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.

Mapo Tofu (221)

Lately I am just walking around or driving and suddenly I remember something I forgot to blog about. Like last night I was driving home and just as I hit Red Hill I realized I forgot yet again to blog about my thoughts on the super duper magnificent omg wonderful Lost finale.

I am a bit torn as to which scene to post since there were four that I considered incredible, but I finally settled on the Goodbye Kiss.



Ok seriously, oh my god. And I thought Sawyer couldn't get any hotter. Other greats for me included Penny and Des reunited, Ben sobbing as he moved the island, and of course the now infamous ending scene between Jack and Ben. The one that made me laugh the most was probably in the very beginning though, when Ben told Locke, "You couldn't find the anthuriums, could you?" "I didn't know what they looked like!"

I found this fantastically amusing, but this is probably because I grew up in the floral industry on the Big Island, where wanting to die at the sight of anthuriums is very common. Hey, you try staying up til 2 am making tropical Costco bouquets in the freezing winds of Mountain View. My brother will get a chuckle out of that.

My family has caved into the peer pressure and acquired a Wii, much to the delight of Buddy, who thought Wii Boxing was awesome. We had to start keeping the wiimote on top of the tv where he can't reach it after he was sighted hammerfisting the nunchuck and wiimote into the hallway walls. He's such a hallway bully.

If you were going about your business a few nights ago and suddenly heard a high pitched screech, that was probably me. I'm sitting in the living room when I hear, "Um, should he have that?" I look up and Buddy has opened my bento accessories drawer and somehow taken out my cottage cheese tub of precious soy sauce bottles. My immediate reaction was to yell, "BUDDY, NO!" and it was as if I'd set off some alarm in his head that any mischief to be done had to be done immediately or not at all. He thrust his grubby little toddler paw into the tub and began to flurry his fingers around like a cake mixer gone psycho. Piggies and fishies and pandas and flowers and carrots went flying in every direction.

I was not happy.

Okay, so... my bento contest. I hadn't said what I was giving away, but now I have a picture so you can all scramble to enter!


Click that for a bigger picture. Tally:

1 pink two tier bento box with a cute wolf on it
1 yellow two tier bento box with a cute bear on it
1 green Hello Kitty bento box with fork
1 black lacquer round bento box with berries design
1 pack zoo animal food dividers
1 penguin hot dog cutter
1 set of sea animals food picks
1 mini rice paddle
1 pack pastel sushi grass
1 onigiri mold (cylinder shape)
1 set Hello Kitty soy sauce bottles
1 onigiri mold (large flower)
1 set of chopsticks
2 wine bottle soy sauce bottles
2 piggie soy sauce bottles
2 fishies soy sauce bottles
1 yellow Putifresh banana cup
1 Charmmy Kitty bento bag

Oh yes, this bento prize pack is totally filled with awesome sauce! If this doesn't inspire you to submit an entry, you need your head examined. I mean this in a good, concerned fellow bento fan way.

To find out how to enter, see my 100k Bento Contest post.

Mr. Pikko was ill yesterday, so this was my cue to dart down to Marukai to raid their new stock. I went a little cuckoo. :(


Click for big version! I ended up with 8 new boxes, two bags, cookie cutters, food picks, BENTO STRAPS (omg they never have those), onigiri molds, cute disposable bento boxes, and soy sauce bottles. You see that red one on the right side? It's obviously for a triangle musubi but I was like, WTF? Are there monster sized onigiri that I've never heard of or something? Then I read the package and it says it's to store 2 convenience store musubis in. As if I'd feed my kids musubi from 7-Eleven! Ech!!


Close-up of the accessories. Aren't those doggie straps so cute?? There were chicken ones too, but one of them clucked at me rudely and I put it back. The nerve of chickens, I swear.


Finally, we get to my lunch. Whew, I sure had a lot to talk about today. I have to start writing down my topics as I think of them. Today I had mapo tofu with rice in one of my new boxes. I love this box! It fit a perfect amount of food for me and the blue strap I bought came in really handy. In the second tier I just dumped a lot of blueberries in cause the pack I bought at Costco was huge and decently priced, so I have a lot of berry eating to do.

