Healthy Tuna (137)

When I used to attend UH Manoa, they had these great Marriott "cubes" which were portable food stands and they sold these really awesome sandwiches called "Healthy Tuna" and "Healthy Ham and Turkey" etc. They tasted really awesome because they had cucumbers, tomatoes, tons of crunchy lettuce, and whole wheat bread. Eating those sandwiches in college really got me into eating sandwiches and so today I made one slightly similar to bring back some old munching memories.


To make the tuna I used one can of tuna in water, 1 1/2 Tb of light mayo, onions, salt, pepper, and since I didn't have regular sized ones, diced tomatoes from my garden. Added in are cucumber slices and romaine lettuce. This sandwich comes out to a whoppping 5 points because each slice of bread is 2 points. :( Sadly, I was obviously cock-eyed when I cut the first sandwich piece because all the pieces are of different lengths. This is why I took the picture at this angle, to try to hide my noob cutting skills. lol

I've also brought some jabon with me to work to eat. People on the mainland call it pomelo and I just looove this stuff. Since it's showing up at the market that means Costco will carry them soon and that means the swap meat will have some soon! They're so awesome and I love both the white and pink varieties. The only downside to jabon are the "jabon farts". People who eat jabon know exactly what I'm talking about. LOL

My daughter will be taking a field trip soon, so a kid bento opportunity is coming up soon! The only bad part is, she's terrified of the thing featured at the trip destination. It's only a recent fear and we have no idea where it came from. And speaking of terror, boy did she scare the pants off me this morning. When you're on the freeway 15 minutes from your next stop, the words, "I have to go shishi." just strikes all the panic chords in your heart. (shishi is our Hawaii word for pee) All is well though, the carseat is dry. *whew*

Teriyaki Ahi & Tofu Steak (109)

As I mentioned yesterday, we had teri ahi and tofu steak for dinner last night. I set aside a small piece for me to cook for my bento. It turned out pretty good even though I wasn't going by any recipe or anything. I simply cooked the tofu steaks and fish fillets in olive oil and then added Mr. Yoshida's sauce to the pan.


I have furikake rice underneath the tofu and broccoli on the side. The little fish bottle contains extra teri sauce for me to pour on the rice when I eat it today. With the small amount of rice, this bento is about 2 points. I packed this into my newest bento box that I got on eBay, a blue Doraemon box. It's a great size and has a food divider, so of course I love it! A picture of the box:


I forgot to freeze my spaghetti last night and I'm not even sure I'll be able to because my freezer is ridiculously packed with stuff. This morning Mr. Pikko called me over to it and said, "You hear that? That's the ice machine breaking." Apparently it's not good to shove packs of frozen gyoza and bagels into the ice tray. Who knew!? ^_-

Lunch Update

Well the in-laws have been dropped off and I made it down to Monarch with a ragingly mad stomach. I miraculously found parking right out front and ordered my favorite: Nori Wrapped Crab Stuffed Ahi. They normally drizzle it with a wasabi sauce but since I hate wasabi, I ordered without. Got my order in just a couple mins as I guess they have them already fried and just slice them up for the lunch rush. I was in such a hurry to get home to eat it I decided to go back out later for my errands. Anyway, pic:


I looked at it several times while at stop lights because I was so hungry and then when I got home I was struck by a maddening thought. I had no bento today. I bought my lunch. So what did I do?

I busted out a bento box and put the food in there to eat.

OMG! I know! Totally mental... I think I've just gotten so used to eating my lunch in a nice box that I just have a hard time eating from a styrofoam box. Anyway, here it is all snuggled into my sakura lacquer box:


I'm not counting this as one of my bentos and I'm certainly not counting the points as I'm writing this off as a monthly lunch splurge, though in truth the only points would come from the panko, the mayo in the crab stuffing, and the oil it was fried in. I didn't eat it all. I ate barely 1/4 the rice and there's still one piece left in the box. Still, it was a lot of food. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go flop down and die on the couch from overeating or go walk it off. Cross your fingers I end up doing the latter.

Mahimahi and 10k!!!

Celebrations are in order for today my blog passed 10,000 hits!! Woohoo!! I will have to go celebrate by heading to Marukai or something. :D Thanks to everyone who comes back to see what I eat. I'd never have thought when I started that doing a bento blog could be so much fun. I hope I've helped spread my love of lunch to many!


I'm back to counting points today. Nothing like getting on the scale and seeing that you've gone back up above 130 to light the fire under your ass. I count this lunch as 2 points, one for the rice and one for the mayo in the tuna (leftover from yesterday). The meat in the middle is leftover mahimahi from last night. There are some steamed zucchini slices underneath it propping it up so that it stands nicely. I added some sliced takuan for color in an orange Miffy food cup and then some shelled edamame. The soy sauce fishie is for the mahi.


Today's lunch is packed in one of the bento boxes I got at the discount store in Little Tokyo. The cover is cute, though there was no matching band for it. :( It's a great size though and I love the color.

Today we took Baby Girl to the preschool open house and boy is this going to be a rough week. She wouldn't let go of my leg and wouldn't say hi to any of the other kids or the teacher. The good news is that one of the girls in her class is from her Gymboree class. Didn't do much good though, she stuck her head between my legs and then loudly proclaimed she would like to go play outside. *sigh* Also, looks like I'll be doing bento for her only when she goes on field trips. Mr. Pikko doesn't want to make her feel entitled or something. They had brownies and cookies out along with butter mochi.... but I resisted!

Tuna fish w/ celery

I hate to cause heart attacks for people who come here every day looking to drool over yummy looking bentos, but I've been having a craving lately for tuna fish and celery sticks, so that's what's for lunch today. It's mixed up with some Miracle Whip Light, black pepper, and sweet onion then topped with parsley and bell peppers.


