Shrimp & Asparagus Pasta (188)

This past weekend Baby Girl won two passes to an advance screening of Penelope. Since it was enough for 4 people, we made a Girl's Night Out of it and she and I went with my niece and Grandma J. We got there way too early, so we went to the nearby shoe store to buy sandals. The movie was really cute, I liked it! James McAvoy was really hawt, but then I went to look him up and found that he was that creepy fawn from the Narnia movie. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and adored Mr. Tumnus in the book, but he was just so icky and badly cast. So my advice to him is to stay away from fawn roles and stick to hot-gambling-addict-with-a-heart-of-gold roles. I found it amusing that this movie takes place in what is obviously London, but none of the main characters had British accents.

I didn't have a bento yesterday because we had our free lunch at Hanaki. The food was good, but I ate too much. :( Back to healthy business today...


I had to come up with something to use up the assloads of shrimp I STILL had left in that neverending salad from Costco, so I thought this up last night while falling asleep. I sprayed Pam into a pot (I'd used it to boil the noodles and didn't feel like using two dishes) and threw the shrimp in, then the asparagus, then put in some garlic salt. I added olive oil and the noodles, tossed them around, and voila! An all Core pasta bento! The noodles are whole wheat spaghetti, which is allowed on the Core diet as long as it's just one serving. The olive oil is a healthy oil and you're supposed to eat a teaspoon or tablespoon a day on Core. I couldn't remember if it was teaspoon or tablespoon so I decided it's better to go with the lesser amount... I cut a little grape tomato in half to decorate it.

I put my name into one of those boxes at a smoothie store and "won" 30 free day at 24 hour fitness. I had to squeeze into a tight schedule of what sounded like several other "winners" to meet with the membership hustler tonight. I had a membership once long ago but was too intimidated by the place. I figure if I get a free month I should check it out again.

Star Spaghetti

I learned a lot of things this weekend. For one, it's a mega pain in the ass to have to do anti-fraud stuff to prevent identity theft. We changed bank accounts, called Social Security, put fraud alerts out, etc. Two, I learned that it's best to make completely sure that your friendly neighborhood burglar did actually take your social security cards because if you should find them later, you feel pretty stupid.

But we won't talk about that. Let's just say I'm relieved and leave it at that. The good news is there might be a lead on who did it. Hooray!

With our house in complete disorder (15% from burglar, 70% from kids, 15% from general messiness) I had to do some cleaning and this led me to start thoroughly cleaning out the kids' room, which has become a disastrous storage area that things get literally tossed into when guests come over. What I learned from this was that closet doors are very frustrating to put back in, so it's best not to accidently rip them off track. Then I learned that I still fit into my prom dress from 1996, which was frickin' awesome. I have to get that thing cleaned and preserved or something. Baby Girl was very upset and loudly demanded, "WHY DIDN'T YOU BUY ONE FOR ME, MOMMY???" I found pictures too and I thought about scanning them, but then decided my head was too fat. The last thing I learned was that when you drop a couple dozen child hangers into unraveled and tangled kite string, you are in for some hell and the people near you will have to cover their ears.

My MIL had a lot of leftover spaghetti from earlier in the week and I was more than happy to offer to take it home because then I didn't have to cook. Even after we ate, there was still a lot left so I brought some for lunch today. I didn't have much time because I was lazy this morning, so all I did to decorate it was to put some star shaped cheese and then a piece of parsley, which if you look carefully, is terribly wilted.

On Sunday we decided to eat cheap and had lunch from McDonald's. Happy Meal toys really aren't what they used to be...


If you look at this picture you will see this bizarre looking toy that came with the meal. Look at the instructions... I mean... what? Is it just a stencil and the weird looking creature holds it?? There is a little lever on the side and if you move it up and down, the freaky thing makes like he's manhandling his invisible alien peepee. Great toy, really.

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?

Spaghetti & 20k! (108)

It looks like today I will be hitting the 20k mark, which is really something for me since I've only had this counter up since May, making it 20,000 visits in just over 4 months! Thank you to everyone for reading and I hope you keep coming back!

Yesterday Baby Girl was adamant about eating spaghetti for dinner so we headed to Foodland to do the week's grocery shopping and I picked up a McCormick packet of spaghetti this time instead of the usual ready made sauce jars. I had wanted to try something new but apparently before I do things like this I should be made to go back to elementary school for reading lessons as I cooked it totally wrong. I read "tomato sauce" instead of "tomato paste" and added 3/4 cup too much water. +_+ Pure genius. I figured the kids wouldn't care so I just fed it to them kinda watery and I was right, they ate it all up. Probably because I added the magic ingredient, Kraft cheese. I was told once that this is a Big Island habit and that elsewhere it's considered really weird. Mr. Pikko had to wait an extra hour for the sauce to burn off the extra water. *sigh*


This spaghetti is all Core because I used extra extra lean meat, olive oil, a seasoning packet, tomato sauce, and whole wheat pasta. I have some extra and will likely freeze them tomorrow into cups as Biggie has suggested on her blog. To top the spaghetti I have half a small red bell pepper thinly sliced and then topped with parsley. On the side I have the last remaining butt of garlic bread, which will count as 2 points all by itself.


On my bottom layer I have a small cup full of blueberries. Ever since I started eating them I've felt that they have a very familiar taste and last night I finally realized what it is. They taste just like waiwi (pronounced why-vee), which is a small guava that grows here in Hawaii. The picture on that page shows a red guava, but the ones that are more common on the Big Island are the yellow variety. I loooooooooooove waiwi. My dad knows that if he ever sees a big cluster of green ones that he should pick it for me and send it over. When I first met Mr. Pikko he took me to meet his grandpa and he had a yellow waiwi tree in his backyard. Unfortunately the dumb plant was growing into his water line so he had to chop it down. *sob*

I am a serious fruit fan and the best part about growing up on the Big Island is that we have all kinds of awesome weird fruits to eat including waiwi, guava, rambutan, lychee, starfruit, etc. What I miss the most though is hands down: mountain apple. Ohhh man. My grandma had a bigass tree in her yard and my dad used to climb the tree to pick it riddled with spiders and all kinds of gross crap. Lots of times they had worms in them but when you did get one that was free of stings and ripe... ohhhhh. It's times like this I really miss Hilo. Take a look at this page to see some farmer's market pictures and maybe you'll see what I mean. Hilo may have been a dumpy town to grow up in but it sure does have it's moments.

Ok so back to the bento, haha. I also have green grapes which we bought yesterday. Thankfully, most places seem to be stocking more and more USA produce. YaY! Next to that I have some diet horrors. A brownie cut in half so that it fit into the box on it's side and then half of a sugar cookie. My sister-in-law baked these and brought them over, claiming they didn't taste very good but of course she was lying, they taste like heaven. The cookies are a bit odd as they are spongy, but the best part is they taste exactly like pancakes soaked in maple syrup. I wish I could have fit a whole one in there... On the side I also have a KCCA salad and a white peach.

On the menu for tonight: teriyaki ahi with fried tofu steak! Mmmm..

Spaghetti & Drawing!

Bento #97 for today is a bit plain as I fell asleep early and didn't have any time this morning to do much else than boil the noodles and top it with some veggies. Last night I ate this with regular spaghetti as I was hungry but when I took some for my lunch I only took the sauce because whole wheat pasta (which I have at home) is a Core food while regular pasta is not.


I topped it with corn and bell peppers to give it better color. I was tempted to take garlic bread, but that would have been 2 whole points right there so I thankfully resisted.

Guess what! Our season tickets finally arrived in the mail today! Woohoo! First game is next week Saturday and I cannot wait to start planning our food for those games! Last night I took video of Baby Girl doing all her cheers and I'll get around to posting it before the season starts. I really hope her UH cheerleader outfit still fits cause that sucker was like $50. I have to get down to the Rainbotique and find Buddy a mini football jersey. There's this cute one with the number "1/2" on the back for little boys. It's very awww.

Since I was at the post office today shipping out bento orders, the idea came to me to have a little drawing in celebration of the big #100. So to mark the occasion, I am offering up a prize packet of one Hello Kitty bento box (I'll discuss with you color), some soy sauce bottles, and sushi grass as a prize for a drawing. All you have to do to enter is e-mail me at pikkopots gmail dot com with the following information:

Name:
Country:
E-mail:
Why you like bento:

Don't worry, I won't post anything except your first name, country, and why you like bento when you win. On the night I'm making #100 I will write everyone's name on a piece of paper and then have Baby Girl pick one from a bag. Hopefully she won't produce a fist full of papers and proclaim everyone winners, cause I'd go broke sending that out!

Ebi Curry Spaghetti

I'm at home sick today but since I will be venturing out to get a safety check on my van at a place nearby, I decided to go during lunchtime so that I can still do a bento today. This morning Baby Girl was really whimpery and sad about going back to school for some reason, so I took her in to school instead of her going with Daddy. She started screaming as soon as we got to the classroom and the aide had to pry her off my leg. Hopefully it really is just the dropping off part she doesn't like and this afternoon she'll be all smiles again.

I mentioned that I'd bought some packet to make Ebi Curry Spaghetti (ebi meaning shrimp) and I tried it out today. I ate what didn't fit in the box and it was pretty good!

The whole package according to the back is 2 servings at 140 calories and 1 gram of fat, which strikes me as a little odd but I guess since the serving of noodles is so small, that would be why. Whatever, something that low fat I can definitely live with!! Still, it comes out to 4 points for lunch. Not too bad, but it means I'll have to eat a pretty strict Core dinner tonight.

It was pretty easy to make, took about I dunno 10 minutes? That was probably because I sliced and cut the carrot flowers though. As you can see, there's broccoli to go with it. It looked pretty plain so I chopped up some carrot really fine to sprinkle on top. I have one more package in the fridge along with the rest of the shrimp, so maybe I'll try it out on the kids this weekend. ^_^

Spaghetti & artichokes

I've made a really funky looking bento today because I had a specific set of things to work with, namely spaghetti and artichokes. I bought the artichokes as a bag of four from Costco 2 trips ago and keep forgetting about them because they're hiding behind the huge gallons of milk in the fridge. While trying to figure out what to put into my spaghetti bento, I finally remembered the poor lost thistles.

I hadn't eaten one since I was a kid but do remember loving them a lot. Mayonaisse was the only thing I could remember us eating it with so I looked online and every place says to eat it with mayo dang it! Since I didn't even know how to cook one, I looked around for a guide and eventually found this one. It has great pictures and step by step instructions! Adding the garlic bulb and bay leaf actually did add a lot of taste and it was quite good with no mayo at all.

Pay close attention to where it says to cut off the tips, Mr. Pikko actually poked himself on one of the thorns bringing the bag in from the car and his thumb was actually oozing blood. And now that I think about it, artichokes look a little like the Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors! zomg!


There's a bed of artichoke petals underneath obviously, then the heart is chopped up and on top of the spaghetti, which I mixed up this time. This is organic whole wheat spaghetti, so I don't need to count it as points today, though I did cave in and just eat the regular spaghetti noodles for dinner last night. I fried some chopped bell peppers with a bit of pam, pepper, and garlic powder to add color since the artichoke hearts really didn't look that appetizing. I'm also packing a small green salad that I took from dinner leftovers last night. I don't have any avocado cause the one that I bought was like half black inside, but the crab alone should taste great anyway.

While I was putting this one together it occured to me that my very first bento post was spaghetti in Baby Girl's pink Hello Kitty bento box. That was on April 26, about 1 1/2 months ago! I should go back and count how many bentos I've made since then!