We recently discovered that Baby Girl and Buddy find Hawaiian music incredibly amusing. My boss gave me a spare CD of some of her favorite Hawaiian songs and with them being obsessed with Eggman's Somewhere Over the Rainbow, they make me play it all the time now. There's a version of No Ke Ano Ahiahi that makes them break out in fits of giggles and then yell at me to start the song again. This CD has provided many hours (yes, I said hours) of car entertainment, so Auntie B scores points with my kiddies.

When I first brought it home Mr. Pikko immediately began joking that "Mommy's boss is giving her mixed tapes." This led to me and my cousin Jenn lamenting about how kids will never understand how much work it was to get music when we were growing up. If you had the standard boombox and heard your favorite song come on while you were pretending to clean your room, you had to dash to the radio to hit Play and Record at the same time. If you had the mega uber boombox with two tape decks (holy crap), you could move songs from one tape to another! (seriously, holy crap!) This is a sure sign I am getting old. I can already hear myself yelling at my kids when they're older...

YOU KNOW, THERE WASN'T ALWAYS TIVO. IN MY DAY WE HAD TO USE THE REWIND BUTTON ON THE BETAMAX AND LET ME TELL YOU, IT SUCKED!

I'm not even 30 yet! *sob*

Tonkatsu (216)

Today's bento is brought to you by the letters 'B' and 'P'. I was making it this morning and went to the fridge to grab the tomatoes. Buddy saw me and immediately got frantic, "BUDDY DO! BUDDY DO!!!!!" He started wailing when I picked them out and washed them because he had wanted to choose them. Since he doesn't know a firm tomato from a football, I was unable to accomodate his wishes.


Instead, I let him put the tomatoes into the bento, which worked like a charm in getting him to stop screaming. I swear, the kid can turn the tantrum on and off like a light switch. So anyway, this one was done by Buddy and Pikko. I'm one proud bento mama today!

This is tonkatsu from a few days ago. I had no bento yesterday because I had a lunch meeting at The Willows. The place was a ghost town, it was scary. Don't people eat lunch out anymore?? I especially liked the roast turkey and prime rib. I wish I'd skipped the fish and chicken long rice and gotten more turkey.

Anyway, tonkatsu with furikake rice and green beans and Buddy's tomatoes. The wedding is this Sunday and I have no idea how much I weigh, but I tried on the SIZE SIX dress last night and I fit just fine (awesome), so that is really all I care about at this point. I've got my shoes, my bra, and my dress. I just need to find some nice wedding appropriate earrings, a matching sweater to keep warm, and pantyhose and then I'm all set.

Mr. Pikko and I will be watching UFC 84 in Kona this Saturday. GO GO BJ!

Pork Hash (210)

My son has definitely entered his Terrible Twos. The other night I was putting the kids to bed and he wanted to watch more TV. After the usual squabbling back and forth, I finally just pushed him into his room and shut the door behind us. I tried reading to Baby Girl but he was screaming his head off and she said it was too loud to hear. He was holding a little toy Thomas train in his hand and when he finally calmed down he was in grumpy mode. He finally gets my attention with his glare and then proceeds to very flagrantly lick the wheels of Thomas.

Next thing I know, he is steamrolling Thomas up and down Baby Girl's blanket, which of course turns into more chaos. Oi. Later, when he's finally in bed, I'm reading him a book and he begins to very carefully roll Thomas the Spit Engine up and down my arm. He'd long dried out, but I knew the evil intent behind that seemingly cutesy toot tooting.

Today for lunch I had pork hash, which Grandma J usually makes in a gigantic wheel of meat and then slices into wedges. This time she made some of the excess into little patties, which makes for great looking bento food!


My sister-in-law had brought home some fancy looking rice from a client, so I took some of that instead of the plain white rice. It turned out to be sushi rice with cut up cucumbers, tuna, and pickled ginger. I sliced 1 patty in half and layered it together with the last half that I had taken in addition to the whole patty. On top I layered baby carrots and edamame. There was some extra space so I added two tomatoes and finished the whole thing off with a little thing of parsley.

10 Toddler Commandments

I haven't had a bento since last Thursday and this is due to the cold from hell. On Friday Buddy had it pretty bad and so I stayed home to watch him. Unfortunately I picked it up from him and for the last 3 days I've felt that confusion, "Am I hot? Am I cold? I have a fever, yet I have chicken skin, wtf?" My head has felt like it was going to explode and Mr. Pikko has been hacking away next to me like coughing is going out of style. Thankfully, I do not have a cough, but he definitely does it enough for both of us. I don't feel enough like a bitch to tell him his coughs are making my headache worse.

As if this cold wasn't bad enough, my kids were taken in the night and replaced with little demons. Buddy has had what my sitter called "Night Terror" which basically means he shrieks his head off every hour and cannot be comforted. Picking him up is only wise if you enjoy hard kicks to your exceptionally tender stomach. This does wonders for our heads, obviously.

Add to that, I have committed many dastardly crimes against my sweet children. Mommy must learn the following when she feels better:

1. Mommy shall not declare it "brush teeth time" while Curious George is still on.
2. Mommy shall not fold jelly bread in half.
3. Mommy shall not threaten to delete The Rugrats Movie off the TiVo.
4. Mommy shall not give her children Apple Jacks in a play food bowl because it is "too small".
5. Mommy shall not give milk when asked for milk, for her children really wanted juice.
6. Mommy shall not refuse to read Where The Wild Things Are more than three times in a row.
7. Mommy shall not pick out the wrong pink shirt to wear to school.
8. Mommy shall not say for the third day in a row that she's been too sick to go buy more milk.
9. Mommy shall not pour into the green cup instead of the blue cup.
10. Mommy shall not state that it is "too dangerous" to turn around while driving to look at every pair of Fruit Loops miraculously stuck together.

I write this down now so that when I'm 90 years old and driving my children insane, I can say, HAY KIDS, go look at my blog entry on April 29, 2008, you'll see why I'm so demanding!

Last Thursday before we became deathly ill we actually went out with some friends, which is now causing me to wonder if this is bachi for actually going out without our kidlets. D: We met at Yakiniku Million, which was an old haunt during the college days. Back in the late 1990s this place was that hole in the wall place that had some godly dish that everyone had to have. All of us would drool on the drive down (with the exception of one guy who was made to sit in the trunk of the hatchback since we only had one car) at the thought of their side order meat jun.

Millions had, hands down, THE best meat jun in town. All of us would order the same thing: side order meat jun. Sometimes we'd bring someone new and he'd order BBQ chicken and we'd look at him like he had two heads. They served it with a lettuce leaf and sometimes one last piece would be hiding under there, which was so awesome we started hiding a piece under the leaf just to have a surprise at the end of the meal. Then somehow, somewhen, they changed cooks or something. The meat jun is still really good, but it just doesn't have that legendary taste that I remember. My current favorite is now O-Bok, at Manoa Marketplace. No sauce needed.

We ate with a different set of friends this time so we actually did order Yakiniku. I think this is Combination B or something:


Cooking the food on a grill:


Yakiniku is something Mr. Pikko just doesn't get. He says he goes to a restaurant to get fed, not to cook his own food. He rescued both of us and ordered two side order meat jun.


There's the meat jun in the middle. We ended up getting three plates because in the midst of the talking, our friends said, "Hey, this meat jun is pretty good!" Notice the lack of lettuce leaf though. :(

I wasn't really big on their sides as it was the fancier fare of Korean sides. I much rather have the take-out type veggies: bean sprouts, kim chee, mac salad, cabbage, chop chae, etc. Legendary meat jun missing aside, the food was still great. I was pretty relieved that I wasn't the only one that took about half an hour to understand what the smoke vent was for...

Tonkatsu (204)

I type this with blurry eyes. Buddy woke up at 4:15 AM, asking for "chicken and rice" since he didn't eat much dinner the night before. I went to the kitchen and like any other good, kind, caring bento-minded mother woken up at 4 AM would have, gave him a wonderfully nutritious and beautifully prepared breakfast: chopped up microwaved hotdogs. LOL

Did I have you going? I suggested everything from Cheerios to strawberries to pancakes to grapes to peanut butter whole wheat toast. He wouldn't have any of it while he waited for the rice to cook so that I could make him some Costco chicken fried rice, so that's what he ate. And then when the rice was ready to fry, he was "full" and wanted to watch tv. Typical toddler, living in the now, which changes every 5 minutes.