People allergic to veggies may want to look away right now, for here is a layer consisting solely of celery sticks. Eeeee! The other layer has a piece of toast sliced into little strips. This is for my vegetable soup that I brought to eat. It's just boring ole' Campbell's alphabet soup, but sometimes you just want to eat something. I brought my red soup Tupperware and will heat it up in that.


Inside the little Hello Kitty container is some peanut butter, which I intend to use on the bread and some of the other celery sticks. I brought extras because really, that's a whole lot of tuna! As you can see, I packed up one of Baby Girl's little toy knives to spread the peanut butter around. It fit into the cover perfectly! I even added in a small handful of Honey Nut Cheerios. Quite a handy box! I got this one at Marukai in LA.


The box was actually plain white on the front, but it was pretty boring so I went and I fished out some of my old Korean Morning Glory stickers. I found three that I liked and tacked them on. Looks much better if you ask me!!

Pipi Kaula & Musubi

Today we were going to take the kids to the pool nearby here, but when Mr. Pikko went to check out how crowded it was, he found out that it was actually closed. Bummer! We made alternate plans to go to another pool and I ended up staying home with Buddy to finish making the food while Baby Girl and Daddy went swimming. We were going to eat chili and hotdogs so I wasn't really intending to make so much food, but as usual with picnic bentos, I got carried away. We at these at my sis-in-law's house and then the kids got to swim in a wading pool in addition to the big pool earlier. It was a nice, fun, sunny day!


It's funny how food can take you back in time. I filled these up with shoyu tuna, which I haven't eaten in a VERY long time, like maybe 12 years or something nuts like that. But anyway, even though it's been around that long, as soon as I ate some I could remember myself sitting at our table back at home reading Archies while eating some plain ole shoyu tuna with rice. The recipe is very easy. You basically drain a can of tuna and then add two tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of soy sauce. (I used Lower Salt Aloha Shoyu) Mix it in a small pot and heat and you're done. The first two balls I made leaked juices when I squeezed the upper mold down so I squeezed the tuna before putting it in for all the others and that solved my problem.

The nori faces kinda drove me nuts cause the sheets I had kept ripping when I punched it. Either that or the eyes and mouth wouldn't completely cut. Plus I had to figure out a way to make 16 faces out of 3 punches.


I dug out my frozen spam musubis from the zoo bento before and reheated them. I thought they tasted fine but Mr. Pikko flipped out that I'd give people old musubis from "three weeks ago" when really it was only from last Sunday and I froze them immediately after making them. Next to that is some pan charred pipi kaula (pronounced peepee cow-lah) that my mom and grandma were so nice to give me while I was in Hilo. It's basically smoked beef and tastes so awesome when fried or microwaved. They used to come in big slabs but then some genius at Frank Foods must have been wrestling with his pipi kaula and knife when the incredible idea of pre-sliced pipi kaula came to him. Or her. Whoever it was, you're the awesome!

I weighed 128.9 this morning but am now 132.1, so tomorrow will be a light lunch with soup!

Salad kit

No bentos yesterday as I simply didn't have the time. At 9 am Baby Girl saw hubby watching "Mittsbusters" and since it involved a pool, she suddenly wanted to go swimming. Took us like an hour and a half to get ready and when we finally go there and get into the water the first thing out of her mouth was, "Ok, let's go home now." O_O

Poor Buddy had been completely heartbroken that we left him home (hubby can't go outside because of an eye infection) and so I let them play in the yard with the water pool while I pulled weeds. I am slowly but surely winning the war against those deeply rooted suckers! There's a whole 3' x 2' plot of gravel completely weed-free now! Before I knew it, it was 11:45 so I just defrosted some of the leftover turkey lasagna from Saturday night and they all ate that. I had some chicken salad.

For dinner I made Chinese style steamed fish and though it was the first time I'd done the sizzling peanut oil thing and the first time I'd used my fish poacher thing that had been hibernating on top of the fridge for two years, it turned out great! I'd planned on taking some for today's lunch, but the kids enjoyed the fish so much that they ate half a side of the fish by themselves! :D So after some thinking during Amazing Race (yay my team won!) and Sopranos I decided on what I'm calling a salad kit.


The lettuce bowl looked pretty zzZz so I put some momi nori on it. The back of the package says to put it on salad, so I'll see how that tastes. Seems wierd, but you never know! For toppings I went kinda nuts, adding chicken, tomatoes, and carrots. I also finally found the leftover avocado after almost needing to put out an APB on it. If Baby Girl had been awake while I searched the fridge, I guarantee she'd have said "I tink the avocado ran away from home, Mommy." She says that about everything I can't find. It may be a sign of things to come so I must note this down onto my "things I must remember when my daughter turns 13" list along with "bar her windows". Anyway, not sure I'll eat the Babybel as that would add 2 whole points to my all Core lunch.


Fruit bowl has blackberries, mango, strawberries, and kiwi. The goal of the salad kit was to fill it with lots of tasty things that would negate the need for salad dressing. I've tried all the Kraft Free ones like Ranch, Catalina, and Italian Caesar. They taste like how you'd expect fat free salad dressings to taste like: ass. They're so bad I'd much rather go without em.

Forgot to mention, one of the things I did today with Baby Girl was to start a tomato garden (obviously Nexa wishes to infect me with another hobby as revenge for getting her into bentos). Of course me being me, I did first and read instructions after and found out I'd done it completely backwards. We'll see how it goes. I couldn't find a good pot variety of tomato anyway, so maybe it's best this way and I can have another go next week. While at Lowes we ate shave ice with ice cream. *gleep* Since it's pretty much syrup and ice cream, that's probably like a 15 point item or something ridiculous. I weigh in tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers.