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.

Jang Su Leftovers (197)

I passed out last night with 8 Easter Baskets unfinished and so it was a good (well, not all good) thing that Baby Girl woke up this morning at 5:15 am to announce that she'd wet her bed. We finished them together and she so kindly topped it off with a nice big tantrum/meltdown. I can't wait til these "Tantrum Threes" are over as lately I can just about see the edge of the cliffs of sanity.


There we have it, all 17 baskets. Now my brain can rest easy. One had no tag cause I forgot the name of a kid. 16/17 is still good though...

With all of that going on, I had to rush this bento and managed to finish in 10 minutes. Go me!!


We ate food from Jang Su BBQ last night. This place is at Waimalu Shopping Center and though Kim Chee still has my favorite food, Jang Su's food is pretty good. I took some of the chicken and bulgogi (thin bbq beef). I put some nori paste onto the rice because I just bought a bottle of this recently. I looooove nori paste. They have different types, I think plain, mushroom, and bonito. Since I'm allergic to mushrooms this is the bonito one. Sooo good on rice.

The bulgogi had a lot of fat on it but since I refrigerated it, the fat was white and hard and very easy to just pluck off. Much easier than staring at a piece of hot meat not knowing which is meat and which is fat. Tucked in with it are cucumber pickles and a baby carrot all sliced up. I only put it in for color, I have a whole bag of baby carrots to eat too. I bought one of those Costco baby carrot bags. You know, the one so huge you could mistake it for a Longs bag? (Longs Drugs bags are bigger than supermarket bags, thus are win.) Anyway, I'm in a Carrot Race right now to eat them all before they go bad.

I missed Idol last night and hadn't even watched Tuesday's show. I dunno why but I've lost a lot of interest in this season suddenly. I'm still pulling for David Archuletta and Ramiele Malubay, but I just got so bored with the show. Mr. Pikko says its because of the two weeks of Lennon/McCarthy and I think he's got something there. I mean, they made great songs, but they're very mellow and not very exciting. I don't get how they expect the kids to MAKE a mellow song exciting. Survivor was on last night, but I'll have to watch it tonight! I hope Cirie is finally gone! I despise her for getting rid of Yao Man.

Gyoza & Onigiri (196)

Someone commented on yesterday's entry with a link to Spark People and I went to take a look and will definitely have to give that a try. I realize that I owe Weight Watchers a lot for helping me lose 22 pounds, but right now Mr. Pikko is very concerned about all the doom and gloom talk that economists are having so I need to shave spending. A subscription to WW again is something I want and not something I necessarily need, so I really need to thank mbbored for the referral. Free 99 is most definitely a Pikko kind of price tag!

As I mentioned, economy has become a hot issue in my household. To show my support for this, I'm going to start trying to focus on doing more cost-friendly bentos. I might even start a series of a subject like say, 50 Ways to Eat A Costco Chicken. Actually, 50 is a lot... I should start lower with 12 maybe, haha!

For now though, I'm trying to uh... purge my fridge and freezer from things that I've bought during naughty trips to Foodland. I packed 3 pork gyoza into this bento along with a leftover pink onigiri from the freezer. The fish bottle has soy sauce for the gyoza. Next to it I have kim chee crab, which I will eat with the lettuce that lines the box. In the middle I have sliced takuan, ume, and edamame.

When I first got these small round boxes I didn't really care for them but now I really enjoy packing small lunches into them. I wish I had more of these black lacquer boxes as I really think food in a black box makes for great contrasting colors. I haven't used my two-tier boxes in quite a while, I guess I am just going through a bento box mood right now.

Easter is right around the corner and UGH do I hate holidays like these because it means giving a whole lot of things to a whole lot of kids. Don't get the wrong idea, I do enjoy giving to kids. But 17 kids? My wallet is crying uncle! My husband's eyeballs are still rolling around the cash register at Price Busters. My sanity is pleading insanity! (Don't you just love the feel of Easter grass between your toes?) And this doesn't even include my own kids and my niece and nephew. After this ridiculousness I'm done with classmate Easter baskets. Next year, I'm having a big Easter card project at my house for my two kids and we're giving handmade painted egg cards and a healthy snack. This just costs way too much.

Crab & Avocado Sandwich (194)

Sorry for the lack of bentos this week, but as I mentioned last Friday, we had a potluck on Monday. Lots of yummy foods were consumed including an apple/nut salad, lobster ravioli, healthy rice (from me, more on that later), enchiladas (which I didn't eat after someone said, WOW THEY'RE SPICY!), lots of fresh veggies, some REALLY ono fresh salsa with corn chips, salami & cheese on toothpicks, cold cut sandwiches, and lots of other goodies including the cuuuutest Easter cupcakes which I am so stealing for Easter this year.

Yesterday I stayed home because poor Baby Girl caught Buddy's stomach virus. She lay limp and miserable all day, the poor thing. ;(

As I mentioned, I made Healthy Rice, which is a very good and increasingly popular dish that I got from Grandma J who got it from someone else. It's very simple to make and I was asked for the recipe by at least half the office.

5 cups cooked rice
1 jar Nametake mushrooms
1 jar Ochazuke furikake
2 cups shelled edamame

Instructions:

1. Combine and stir together well.

I still have leftover ingredients so I'll be sure to make more for a bento once I buy more edamame. The best part of it all? I am allergic to mushrooms and I gave this a try, happily discovering that I can eat nametake mushrooms no problem! WOOHOO!!!

I haven't had a sandwich bento in quite some time so I decided to use some of the big pack of Costco imitation crab meat that I bought for a sandwich. Since mayo is a big no-no in calories and I've brought a lot of food for lunch, I opted to use Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese instead. It's possible this will turn out to be a terrible combo, we'll see!!


I lightly toast the bread but it gets a bit soggy in the fridge anyway, so I only toast it to make the cutting easier. I lined the sandwich box with lettuce, which I eat with the sandwich so nothing gets wasted. I also sliced up some avocado to make it less boring. With the cheese and the bread, this comes out to a 5 point bento. Each slice is 2 points! D:

The silliest part of this bento is the baby carrots. This bag was a bad batch, containing a lot of carrots that didn't get peeled well, so were therefore very bitter. Trust me, peeling little baby carrots is a severe pain in the ass. And I just noticed one of them had the nerve to fall out of place in the box before I took the picture. How rude!


I haven't had one of these in a while. Since this is an additional quarter avocado, this salad is 1 point. But, with all the walking I do for this job, the 1 point isn't a big deal. I get about 40 minutes of walking done per day just to pick up the mail. Pretty good, huh? :D


Lately I've been eating a lot of food so I have to keep myself under control by eating a lot of healthy food. I brought miso soup with tofu to eat in the morning, which was a good thing since Buddy had me up at 4:30 AM asking to eat everything under the sun. (catching up for 3 days of almost no eating) I brought more of my ancient kiwis along with their buddies the Senior Citizen Blueberries. If you look closely, you can see their wrinkles. As I've said before, I hate wasting fruit. You should have seen the nasty ass raspberries I very reluctantly threw away this morning. (I almost ate a few before tossing too, lol!)

It's more important than ever for me to be adhering to my diet now because my bridesmaid dress came in. I ended up being asked to pick my own and I chose this one. I love it! And even better, I fit quite perfectly into a size 6 petite! WOOOO! That's actually better than the dress, hehe!

Last Legs Bento

I have a very strange bento today because I had to use up a lot of old food before it expired. We had pork chops last night but I didn't take any since I had a pot of rice about to dry up in my cooker. When I was looking in the fridge for something to put in with it I noticed a tub of kim chee crab that I had forgotten about. It actually expired yesterday but I figure one more day isn't going to kill me. *knock on wood*

The rice was actually starting to turn a light yellow color because I cooked it on Sunday so I mixed it up with a lot of furikake then added nori punch faces. These punches are so great because when you have several you can just mix and match the eyes and mouths. I was lazy so I just shoved all the crab into the middle. I have an avocado that I forgot at work, so I'll use that to help with the spicyness. I added two carrot flowers to the middle and two last sprigs of wilted parsley before finally dumping it. This is why I'm calling this my "Last Legs" bento, lol.

Buddy saw me slicing the carrots and wanted the flower outlines, so I gave them to him, thinking how lovely it is to have a son that eats veggies without blinking an eye.

Then I found regurgitated, chewed up carrot on the carpet in front of him in my bedroom. He was grinning ear to ear, the little fart.

I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and posting nice comments. I really appreciate everyone being so encouraging!!

Sandwich Kit (151)

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

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

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

Shoyu Chicken (150)

Sorry for the late posting, I've hit 9,999 posts on Allakhazam and I've been busy prepping what I'm revealing for my 10k ding. Today I had a three tier bento but don't let the pictures deceive you, this box is actually really small, maybe 5 inches long or less. It was a plain box that I got at Marukai this summer during E3 and I added a sticker to make it a little cuter.

This is shoyu chicken made by my MIL with some white rice decorated with mixed veggies. If you're thinking to yourself, "Geez I wonder if she placed those vegetables into her bento one by one", the answer is yes I did. I used chopsticks. In Allakhazam IRC yesterday we were all laughing at this guy who doesn't know how to use chopsticks. All in good fun, but I just wanted to mention how awesome chopsticks are. I even eat spaghetti with chopsticks; a habit I picked up from my friend Janis.

I packed more kim chee crab and avocado without lettuce. I found after forgetting the veggies that it's actually not too bad without it, especially if I don't have room in the box. I bought the avocado at Foodland on Sunday and I'm very proud to say that I chose perfectly. The next morning when I cut it open it was beautiful and the best possible texture for slicing. It looks exactly the same as yesterdays just with no tomatoes.

My tomato garden died while I was in Anaheim. Mr. Pikko claims, "Hey! I watered them!" but I have my doubts. The plants are all brown and I think they're unrecoverable. Not too bad though, I must have gotten like 200 tomatoes out of those plants and now I have the pot space to grow edamame!! Weeeee!

Finally I had pomegranate seeds for dessert. Actually I lied, I had some godly pumpkin pie for dessert. George at work brought by some pieces of this pumpkin pie that his wife made and holy omg it was divine. I asked for the recipe and hopefully I'll have that in my grubby little pumpkin pie loving hands soon. Yum yum!

Pork Tofu

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



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

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


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


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

Whole Wheat Spaghetti (138)

Yesterday this really scary e-mail got sent out by Campus Security saying that some psycho was overheard talking to himself on a bus about how he was going to shoot 30 UH students, then he got off the bus at McCully, which is maybe a mile from campus. I work in a secure area, but Mr. Pikko didn't want to take any chances, so he asked me to leave work early (he was at home sick). So I did and was able to get some errands done, including returning $107 worth of merchandise to Sephora. Man, that felt good. I then went to Longs and bought mascara, eye makeup remover, and a foundation sponge for $17.00. All that cost less than the mascara I returned, hahaha!! My cheapo brain was positively beaming.

We ate Zippy's yesterday and I had to pick up this monstrous order for everyone. We discovered that their fried chicken is freakin' expensive!! 17 bucks for 10 pieces. I mean, it tastes really good but what the heck? Anyway, Zippy's now offers whole wheat noodles for their spaghetti, which I am of course a big fan of since WW noodles are a Core food. I've got some for lunch today with some fried bell peppers and sweet onion. I fry these in olive oil and pepper, so it's still a Core addition. Next to it I have a slice of toasted whole wheat bread topped lightly with spread and garlic salt to make some healthier garlic bread.

In my other layer I have the last of my kim chee crab and some avocado. The kim chee crab this time was a lil more expensive than usual, but I think it's because they used a better brand of imitation crab and you can really taste the difference. Hopefully Foodland will continue to use that one. Our avocado tree has reached the end of it's fruit season, so it's back to buying avocados for me. People seem to comment pretty frequently about how beautiful my avocados are and I'm a little confused by this. Are people admiring the way I cut them or are avocados just uglier on the mainland? Please fill this clueless Hawaii girl in please! :D

Halloween is coming... I must find somewhere or someone to dump all the Halloween candy on... I must also think of some appropriate thing for my kids to "buy" with their Halloween candy. A toy? A movie? Any suggestions on healthy alternatives?