Today I'm having tonkatsu. I had meant to cook some chicken I didn't get a chance to use over the weekend and try chicken katsu in a different way, but fell asleep putting the kids to bed. This looked a lot better before the sauce all oozed together, but unfortunately I took too long to take the picture. The katsu is cut into small pieces, there's rice underneath, and the asparagus lays nicely on top.


In my second tier I have a salad. I topped it with some Costco chicken so that I didn't need dressing, but I might go trolling into the work fridge and see if there's some healthy dressing I could sprinkle on.

Someone commented yesterday with a really great link to a blog post by Biggie on how to do thin omelets in the microwave. It made me think back to when I had lots of time to read everyone's blog and see all the great lunches and I really miss doing that. Biggie has such a wonderful, helpful blog and if I ever get around to constant reading again, hers is definitely on the top of the list. When I first got into bentos a year ago, hers was always a favorite of mine. Please take a look at her site if you haven't seen it yet. ^_^

Happy Easter!

I had a rather hectic weekend with a lot of things to do ahead of time for Easter. Add in the fact that my two little devils very thoroughly went through all of our belongings, making sure that every last thing was out of place or ripped to shreds. I did a lot of really bad grazing on the Costco bag of almonds I bought and fortunately, all the walking and bending over to pick up things probably helped negate it. That's still no excuse for bad habits though...

We currently have five little kids in the family that adore anything Jell-O, which is a really good thing for me because I'm always looking for backup excuses to make Jell-O eggs, something I've never been completely sure any adults other than me care for. My Aunty is the one who passed on this odd craving for egg shaped Knox Blox. Before advanced technologies were discovered (plastic eggs & molds), she used to poke holes into the tops of her eggs and siphon the egg out whenever she made scrambled eggs. She'd then save the rinsed out eggshells all year until finally Easter came around and she could use them to fill with Jell-O. I still remember helping crack the eggs under warm water. This freaking insane yet endearing technique must have done something to my head over the years because as it is now, I cannot have an Easter without Jell-O eggs. And I don't just make a dozen, I go crazy and make at least 50. My co-workers will find this out tomorrow. He he.

This year I made Cherry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, and Berry Blue. I made one box of Grape, but I ended up eating all of them with the kids on Saturday... hee. I still have tons of boxes of Strawberry, Raspberry, and Grape to make. Since Buddy had hidden a bunch of boxes around the house (I found one in the toy chest), I was missing some boxes and had to go to Foodland to round things out. I almost broke down crying when I saw that they didn't stock Peach flavored Jell-O anymore. Peach Jell-O was something I was addicted to while I was pregnant and I only have two boxes left. Hopefully they just don't stock it and it's not discontinued. My mom had a favorite Jell-O flavor: Blackberry. That got discontinued! D:


I had talked about my co-worker's cupcakes and how I was going to steal her idea. Well, there they are! They didn't come out quite as good as I had hoped. I should have gone for Jelly Bellys instead I think. I thought about using the little box of Bertie Botts I had here, but then thought that would be mean and that maybe eating a Booger flavored bean would make the cupcake experience a bit less than pleasant. They're topped with green dyed coconut and Smoothie flavor Skittles. Sadly the bag had very few purple Skittles and I found those made the cupcakes look the best.


I made a really huge ass Kim Chee Crab and Avocado Salad for the family and everyone liked it, so that was a good success again! I added sliced baby carrot this time for a bit more color since I forgot to buy grape tomatoes. Easter was really fun overall. My almost brother-in-law made scallop with mustard sauce appetizers and and a really, really good beef dish. We dyed eggs. Buddy dyed his legs yellow. I had a lot of fun with this Tye Dye set I bought. Yes, I dyed eggs. I'm still a kid at heart, so sue me. Sadly, no egg fights. I'd seen an oddly pointed egg while boiling them too. I had plans for that egg! Perhaps when the kids are older. It's just as well, they'd probably cry too much from Aunty Crystal owning them.

After that we played Rock Band and I finally gave it a try. It was fun and even Grandma J tried it out. Yay!


On Thursday, my boss mentioned I should grow some wheat grass as Easter grass for the kids. I had heard of wheatberries before but had no idea what they were or how completely dirt cheap they are. I headed to Down to Earth after work and bought 2 pounds of wheatberries for around $2. I soaked way too much and laid them out in one of my roasting pans on top of wet paper towels. The next day they had started to sprout already:


They're really fun to grow!! The only bad part is that like I said, I soaked way too much and so now they're all piled up on top of each other trying to grow. I transferred some of them to the bottoms of my flowerpots but there are literally thousands of them still needing transplanting. The really retarded part is that I'm doing it by hand, one at a time. LOL


These are the transplanted wheatberries on Day 3. They grow really fast!! Luckily I had a spray bottle and the kids have been having a ton of fun watering them by misting them. The grass is actually even taller now. Updates tomorrow!

We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who! again. It was Buddy's second time and Baby Girl's first. She chickened out the first time and this time was sobbing, asking if we could go home. I had to trick her back into the theater and eventually she started peeking and as soon as the credits rolled, she yelled, "NOW I LIKE IT!" When I was younger I used to watch movies like Aladdin and Lion King and wondered why the hell these little kiddie movies were so riddled with adult humor. Now that I am older, wiser, and nearly braindead from whining children I understand that the humor is there to make the movies bearable for parents. It really just wouldn't do to have a bunch of stupefied parents driving their children home. They no doubt already have that dead look in their eyes from one too many Barney's or Dora's. That being said, I really enjoyed seeing Horton twice. My son adores him. Now if I could just survive the 50 daily requests for the longest Horton video I could find on YouTube (7m 5s), things should be okay.

Two Jell-O eggs were consumed while writing this post.

Onigiri (193)

Today's bento is not for me. Baby Girl has a party today and parents were given the option of bringing food for the kids. I decided to bring in onigiri or what people in Hawaii call musubi (moo-soo-bee). I got up at 4:30 am to do this because I'm such a die-hard crazy mom.

Just kidding. I got woken up by a horrible stomach ache and by the time my ordeal was over, I decided to just stay awake already. I cooked two pots of rice to make pink rice and blue rice, adding two drops of red and blue food coloring to the water before I pressed the Cook button. I made two cups of rice each time and it turned out to be too much so I wrapped the extras in Glad wrap and froze them. FOR ONCE I did not waste rice! I am sadly a notorious rice waster when it comes to the rice pot.


Before I highlighted my hair I had one white hair. After punching out 16 nori faces this morning I'm sure I must have at least 50. Getting a good sheet of nori that will punch right is SOOO rare. Punching these faces made me want to punch something else. Like maybe me for deciding to put faces on these accursed riceballs. Hopefully the kids like them and eat them. Buddy liked looking at them, giving them a nice long "Whoaaaaa..." He's such a great confidence booster for me!

I won't have a bento on Monday because we're having our monthly work potluck. Have a great weekend all!!

Turkey Croquette

Living in Hawaii you tend to get used to the whole "small town, small state" thing where everyone seems to have a friend who knows this person who is related to this person who is real good friends with your next door neighbor or something like that. Hilo is especially notorious for this because it's such a small town but it happens here in Honolulu as well. Take for example the fact that one of my readers works at the same campus as me or that one of my FFXI linkshell members is a mere 10 minute walk from my office. A real shining example showed itself today though!

One of my co-workers here calls me over to her desk to show me an e-mail from her sister and it's got the picture of me and Colt in it. I was looking at it thinking, Err... HUH?! Turns out she found my blog, figured out I work at UH, realized her sister also works at UH, thought to ask whether she knows me, and turns out she sits right here in this office with me. We were all cracking up about it. Hi Cindy! Thanks for reading! ^_^


Today I have for lunch the turkey croquette bento I mentioned yesterday. I cut it in half so that it would fit into the box nicer, shoved a tiny bit of white/brown rice into the corner, and added broccoli, sweet potato, carrots, and cucumber kim chee. The cucumbers were being really stubborn because they're big fat pieces, so I sliced it thinly to make them more cooperative and that worked out pretty well.

There are times when my kids drive me completely insane and I blame this for the evil mommy that comes out of me occasionally. I don't know if it's just me and my parents goggles, but sometimes my kids make the most hilarious frickin' faces when they're sad and I crack up laughing. Sometimes when I'm thinking straight I try to hide it, but most of the time I burst into giggles or cackles about it.

Take for instance dessert the other day. Grandma J bought a box of these Skinny Cow fudge bars (which, at 50 calories per, rock by the way) that my kids are now addicted to. Buddy loves them and shared one with me. He couldn't bite it very well so would only come away with little nibbles. When Baby Girl had one to herself, he of course wanted some. Since he was only skimming the surface of the pops, I told her to let him have some since he can't bite off much anyway. She holds it out and he comes over and CHOMPS off a good 1/3 of the bar, leaving her with this look on her face which I think was a mixture of shock and being on the verge of tears. I'm still getting the giggles picturing it now.

Anyway, I told him he should give some back, kind of as a joke. But kids sometimes listen in a very literal sense and so he spits it out, nibbles off a bit, and gives it back to her, melted chocolate and spit and all. Of course, she took it and ate it immediately. lol

Kung Hee Fat Choy!

Yesterday before the meeting, we went to eat at Kim Chee 7, which is my favorite place to eat Korean food. They have really great kim chee here, especially the daikon pickles, which are pictured below on the left. On the right is their regular kim chee, which I didn't like before, but now love. In the two little bowls are their onolicious meat jun sauce. SO GOOD!

I had the lunch special, which is a combination plate of meat jun, bbq chicken, mandoo, and vegetables. I don't really care for their plate veggies all that much, it's really the only weak part of Kim Chee restaurants. If you want the best bean sprouts namul, potato, cabbage, and taegu you have to go to Gina's. Usually I dump the cabbage into the kim chee sauce in a little attempt to make myself more of that yummy stuff.

Before the people who pay attention to my dieting completely flip out, I did not eat all of this. I ate all the meat jun and a small part of one chicken. The rest will no doubt show up in a bento tomorrow. I ate very little rice, so it wasn't too bad.

Work parties and meetings are proving to be a constant interruption to my bentos! lol Today is Chinese New Year and so we had a team meeting + potluck. I bought some pork hash from Chun Wah Kam this morning.

This is a very beautiful salad made by my boss:


We also had another Chinese chicken salad, pasta salad, cantaloupe, watermelon, a spicy shrimp and pepper dish, curry manapua, pie, almond float, a noodle dish, choy sum, and some sticky rice with meat. My plate:


As you can see, I was pretty good, even though it was a lot of food. I took from both salads, the shrimp dish, half a manapua, choy sum, and fruits.

I hope no one is getting annoyed that I'm posting regular food here now. I just figure that bentos aside, the food we eat here in Hawaii can be just as interesting. I bet I make my ex-Hawaii mainland dwellers drool too, haha!

"OHHHH! MANAPUA!!"

"OHHHH! PORK HASH!!!"

"OMGGGG MEAT JUN!!"

Hehe.

By the way, the teacher gave an exceptionally glowing review of my darling spawn, leading me to the conclusion that I am the proud mother of the Teacher's Pet. It was a combination of the "she defends the littler kids from bullies" and "she's like a leader in the class" comments, the fact that she gets to sleep next to the teacher's desk, and the story she told us on the way home about how the other kids go out to play and she stays in class with her best friend and they eat gummy bears (A whole package, Mommy!!) with the teacher. Nice.

Also, I'm a bit worried about the quality of education my baby is getting here:


I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do when she watches The Secret of Nimh for the first time!!

Parent/Teacher Conference

I have no bento today as I'm leaving at noon to attend Baby Girl's parent teacher conference. This should be interesting as her teacher gives me the impression that she's allergic to parents. Anyway, we received her report card a couple weeks ago and were a little taken aback by some of the reportings.

She had "Needs work" down under the curiousity and asking questions section.

I can imagine the meeting already.

"Your daughter doesn't ask very many questions, we are concerned."

I will then look at her with a facial expression that says, "You, madam, are on crack." After that, I will inform her that in the last year, I have heard more questions come out of her in one car ride home than you hear during a week of Family Feud reruns. Then maybe as a joke I could tell her I'm thinking of having my ears surgically removed until the Whiny Years are over.

I'll also have to ask whether her little boy crush Ryan really is eating cockroaches and zebra heads. She tells me this at night as a little joke, which leads me to wonder about how healthy her imagination is. +_+

Stuffed Aburaage (162)

Yesterday morning my cousin Jennifer e-mailed me to say she'd missed her flight to Honolulu and that she needed to find a hotel to stay. I ended up offering to pick her up after the radio show and letting her stay the night. We had a nice night talking at Zippy's and laughing at the kiddies who apparently were high on the idea of Aunty Jennifer coming over. Baby Girl put on a Christmas singing show and at the end of one song did a shaka. She sang the song again and her shaka was taking on a weird form and we were like, what is she doing? Then suddenly she does what she wanted, which was to have only her thumb, pointer, and pinky pointing up. Then she screams, "ROCK ON!!!!!!" We almost busted our sides open laughing!!

While we were talking she mentioned a co-worker of hers that reads my blog every day. Hi Christina! Thanks for reading!! ^_^


Today I'm eating stuffed aburaage. Aburaage is fried tofu skin and the stuffing is made out of pork. It's my mother in law's dish and something that doesn't smell so great, but tastes really yummy. On the side I have some white rice and stewed carrots. I added the shelled edamame and a little sprig of parsley for extra detail.

I've been slowly but surely going down in weight, probably because I've been really good about portioning lately. My other cousin Stef heard I've become really skinny and told me I need to eat food but as you can all see here, of course I eat food. lol My best friend's wedding is at the end of May, I'm pretty confident that I can be at my goal weight of 120 by then!! YaY!

I will have no bento tomorrow as we are going to have a Christmas lunch for work.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (159)

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

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

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

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

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


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

The Peas May Be Doffed

Mr. Pikko and I have come to the conclusion that our daughter is either going to win American Idol 25 or be the next Tori Amos with crazy lyrics that appear like they were read from a finished Scrabble game. After writing such lyrical masterpieces as "Cheese in the Box Doesn't Make No Sense" and "There's a Big Fat Hen", she's come up with something new which she debuted to us last night.

At least 200 times.

On the way home we were treated to her new song "The Peas May Be Doffed", which is a stunning remix of that wonderful Christmas song a couple of you might know, Felis Navidad.

I was putting Buddy to sleep and I could still hear her yelling it in Mr. Pikko's ear as he tried to read something on the computer.

THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
THE PEAS MAY BE DOFFED, I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

To answer your question, people-without-kids, yes they do this. And sometimes they don't stop until you look at them with fire in your eyes and ask them to please cease for the sake of your sanity. If you're lucky, they're scared enough to listen.

If you want to know how to sing with as much awesome as my daughter, when you sing Jingle Bells, end the song with "In a fun four-horned fin play!" The office people will love it, I swear.

I have no bento today since today is radio show day and I was lazy last night, still working on my 10k ding. I figured this story would be an amusing enough replacement.

Veggies Bento (142)

Last night's trick or treating was so much fun! We left work early to take the kids out and it was still pouring rain all the way home, but when we got to MIL's house, the rain was just drizzling here and there. We ate dinner and got the kiddos dressed. Buddy was very resistant, protesting the entire time I took off his clothes and then finally took off running in just his diaper and I had to chase him around for a bit. He had some serious issues with wearing his costume and kept crying, "Nooooo! Nooooo!" whenever I tried to put it on until finally I said, "You want puffs??" (those star shaped Gerber things) and his eyes glazed over and he said, "Puff." He let me put it on no problem! Yay, problem solved right?

Everyone is dressed and standing against the wall except him, who his looking at the camera going, "Nooooo! Nooooo!", going limp, etc. I tell him, "Please just stand by your sister!" He is fussing fussing fussing then suddenly goes, "Puff?" As soon as the word "yes" escaped my lips he stood over by them and grinned ear to ear saying, "Eez!" Not even two and a negotiator already. :(

I had nothing but fruits and vegetables to put into a bento today, so that's what I ended up with. I've got a bunch of cucumber slices, which I will sprinkle with salt before I eat, then three colors of bell peppers with some fat free Ranch dressing in the little cup. It's oh so healthy, no??


Hahaha!! Second layer: NOT! I've got some Halloween munching to do and so I picked out one of my favorites, peanut M&Ms! I figure this is a much better portion than if I were to go buy a regular sized bag from the vending machine. I've also got this lil packet of sour apples and then some sakura shaped banana slices. There's also a little hidden Laughing Cow Light Swiss wedge in there.


Today is November 1st, I leave for Fan Fest in less than two weeks! Ahhhhh!! Panic panic panic!!!

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!

Sunday Bento & Obon

Last night me and the kids went with my father in law and my niece to the Mililani Hongwanji bon dance. They're a larger temple so they have theirs on two nights. I was so thrilled! It was a monstrous bon dance in a humungous parking lot. Tons of people were dancing and the andagi was soooo fresh and good.

One really cool thing was that Baby Girl felt brave enough to go in and dance without me carrying her. There was a flag dance and she kept saying she wanted to go close and closer until finally I asked if she wanted to go in and she did! We didn't have flags, but we just did the motions anyway; it was a really fun and easy dance. She really enjoyed it so that was awesome!

Hands down though, the best part was their Fukushima song. Finally after like 7 bon dances in the last two years I find one church that has kids in the middle. They weren't yelling "betcho!" but something else. Still, the effect was the same. There had to have been a couple hundred people dancing and they had super fast foot movements that I could only manage to do once because it's rather hard to sidestep and hop from one foot to another while carrying a 30 lb toddler. Baby Girl was content to play with her towels so I took Buddy into the line. He seemed a little perplexed and I saw lots of other people dancing with babies. Around 10 minutes in he starts frowning whenever the kids yelled, which was really cute. A couple minutes later he just put his head on my shoulder and actually SLEPT through the rest of it.

I'll definitely be going to that one next year as it was the best obon on Oahu I've been to by far. Perhaps next year if I remember the season in time, I'll finally get to go to the granddaddy of obons here: Honpa Hongwanji.

Anyway, being at home pretty much all day I made the kids a bento to eat at home. It's pretty simple as I started on it late and they wanted to eat. I cooked a can of vienna sausage along with the hot dogs as I thought Buddy would prefer that. Turned out that he really really loves crab hot dogs. He ate like three by himself!


I made some penguins too but really didn't care for them so I left them for Mr. Pikko to eat, lol!

3 Bento Day & Store

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


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


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


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

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

Veggie Chicken Nuggets

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


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

Korean BBQ Chicken

As you may have noticed to the right, I signed up for the Best Food Blog at the Blogger's Choice Awards. At first I thought it'd be incredibly lame of me to sign myself up but then Mr. Pikko said he didn't see anything wrong if others did it. I don't expect to win at all, but I like little contests like that! ^_^

We ate at Kim Chee 7 last night and though I ordered a small portion BBQ chicken, they gave me a full size so even with sharing with the two kidlets we still had leftovers. Today there's a softball tournament we're watching and so I packed up a bento for Buddy to eat and we planned to pick up something for Baby Girl. I also packed a salad for myself, but ended up eating this at home during an intermission.

On the left side there's chopped up BBQ chicken (Kim Chee has the best chicken on Oahu imo, though Gina's at Market City has the best vegetables hands down), bean sprouts namul, and kim chee. On the right is rice with Seto Fumi furikake. In addition to the food I packed fruits:


This has sliced strawberries and pitted cherries. It looks like a lot of food for an 18 month old boy, but he ate every bit down to the last tiny piece of strawberry. My salad: (click it to enlarge)


This consists of thinly sliced romaine lettuce topped with 1/4th of an avocado and some kim chee crab. The kim chee crab from Foodland is tastes a LOT better than the one at Don Quijote. It's very flavorful and really spicy so that I don't need any dressing. Lettuce and crab and avocado mixed together is so yummy!!

We're going to another game at 6, so I may pack up bentos yet again! In another type of adventure, my tomato garden is coming along nicely. Baby girl is growing beans and watermelon and her plants look pretty cool too. Problem is we've got bugs! If someone knows what is eating our poor plants and what we can do to combat them, please let me know. We have also planted the Beekeeper Mix that came with a Tori Amos album we bought years ago. It's full of various wildflowers and so far 5 have sprouted. Here are my tomato plants, I hope to have real Pikko-grown tomatoes to put into my bentos in a couple of months! :D


I have like 20 of these, so hopefully that gives me good odds on keeping at least a couple alive in time for them to give fruit!