Edit: I just so happen to peek outside with a flashlight at the garden and holy crap my tomato plants were doing straight leg toe-touches! I ran right outside to water the poor things and noticed white larva looking things under the leaves. Curses up on you, leafminers!!! Out of our whole garden, Baby Girl's watermelon is doing the best. They've got little vines now!

Spaghetti with asparagus

Ok so, being pretty much a bento presentation n00b, I had to think for quite some time (the entire time it took me to do the dishes) on how I was going to arrange things. My bento box is on back order from this cool website I found yesterday called Jlist so I was going to just use a tupperware container when I remembered that someone had been nice enough to give my daughter a Hello Kitty bento box at one point. I happily dug it out of the toy chest.

One of the first things I had to do was clean the kitchen. I figure if I'm going to start making cute lunches for myself, I need to have better dish discipline. I washed all the dishes and scrubbed down the stovetop and after about 40 minutes, I was ready to start. Yeah. 40 minutes. I'm not really good about keeping the kitchen clean every day. In fact, some of the dishes I washed included my jello egg molds from Easter. Just one of my disgusting habits that I need to smash and burn this year. Maybe with bento making I will be successful at last. Now if I could just convince the hubby that it's completely fair for him to wash the kid's dishes in addition to his own. (the butthead doesn't do dishes I make)

Anyway, I thought all that cleaning time on what to put into the bento but was having a hard time with presentation planning. It turns out that kind of stuff came with actual doing and planning didn't really help all THAT much. Planning is probably the most useful for food prep. MIL had made spaghetti last night so I ate only some of the serving I brought home with me. (I ate at home so I could eat whole wheat pasta) I mixed up the spaghetti sauce with the steamed veggies she served and the pasta. I made a little foil "cup" for the spaghetti and placed it in the box so that it took up about 2/3 of the space and dropped the spaghetti in. To add more veggies, I fried up some chopped bell peppers that I keep in the fridge for a quick veggie omelette in the mornings, using only cooking spray, pepper, and onion powder. I topped off the bell peppers with some cheese flowers that I made with my new veggie cutters from Shirokiya.

Next I pan fried a few stalks of asparagus with garlic salt and a bit of olive oil. I'd chopped the top section so that they were all about the same length and chopped the lower portions into small bite size sticks so that I could use them to prop up the tips. That turned out pretty well! There was some extra space in the corner above the asparagus tips, so I tucked some sliced sanbaizuke (pickled daikon) in there. There was also some empty space at the bottom of the tip spears, so I added in one of the cocktail tomatoes I bought on sale. I doubt I'll eat it though, they taste like ass. They're all getting wrinkly, so at least this little guy got to be useful. I'll try to oven roast the rest and see if that helps kill the horrid taste any. Next time I'm buying cherry tomatoes! Here is the pic:

Next I needed to make my fruit/veggie snack bento. I'd bought this little round container at Don Quijote a few days ago and that came in really handy this time. I first added some baby carrots (which I found out yesterday, are NOT baby carrots but regular carrots chopped and shaved to look like baby carrots. the nerve!!!) then some slices of mango. I have no idea what kind of mango it was. It was hard and yellow and the sticker said Freska, Produce of Mexico. So either it's a Freska mango or Senor Freska of Mexico found a good tree to steal from last week. (in Hawaii all the swap meet people steal mangoes)

To top off, I added one strawberry sliced in half and sliced kiwi cut to look like sakura blossoms.

Hubby was very impressed, calling me "nuts" and saying "oh my god". It's just a start, but I'm very happy with it. I'm hoping that smaller portioning and the vegetable/grain/protein ratio of bentos combined with a very slow technique of eating will cause me to have very different eating habits than before. I'd read before that savoring each small bite of your food helps you to enjoy your food more and get more out of a smaller meal. Certainly having such a nice lunch would make me want to enjoy it slowly. We shall see if this works for a mom who has previously needed to snarf down her food in order to keep her kids from eating it all.

We shall also see how long it takes for me to burn out of this little fad of mine.

Everything in this lunch is a Weight Watchers Core food. ^_-