Shoyu Chicken (136)

I went to Sephora yesterday to get a makeover and this nice pregnant lady named Maria helped me with a makeover then took me shopping. By the time I got to the register, the bill was a heart attack inducing $254!!! I got back down to earth when I got home and picked out three things that I'm going to return, which brings my purchase price down to a more reasonable $170. Still enough to cause my wallet to burst into tears, but I've been feeling for the last 6 months or so that I'm too plain and wanted to at least learn how. So... I'm happy. I just have to practice application now. -_-

My life has been consumed with Fan Fest and my bentos have been made in auto mode lately. I can't wait til this is finally over, then I can think about things other than FFXI and databases and websites and booth promotions and costumes etc etc. I've been slacking so badly on bento orders and for that I sincerely apologize. Fan Fest is just 3 weeks out, hopefully I survive until then.


Today's bento took me a shockingly quick 15 minutes to make. I had rice leftover for the onigiri but the nori face was frustrating me. I guess certain brands of nori just don't cut well. The chicken I let cook in Yoshida's sauce overnight on low, so it was pretty difficult to cut and still get them in nice pieces, they kept falling apart! My MIL usually cooks them in the sauce, adds a little water, then thickens the sauce, but I didn't have time to thicken the sauce so I ended up with what just looks like Shoyu Chicken. Still tastes good tho! The broccoli I heated up water in a pyrex and then let them sit in the hot water for a few minutes and the carrots and tomatoes were put in for color.


My second layer picture is terribly blurry and not very exciting, but it will taste great and give me a nice spicy boost after lunch!

Total points for this bento is 1 for the onigiri. The chicken is made from boneless skinless, trimmed thighs so I didn't count it, though I suppose I should. 2 points? ^_-

Core Bento (134)

After two days of sickness and a weekend of last minute naughty food gorging, I'm back today on the Core diet to lose the last 10 pounds to reach my goal.


On the left side I have some shrimp and in the little yellow container there is cocktail sauce to dip them into. I didn't get to photograph the egg too well, but this is from one of the new egg molds I mentioned last week. Next to the egg I have cucumber kim chee, then some small carrot sticks, and two small blocks of tofu. I've got a fish with soy sauce for the egg and the tofu, but now that I think about it I should have brought a piggie cause the fish isn't much sauce. Guess I'll eat the egg with salt!

I've also got a kim chee crab and avocado salad. I took a picture this time since it's been a while and people may not know what it is when I say KCCA. Foodland sells at their deli Kim Chee Imitation Crab and since it's spicy I use that along with avocado and romaine lettuce to make a dressing-free salad.


I'm starting this new phase of my diet at 129.5 pounds, so let's see how well I do by the time Fan Fest rolls around!

Ham 'n Cheese Pizza (121)

Yesterday at the market we were strolling to the fruit section when I spied some pizza crusts. I decided to let the kids try making their own homemade pizzas for dinner. We have this cute book, which is currently AWOL in our house somewhere, that is a story about how to make pizza and so I picked up a packet of three 7" crusts, a bag of fat free mozzarella, and a jar of pizza sauce.

Baby Girl did surprisingly well in spreading the sauce all over and then putting the cheese on. She was putting a little too much cheese on her own, but just needed a little guidance. Then Godzilla Buddy came into the kitchen. He grabbed a handful of cheese from her pizza and threw it down on the floor! He grabbed another and shoved it in his mouth! Oh the horror! I kid, of course. It was cute. I chopped up some ham for them to sprinkle on and then promptly confiscated the tray to make some ham adjustments. Baby Girl thought she was being so clever by putting 1 or 2 pieces on her pizza and the rest on her brother's. Anyway, I guess the idea of pizza was more fun to them than eating it because as I suspected, they weren't really hungry yet. We'd eaten a really late lunch at 3:30 so I had a lot left to take today.


I have about 3/4 of a pizza stuffed into this box and then on the sides I have olives and carrots. I should have remembered the olives when I was making the pizza, but this is me we're talking about. I rarely remember things. My fruit layer:


On the left are some black grapes, which the market claimed was "seedless" but they most certainly are NOT seedless. I learned this the hard way after I chomped into one and bit into a ton of bitter seeds. They're still great grapes though. On the right are gala apple slices. And in the middle.... this is the highlight of my lunch today. Kookaburra licorice. My friend from Allakhazam, Kaolian, sent me 3 bags of this amazing stuff in thanks for sending him a copy of the FFXI Starter Pack and this is by far the best licorice I have ever eaten. I used to hate licorice when I was a kid but somewhere along the way to adulthood I tried it and love Red Vines.

These however, totally kick Red Vines into distant memories. They're soft and gummyish and taste so good. I cleaned out almost the entire bag this weekend and Baby Girl is addicted too. They're coming out with Mango and Raspberry flavors soon and I'll definitely have to try those. Anyway, thank you SO much Kao. It's a miracle these pieces survived the weekend, really.

There's still more to my lunch! I haven't posted a picture of a KCCA salad in a while, but since this one features my very own home grown tomatoes, I had to take a picture!


They're so cute and yummy! They don't turn completely red and some of them were starting to burst open on the vine, so now I just squeeze them and if they're a bit soft, I pick them. I had about a dozen tomatoes to use as of this morning. I'm quite the happy gardener today!

Zebra Bento & Countdown

Yet another reason why I am mental, I dragged the family to Don Quijote (formerly Daiei, formerly Holiday Mart) to look for good items to use in my bento #100, which I thought was going to be today's one. Well lucky thing I came home and triple counted my bentos cause this is actually bento #96! Oh well... the things I bought should hold up fine until then. But from today I will do a countdown. Three actually.

Bento Countdown to 100: 4!
Days until UH Football: 9!
Days until UFC 74: 2!

Granted our opening game is like the joke of all college football but hey, I'm still excited to see Colt throwing again and to see how the team is shaping up this year. A game against a seriously outmatched underdog makes me worry a lot less than opening against Alabama like last year. So, this is at the very least good for my nerves. I'm still nervous since losing to this team would ruin everything, but it's just a little teeny nervousness. What I am nervous about is our season tickets. Where the hell are they??

And yes, we're having another UFC party this weekend, so I'll have to watch what I eat tomorrow because I know I'll probably end up overeating Saturday night.

On to the bento! Today I have made an entry for bentochallenge! The theme this week is favorite song and although I don't have any one single favorite song, this one that I did is definitely high up there. The sandwich the zebra rests on is a turkey and avocado sandwich on Roman Meal Honey Oat bread, so that will count as 3 points. (since I cut off the crusts) The zebra is made out of Swiss cheese and nori cutouts. I'm quite proud of him as I did all the cutting freehand. No printouts this time! His eyes and nostrils are made out of black sesame seeds.


He's wearing a red bell pepper sweater. I wasn't sure this would be clear so that's why I added in the yellow zig zag. At the top are the letters HELLO carved out of bell peppers as well. This word is part of the hint to the song, so pay attention to that too! On the right side I put a KCCA salad for Mr. Zebra to eat. A close up view:


And now for the answer:









Take a guess!














Mr. Zebra by Tori Amos

Lyrics:

Hello Mr. Zebra
Can I have you sweater
Cause it's cold cold cold
In my hole hole hole
Ratatouille Strychnine
Sometimes she's a friend of mine
With a gigantic whirlpool
That will blow your mind

Hello Mr. Zebra
Ran into some confusion with a Mrs. Crocodile
Furry mussels marching on
She thinks she's Kaiser Wilhelm
Or a civiliaes syllabub
To blow your mind
Figure it out
She's a goodtime fella
She got a little fund to fight for Moneypenny's rights
Figure it out
She's a goodtime fella
Too bad the burial was premature she said
And smiled

So you see, he's Mr. Zebra and he's wearing a sweater which Ms. Amos wants. :D

If you've never heard the song of course you'll think I'm nutters for liking it and that Tori Amos is clearly singing more than two bricks short of a full load, but if you listen to it, it's a really cute and chipper song. It's very short and is old school Tori back when she still sang with only her piano.

One last thing, a friend from Allakhazam is a finalist on Hunt for the Hunter so that she can be a guest star on the Sci-Fi show Ghost Hunters. Please vote for her! She is the first video displayed, Brittany Beaulac!

Kim Chee Crab Sandwich

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I sure had a productive one! Folded a pile of laundry backed up since like February or something crazy like that, opened my bento store, went to a bon dance in Waipahu, got Rank 8 in FFXI, and I even managed to do a Pikko Pots update! Go me!

I had bought crab last week but forgot about it so I had a whole 1/2 lb tub in the fridge. I didn't want to just bring a KCCA salad for lunch so I tried something new by making my own "seafood salad" sandwich. It's quite expensive points wise, coming out to 5.5 points, just for a sandwich!! Each slice of Roman Meal Honey Oat bread is 2 points (sob) and I added 1 1/2 Tbsp of Miracle Whip Light, which is 1.5 points. Ouch!

I toasted the bread too much so it was quite frustrating to cut it. I even sharpened my knife before slicing and it was still rock hard. Plus with a sandwich that thick you know I ended up squishing everything all over the place and then shoved it back in. Anyway, I wanted to include the last of my almost dead avocado, so I mashed it up and mixed it up with my thinly sliced lettuce so that it would stay in nicely. If I'd used just plain chopped lettuce it's likely I'd have ended up flinging my sandwich around the kitchen like a wild monkey. That stuff is so hard to handle, especially when you're chopping it like that! I added some sliced bell peppers for color and to eat more veggies.

I mentioned going to a bon dance in Waipahu. It was the Waipahu Soto Zen Temple Taiyoji on Waipahu street and I thought it was a good one. They had a sizable crowd dancing and I even got to dance to Fukushima Ondo this time, though I only did the footwork because I was holding Baby Girl while doing it. That gets pretty tiring after a while obviously, so thankfully she requested we get out of line after one circle of the yagura tower. Buddy was having loads of fun driving Mr. Pikko crazy by running all over the parking lot and ramming people's feet with the stroller. Unfortunately we only stayed an hour because Baby Girl had a stomach ache. Still, first time this season I got to dance! We'll be in Kona next weekend and I'm hoping that I can convince my brother or cousins to go to the one there. It starts at 8 pm so I'm hoping maybe we could go around 10. But I'm there for my cousin's wedding reception so if there's no time, then no big deal. I just can't resist the thought of going to a Big Island one again.

Our tomato garden is really starting to pick up now and our corn plants have sprouted. How exciting!

Re: The store

I added the matching Putifresh bento bags this morning!

Mapo Tofu

My ultimate mother-in-law (she'd kick your MIL's ass in a cooking contest for sure) made us beef broccoli and her version of non-spicy mapo tofu yesterday. Her mapo tofu is one of my favorite dishes of hers, behind her spare ribs, which completely own me. I decided to take only some of the tofu because I needed a lower point lunch today to help me get back on track.


Due to my husband's claim that onions are responsible for everything from cancer to blindness, she chops green onions and then banishes them to one side of the pan. I felt bad because I know what a pain it can be to chop them so fine and with the green onions put in time-out, no one took them. I ate a bunch of them and was happy to take more to accent my lunch.

To help me make it through the day I packed a veggie bento. The top layer has asparagus fried in olive oil and garlic salt. I made too much so Mr. Pikko and I had a few of the extras. Pan frying is the best way imo. I've done them in the oven before but I get bored standing around then forget about it and by the time I get back they're past the point of no return and I end up with olive green limp stalks instead of bright green spears of goodness. With pan frying I stand there constantly flipping it around and can pick them out as they're done.


On the bottom is a small KCCA Salad. I just realized that it sounds like a radio station, haha! Speaking of radio, if any of my Hawaii readers happened to be listening to the Leaheys on Kumu yesterday, I was the Crystal that called in asking if they were going to interview BJ Penn. I get so nervous calling radio stations, but luckily didn't stutter more than once this time.

I want to thank all of the people that have been rallying and voting for me at Allakhazam. You guys have gotten me over 50 votes in just one day!! <3

Pointless Bento

I got on the scale this morning and I'd gained a pound and a half, so apparently my 3 day dessert binge this past weekend has finally caught up with me. Plus we ate sushi last night and though I didn't eat much, I ate past being satisfied then had Jamba Juice afterwards. *sheepish face* So today, I have an all Core bento, which I decided needed a nice joke to spruce it up. It's point-less. GET IT? Ahahaha! No? Well, fine then. I thought it was punny.


One side has my kim chee crab and the avocado on top. The other side has some cucumber pickles that I made this morning. I finally bought this book I'd been wanting on Amazon called Easy Japanese Pickling in 5 Minutes to One Day and though this is only the first recipe I've tried and I haven't yet eaten the pickles, the book itself looks pretty awesome. It's got lots of nifty pictures and easy instructions. The recipes themselves have very few ingredients. The one I chose today is called "Tosa Style Cucumber Pickles" and it took me less than five minutes to prepare. They're to soak for 20 minutes but I only had enough time to let them soak for 15. I figured they'd be sitting in my bento for a bit anyway so it didn't matter. It's basically a sliced cucumber with shaved bonito and soy sauce. We'll see how it tastes.


My fruit layer consists of yellow peach and a few strawberries. These are the good strawberries I have. To me there are two different varieties of strawberries and I can always tell which ones are the ones I like. At Costco I bought a big box of the yuckier ones (they look fat and the seeds stick out) to make fruit leather cause I bought a food dehydrator to preserve the Costco fruits we can't manage to eat in time. It's pretty awesome and the kids love it even though there's no sugar added.


Instead of showing a boring picture of what is just lettuce in my top layer, here is a picture of my bento all packed up in my Doggie Woogie container. Though this is one of my most costly bento boxes, I've found that it was well worth it. I've used it on many occasions and it's the perfect size for taking a day's worth of food to work instead of packing 3 different bento boxes.

Zippy's Chili

We ate Zippy's Chili last night, which is without a doubt the best chili to be found in Hawaii. If you are reading this from the mainland and you know what I'm talking about, are ya homesick yet? Hehe! I used to eat only the beanless chili but after finding out that chili with beans is less points than without, I decided to give bean chili a shot again and found out that it's pretty good. There was a lot leftover, so I took some for today's lunch. It doesn't look all that appealing in a bento, but hey, it really makes up for it in taste.

I dug out my very very first "bento" container from years and years ago. It's a really old fashioned stainless steel Zebra 3-tier food carrier which I'm sure Hawaii old-timers would recognize right away. I bought it forever ago at some little store at the Hilo Shopping Center. The thing had really shrunk in my mind because when I finally did dig it out I was like, "WTF! It's so huge!" Probably because it's meant to carry food for more than one person. But anyway...


I stuck my Doggie Woogie divider in there to keep the chili separate then added in a little tiny container of ahi shoyu poke and another tiny one of dried daikon kim chee. I bought the kim chee from Kim Chee when we ate there last weekend. They sold me a pretty big tub for $2.00, which is actually cheaper than the smaller tub of cucumber kim chee I buy. It's really yummy. It looks wet but is called dried daikon kim chee because it's, well, dried and then soaked in sauces and such.


No surprise here, yet another kim chee crab and avocado salad! Hehe.. For the last layer I packed a chopped fuji apple and a sliced white peach. I ate like 4 of these peaches on Sunday because eating fruit from Costco is a race against time. You stand in the warehouse looking at the box of really yummy looking fruit and you think to yourself, I can eat it before it rots... I think. And then you get home with 3 types of fruits and you're like CRAP I can't even fit it in my fridge! I'll have to eat what's left outside! *sob* And then the next time you go to Costco you see a new batch of berries and you're like, ooooo. A vicious cycle I tell ya.


I know what you're thinking: Oink! Oink! The reason I've packed so much food is because this whole week we've been getting in to work by 7:45 am so as to prepare Baby Girl for a preschool routine. This means that I'm waking up and eating breakfast two hours earlier than before so now I'm hungry by 10 or so. I'll eat the salad around 10ish, the chili at around 1, and snack on the fruits around 3 or 4. If I don't pack enough to last me all day I end up eating more at dinner, which is what I want to avoid. We ate hot dogs with the chili last night and I almost passed out after seeing the nutritional info so I just ate half of one. I'm not sure how many points the chili is, but the Wendy's chili isn't too bad, so going on that I'm still on track for the week. And hey, I'm back down to 133.5! :D

Turkey Sandwiches

I was able to make my lightbox last night and it didn't come out so good. So much for "couldn't be easier to use"! I should have known that something labeled so easy was going to have the fine print "except for short dorky Asian girls named Crystal" where I wouldn't see it. Good thing it only cost me like a dollar to make it! It's not completely sucky though, as I was able to use it for my pictures this morning. I do like the seamless white background so that I don't have to wrestle with my dirty white kitchen towels anymore. I blame me not having good lights. These photos were taken after I removed the top side tracing paper and then placed the lightbox under the stove lights.

I've really missed bread and since I had a 2 point lunch and an all Core dinner yesterday (steak, salad, onions, zucchini) it seemed ok to finally eat some. Lunch today consists of star shaped turkey sandwiches made with Roman Meal Honey Oat Wheat bread, lettuce, 96% FF turkey, bell pepper, and Laughing Cow Light Swiss used instead of mayonnaise.


The swiss is a pretty soft cheese, so I just mushed it up a little bit and then it spread onto the bread with no problems. I used bell pepper because it's a brighter red and tomatoes were going to be too messy. Filled in the spaces with some julienned baby carrots and grape tomatoes. I bought a small box of the grape tomatoes at Foodland. They were pretty expensive at $3.99 for the box, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that I won't be letting 100+ tomatoes rot in my fridge. Plus, these particular grape tomatoes are super sweet!


My sister-in-law gave us a pack of pre-cut fruits including honeydew melon, watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple so I sliced them up and put them into my fruit layer then added two strawberry flowers. Now that I look at the picture I'm sad that I didn't notice that my strawberry flowers don't have their seeds aligned. :(


I may be tired of lomi salmon, but I'm still not tired of Kim Chee Crab & Avocado Salad!! This stuff really is SO good and so I couldn't resist packing another one today. Mr. Pikko keeps raiding the tub of crab and saying "ohhh so good!" so I have to use it if I want to eat any! ^_^

Bento challenge this week is Sci Fi TV and though I'm dying to do some kind of Battlestar Galactica bento, I have no fracking clue what to make...

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!

Chicken tofu

Contrary to what I said about not losing weight this week, yesterday morning the scale informed me that I'd lost 2.5 lbs, making me exactly 134.0 lbs! I passed my 10% weight loss goal and have officially lost 16 lbs since the end of March. ^_^ Having very low point days is a good thing. The bad part is that since I had 4 extra points tonight, I decided I could have a cupcake. I did decapitate the frosting, but still, bad habit! In other news, my success has inspired two of my Allakhazam co-workers to join up with Weight Watchers! Wewt!

Last night we had a pretty yummy dinner, MIL made chicken tofu with long rice. I nuked one of my frozen packets of kim chee fried rice and added it in to help keep this lunch all Core. I'm still thinking about what to do for a pirate bento and am now considering sitting this one out. It's a pretty hard theme and not one I'm all that excited about. I do have some ideas for pirate ships. We'll see! Anyway, here is the top layer. It was quite dreary, so I added the parsley and tomato. Not that it helped all that much.


I've decided to make larger versions of my bentos available, so from now on you can click each image for an enlargement.

The pupu layer consists of the rest of the ahi shoyu poke, kim chee crab, and some baby carrots. The top carrots are actually sliced in half because it wouldn't have closed with two layers of carrots.


I'll end with one last bit of exciting news. My friend is currently on a trip in Japan and I had asked him to keep an eye out for these nori punches. He emailed me to say he was able to find them with ease and will be carrying them home for me! The best part is I have avoided the $17 shipping fee I saw on eBay. Good thing I have cast iron will and an amazing resistence to making impulse purchases online!

NOT! I'm just cheap...