps to have been into 90s music. Next to it there are green beans with sakura carrots.


I'm almost done eating this durned kim chee fried rice of mine. Next time I know not to make so much at once! I've got one last serving in the fridge but maybe I should just chuck it. Mr. Pikko saw me putting it into the box and went "Ewe." It looked really pale so I added some green peas to the top, though they were pretty badly freezer burned. As I've said in the past though, I'm a food optimist. They can't be all that bad.


The yellowish light is really starting to tick me off, if anyone can advise me on what kind of light I should buy, please let me know.

I've officially caught the family cold, dang it. Tomorrow I'll probably do a salad and miso soup with somen lunch to keep it light.

Chicken Fried Rice

I went to Marukai on Friday and it was basically a total phail trip. The only new item I found for myself was this packet of tiny Miffy paper cups for the kids and even that I found completely by chance in the gardening section. Everything else was nearly gone. Hopefully I will be luckier on my next trip, for now all I was able to accomplish was some bento box purchasing for an Allakhazam forumite. Still no egg molds, furikake bottles, reusable divider cups, or bento straps for the putifresh boxes. Bah!!

We ate out at Monterey Bay Canners and I was betrayed by my waiter. I decided to get fish and since they had Opakapaka (pink snapper) on the menu I decided to get that. There was a version "stuffed with crab salad" and so I asked how they cook it and he said they bake it then top it with the crab salad. I figured being on track meant I could splurge a bit on points and get the salad because it most definitely would come with mayo.

Well the food comes and he plops this bowl of goo in front of me. I was like, "Excuse me, I ordered the opakapaka." Turns out that IS the opakapaka, only he kindly forgot to tell me that they douse the frickin' thing in a butter cream sauce. Overall, it wasn't the greatest of experiences. The kids' chicken nuggets were way burnt, the calamari we ordered was over-fried, my sis in law didn't like her steak, and hubby said his prime rib wasn't that good. Plus it irritated me that he brought the kids food last. Meanwhile my son is so hungry he's thrashing his head against the back of his highchair. The fish was good, though I had to immediately bail it out of it's little fishing boat dish in the hopes that would help me avoid a few thousand more calories.

Lunch today is chicken fried rice simply made by chopping up some leftover Costco chicken and adding 1/2 cup of rice, a little Aloha shoyu, and then topped with furikake.


My bottom layer has asparagus and edamame. Boy do I looove the pre-cooked frozen stuff! All I do is wash the ice off and throw it in and by the time lunch rolls around it's all defrosted and ready to eat! :D Sides today include kim chee crab and avocado salad, a fruit bento with strawberries and cherries, and a crispy yellow peach.


Today was weigh-in day and despite being reeeeally naughty this weekend (Milano Freezer frozen yogurt on Friday, a Jello Cream Cheese square from Zippy's on Saturday, and Milano Freezer again on Sunday) I lost weight again! As of this morning I am 130.3 lbs! Yesterday at dinner I got told by two people in separate conversations that I look like I lost a lot of weight. My MIL said I looked really good in my jeans. I will probably be buying a points calculator and then canceling my Weight Watchers subscription to save money. The "switching to maintenance" article showed up for me and says that to maintain, I'd get 9 points a day instead of 5. I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and 9 points seems SO doable to maintain my weight. I'm so so glad that I decided on Weight Watchers and I hope that anyone I inspired to start up finds the same success that I did. <3

Oyako donburi w/ fried rice

The portion of fried rice I defrosted yesterday had too much in the bag, so I'm using up the rest of it in today's lunch. We had ribs for dinner last night and I didn't want to eat that two days in a row so I was yet again lunchless last night and had to come up with something based on the contents of the fridge. Since I need to use my leftover stash because it's threatening to cause freezer asplodage, I chose the donburi.


This will be a real bento for me (by real I mean, "to go") because I took the day off to run errands and do some bento shopping for a couple people so I'm going to heat it up soon and eat it in the car during a break or something. This second layer has tofu cubes and some edamame on sticks. I forgot to pack soy sauce before I took the picture so it actually has a little piggy bottle in it.


I was 131.1 this morning, woot! Weight Watchers advises you to not get on the scale more than on your weigh-in day, but I'm more the kind of person that needs to know how I'm doing to keep the momentum so I check every single night and morning. I'd read in Reader's Digest that people have an easier time keeping the weight off when they weigh themselves daily, so I took their little tip to heart and it's been good for me so far. I'm sure it's different for others. I think next week I will take a picture of myself to show my progress at last!

Red Rabbit Bento

Someone e-mailed me yesterday saying what a great advertiser I am for Weight Watchers. Haha! That's really nice to hear! Anytime you have questions feel free to comment or e-mail me, I'll be happy to answer. We went to a wedding on Saturday and though I had an entire plate of food, almost the whole thing was Core and I ended up eating a slice of cheesecake. Just goes to show that you can eat at a buffet and still stay on track!

The chicken meatballs have been an attraction for MIL since that day at the beach so she went down to Costco and bought some for dinner last night. They're a little spicy, but taste so good! These aren't hers though... I am still nursing that second bag of meatballs that I had bought. So if you see a meatball tucked in here and there in the coming weeks, you know why.

This bento features a red rabbit egg! I used my egg mold and then intended to dye it pink but ended up putting too much food coloring, leaving me with red fingers and a red bunny. Extreme close-up!


I dug out some of my frozen kim chee fried rice for the starch. The peas looked rather pale, so I took out some frozen ones and mixed them in with the rice to look brighter. The meatballs are on lettuce and I added takuan, carrot, and daikon kim chee to fill in spaces around the red rabbit egg.

I've begun to realize that I eat a crazy amount of food during the day... I mean, I eat an omelette for breakfast, I pack a lunch, a salad, and a fruit salad too. Sometimes I eat popcorn. Then when I get home I eat another salad, dinner, then a fruit snack again. I'm thinking maybe my metabolism has perked up again. It probably helps that I'm eating a lot of fibrous foods!

Elmo snack bento

Years ago when I used to do decos (mail art, viewable at Swapsonian Gallery link to the right) I always favored the color themed decos. That particular fancy of mine has carried right over into bentomaking and so since the bentochallenge theme is Red I needed a good excuse for making another one. Kids make great excuses for bentos and as luck would have it, I've got two on hand.

I'd been brainstorming about this bento for a few days and Ms. Nexasaurus was kind enough to supply me with the wonderful idea of giving Elmo some balloons. This turned out great, so give yourself another great big hug Nexa! Here's the lil' guy:


His face is made of bell pepper, as are the balloons. I put the back side facing out for his face for texture and the shiny side out for the balloons for... shinyness. I did this with my Exacto knife I use for scrapping (washed and dried). That sucker may give me headaches cutting cardstock, but it's no slouch when cutting veggies! I cut up a mini Babybel for his eyes and punched out some dots for his eyeballs. I cut the mouth and balloon strings with a scissors and used a knife for his nose, which is carrot.

It's funny how things work out. His nose was a teeny bit too big and that meant part of it was the clearer carrot center. This really bothered me, but I decided carrot was a better looking orange than Kraft cheese. In the picture, the carrot center makes the nose look textured and lumpy, kinda like Elmo's nose! Anyway, here is the whole bento:


The other side contains raspberries, sliced watermelon, and a Japanese strawberry milk candy. I put in a food pick to add more red too. Before I did this I had seriously contemplated using plain toothpicks with little printed out flags with Dorothy (Elmo's goldfish pet) on them. A couple minutes into Googling Dorothy images I snapped out of my crazy spell and fished out a regular pick. "Fished out", haha!

Obviously this isn't much of a bento food-wise. After I placed Elmo I decided it was just too small for fitting enough red and meat too, so I decided a snack bento would be the best way to go. We're going to a softball game tomorrow, so it seems as if I'll have the opportunity to scare some family members.

Next week I'm going back to regular "nicely arranged" bentos. This is too much stress!

Grilled salmon w/ asparagus

Last night me and the kids went out to eat at Big City Diner with my mom and brother and he very nicely treated us! This being my 3rd time eating out after switching to Core, I can understand why I was so overweight before. Portions are huge, everything has butter, and most things are fried. After closely examining everything I settled upon the salmon (as usual) and following WW advice, asked if they were willing to grill it for me. Thankfully, they were happy to do so and the miso sauce it came with was a nice compliment. I'd upgraded to their garlic mashed potatoes, which turned out to be insanely yummy, but very buttery. I made myself count this meal as 5 points.

Digging my old bunch of asparagus out of the fridge, I was sad to find mold on the bottom of the stems. But ever the food optimist, unlike my husband who will issue death sentences to apples with the slightest spot, I simply picked out all the ones that were still crisp at the top and snapped off the moldy end. Should I die in the very near future, please attempt to contact my next of kin and point out that it's likely I stupidly ate myself to death with some old asparagus. The spinach is arranged a certain way to cover up the parts of the fish I'd already eaten and I added the lemon, tomato, and parsley for decoration and color.


I'd mentioned before about some bento cloths I found at Marukai for wrapping my box. Well I finally got to use it! Here is the box all packed up in a bunny rabbit cloth with my matching color bunny rabbit chopsticks.

We're going out to dinner AGAIN tomorrow for a special occasion. It's likely I'll end up eating... yep, salmon. *sigh* I re-packed (from MIL's containers) Buddy's dinner to make it prettier. I have a Pokemon cloth I can take it in for him. :) Here is the top layer:


It has half brown/half white rice, stewed baby carrots, and chopped cucumber kim chee. I used one of my "Whale of a Punch" scrapbooking punches for the stars.



The bottom layer contains the stew. I'm so demented with bento obsession that I actually took the piece of carrot out, washed it, sliced it, and made them into sakura carrot flowers. The extras I shoved underneath the stew for him to eat. The parsley was really cheap at the market and is a really handy decoration for bento. I'm an instant parsley fan!

Tomorrow will be a really bad day in points... damn restaurants!

Meatball w/ tamagoyaki

My photos today came out terrible. -_- I don't know why but my camera just would not focus properly and I was in a frantic rush because once again I did not make my bento last night like I should have. My aunty commented yesterday that my portions looked huge in some pics and though these bento boxes are actually quite small, she was right about the fried rice portion. I'd had no idea I packed so much in that one box! I ended up only eating half of it and took the rest home for today's bento. I chose my new banana putifresh box and the veggies in the rice had taken on a rather drab color, so I added some carrot flowers.


See what I mean about the picture? I can't stand it!! Grr. Must read camera manual... if I can find it. Feba commented that I should get a lighting box, what is that?? Anyway, here is the other layer:


The tamagoyaki is actually why I was so late. Now I know to cook all my bentos the night before! It's just too stressful in the morning right now!! It was a little rough making the egg because I'd only done it once before and I hadn't done it with my tamagoyaki pan before. (rectangle shape) There are 1.99 pans at Marukai, but the pan I have looks of much higher quality and cost me $25.00 at Shirokiya. The egg wasn't folding too well, but it could be due to using egg substitute rather than real eggs. But my eggs were expired, so I had no choice. The meatballs are actually a teri hamburger patty from MIL's dinner last night cut into small pieces. I stuck in some of my Hello Kitty food picks, which cost me the equivalent of an arm and a leg at Sanrio. >.< I added in a chick soy sauce bottle for the fried rice and another carrot flower for color. Notice the yellow sushi grass? I love it! ^_^

This was only one patty and so I'm counting it as 1 point due to the mostly core ingredients. The only thing in it of concern is the whole wheat bread and though the amount is really small, I feel kinda weird calling it Core, thus the point. The tamagoyaki had 2 tsp of sugar in it, but since 2 tsp of sugar counts as .5 points and I only packed 1/4 of the egg that I cooked, I'm not going to count any points for it.

Kim chee fried rice

I lost 2.2 lbs this week even though I ate like 4 lbs of food at yesterday's buffet. Very bad... I did my best, avoiding the battered fish and the chow mein but I utterly failed when it came to the crab salad. It was extremely win and I ended up eating two servings. I also ate a piece of cake and a slice of custard pie.

Anyway, I had no lunch, so after watching the Survivor finale I decided to make some kim chee fried rice using the immense bag of brown rice I bought at Costco. When hubby saw I bought this he flipped out because not two months ago we gave the bag of brown rice that he had bought from Costco to his parents. When I told him to go buy rice he came back with brown and I screeched about how I hated brown rice. But I'd seen someone's picture of brown fried rice and I thought, hey, I think I could live with eating that instead of straight up brown rice.

I had no idea what I was doing or if I even liked kim chee fried rice, but I started the rice and after about 20 minutes decided to start cooking the veggies so that when the brown rice was done I could just toss it in and finally go to sleep. It was shortly after 12 am now. Starting with the half head cabbage I had leftover from my tsukemono, I fried that in olive oil then added pepper and some chicken bullion. Next I added onions, onion powder, kim chee, leftover peas, Costco chicken (breast meat, no skin), and some of my pre-chopped bell peppers for color. As previously mentioned, I had no idea what I was doing and was actually just tossing anything I thought might taste good from the fridge. It was 1:15 am by the time I was done with this and the stupid rice cooker wasn't even steaming yet. I couldn't tell if it was even cooking and I was dying to open it up to see!! Hubby was just laughing at my dilemma cause he knew how badly I wanted to open the cooker but how bad it would be to do so mid-cooking, should it actually BE cooking.

Giving up at last, I went to take a shower. When I came back out I pressed my ear to the cooker and could finally hear bubbling inside. I watched an SVU. I put the veggies away. When I was just about to go to bed at 2:15 am, THE FOOGIN' RICE COOKER FINALLY BEEPS. So lesson learned here is: when cooking brown rice, anticipate it taking like 2 hours to do so. *mutter*

Anyway, I had to cook it this morning and I added some soy sauce as well. I was tempted to add ketchup too but figured dousing it in 4 condiments was probably making the brown rice feel pitiful enough. Since I hadn't used it yet, I packed today's lunch in my new 3-tier Doggie Woogie bento box from Morning Glory. This box was pretty expensive at $13 so that's the last big one I buy for quite some time. The fried rice:


I really don't like how my pictures turn out by the sunlight, so I think I'll stick to the kitchen. The fried rice doesn't really look that colorless and drab. My veggies layer has tsukemono, takuan, grape tomatoes, tofu and carrot sticks. I used one of my new carrot bottles! :)


Fruit layer has mango, blackberries, strawberries, and some of this new melon I saw at Costco called a Galia melon. It's not as good as I was hoping, but they made up for it by having Tuscan melons in stock the last time I went. Those are way sweeter than cantalopes btw!


Though this meal looks like it contains a lot of points cause of the rice, Weight Watchers Core actually lists brown rice as a Core food. This is why I chose to make brown fried rice of course. :) This entire lunch is happily all core. Which is good because I forgot to eat breakfast and ended up eating at Jack in the Box for breakfast. +_+ Their menu is repulsive! I ended up getting the grilled chicken sourdough with no cheese and no mayo, then I took out the bacon and only ate one of the slices of bread. The chicken fillet was really juicy and the lettuce and tomato they put on were very fresh and thick, which was nice. It was the best I could do, since I wasn't strong enough to just go without breakfast! You should have seen the monster cane spider I saw at the drive-thru though. *shudder*

My throat is almost all better, so it really must have been that I just burned my throat and not something more serious. Considering the pain and discomfort I went through this past week, you can bet I won't be overheating my tea water again!!