Wraps & Watermelon (140)

I think this is my worst bento so far. It's terribly underwhelming but all I had the time for this morning. On Sunday I wanted to eat the turkey wraps from Costco again so this holds the last 3 pieces leftover. I cut them in half to stow them away nicely but it turned out to be a pretty boring display, so I added some flower shaped sweet potato slices to the top. It still didn't turn out as nice as I wanted it to, but oh well. It'll taste good anyway! :)


On the side I have some slices of watermelon that my mom had bought us at the pumpkin patch. It had tons of seeds so I removed all of them for easy eating while I cut it all up. It's super sweet!! I included a tiny pink fork to eat them with. I bought these back during my E3 trip this past summer when my cousin took me to Little Tokyo. It's so nice to finally put them to use! Aren't they adorable! I have white, green, and pink ones.

I've been debating taking my store down for a while since I am having so much stress lately. I'm thinking maybe I could open it back up after Fan Fest when things are much calmer. Right now, I end up taking so freaking long to ship things and I feel terrible about it. I'll let you all know what I decide. >.<

I've got a hilarious kid story to share today. My son does not say "grandma" yet and this drives my MIL nuts, so she's constantly pointing to herself and saying, "Who am I?" or "Who is this??". Yesterday we got home and she tells us rather dejectedly that he's been making this kinda grunting noise to refer to her, like Grt grt! or something. So she demonstrates for us and I about died right there. She was wearing a pink shirt with three piggies on the front. So whenever she pointed at herself she was pointing at the pigs and saying, "Who's this?" and so he'd grunt like a pig. LOL

Costco Bento (131)

I had a rather busy and calorie filled weekend, so I'm back up to 129.5 lbs this morning, which is soooo bad. I had thought walking around at two WalMarts plus Costco would provide me with enough exercise to help balance things out but eeps! When I saw the number on the scale this morning I was freaked out. I'd already made my bento from the night before though, so I didn't want to waste things.


Everything except the tomatoes and parsley are from Costco! We'd gone to get a rotisserie chicken but they were sadly all gone and Costco was closing, so I bought a box of their turkey wraps, some Greek pasta salad, a spinach salad, and fruits. I have one black grape tucked in between the two rolls and even that is from Costco. The raspberries were pretty cheap, so I bought a box of those.


The pasta salad was pretty good, but the olives were horrifying, so I avoided taking any of those.

The UH football team is now 7-0 and undefeated in the WAC. The game was on Friday and boy was that a heart stopper! Our first ESPN game of the season and the field was a mud pit, Colt was throwing terribly, passes were getting dropped, we were down by 14 in the last 5 minutes... I was so down. Colt threw his 4th interception late in the game and drooped his shoulders down in defeat and I thought it was over. I had such a hard time watching. But then a miraculous fumble, an insane catch, Colt ran into the endzone to tie it, we scored in OT, then intercepted on San Jose's OT turn. It was so storybook and me and Mr. Pikko were yelling at our place like crazy people. I even saw someone taking their dog for a walk looking peculiarly into our place.

It still brings a grin to my face. There's a good recap video here.

THREE FOR NOTHING!!!

Ham & Turkey Wraps (112)

I'm posting late today due to a lot of work, a lot of online drama, a lot of online work, and to top it all off, an internets outage when I got to work. For two weeks in a row, I've lost weight on the weekend and I once again attribute this to my two twerps destroying the house several times a day out of boredom. At one point I told the kids to go play and Baby Girl said, "Come Buddy, let's go make a mess!" *glower*

With all of this going on, I had to just make some quick wraps and toss in olives. Not exciting, I know, but at least I still packed a lunch and didn't have to buy something. One roll holds ham and the other holds turkey. I spread Laughing Cow Light Swiss cheese onto snack tortilla (and now that I think about it, I forgot a wedge of cheese on my computer desk, doh!), then put the cold cuts, then layered on leaves of spinach.


I am insanely busy today, but will be taking a bunch of bento orders to ship out this afternoon. Those waiting will get an invoice from me tonight or tomorrow. Sorry for the delay!!

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!

Brown Bag Meeting

Today at work we're having a "brown bag meeting" where we meet over lunch we bring. We ate chili last night and that doesn't make for a very pretty lunch so I started from scratch this morning and made a pretty decent Core bento.


On the left side I have some small shrimps that I bought at Foodland on Saturday. Inside the little orange dog is some cocktail sauce to go with it. On the right side starting from the top left going clockwise there is: Carrot sticks wrapped in turkey, kim chee crab, avocado, two slices of boiled egg, a mini Babybell cheese, grape tomatoes, and cucumber kim chee.

In total it comes out to 2 points for the cheese. Lately my weakness has been in desserts. We had two birthdays last week which meant I kept eating cake day after day (leftovers) and plus I tend to excuse eating candy too. I've decided that I have to limit myself to 2 desserts per week and I eat a small chocolate Riesen candy to appease my sweet tooth on days I'm not eating any dessert at all. This morning I was 127.8 lbs so hopefully I can keep up with my Core bentos and stick to small dinner portions. That's another bad habit I've been feeling myself falling back into: larger portions simply for the taste. I can feel my stomach being full and yet I still eat, which is totally against what Core is about!

We're now 11 days away from the start of the UH Football season and still no season tickets in the mail! WTF? We'll go to the post office tomorrow probably (since I have a bunch of orders to send out) and see if they're waiting. They freakin' better be! Regardless, I'm really excited. Baby Girl has all her football cheers down too, maybe I'll try to take video of her doing them. So far she's got "DEE FENS!" "GO BOWS!" and "TOUCHDOWN!" all ready. I'm so proud. *sniff*

Loving Turkey Sandwiches

I am famous (at least within my own little household) for buying food on sale and then forgetting that I have it until either:

a) I want to use it, but it's long expired or
b) I accidentally find it the day before expiration

"B" was the situation I found myself in last night while deciding what to make for today's bento. I'd bought two packs of the Oscar Mayer deli style turkey breast cause sometimes I like to just sit there and eat it by itself. Well it has a 'use by' date of yesterday, so I had to go with turkey sandwiches again even though I'd just recently done the star shaped turkey sandwiches.


There's a bed of sliced baby carrots underneath the sandwiches and I intend to put the tomatoes on top of the kim chee crab avocado salad I brought. And now that I mention that, I'm going to start referring to that as "KCCA Salad" just so that I can shorten it a bit. On the bottom layer is cubed cigar mango, which my dad was kind enough to buy at the swap meet in Hilo and ship over along with what seemed like my son's weight in lychee. Thanks Dad!!

Cigar mango is hands down my favorite mango, ahead of even the great revered Hayden mango! I haven't had Hayden mango in a while actually. My grandfather-in-law had a Hayden and a Puree mango tree, but since he passed away the house has been rented out and we don't get to pick those any more. :( He had some big bambucha ones too. I think the biggest I had was like the size of two softballs. I've tried to buy at the Kam swap meet but since the sellers there have all stolen their mangos they don't really know what kind they are and pretty much automatically just call it hayden. Plus some of them are so scared someone will steal them before they can, they pick them so green you might as well make pickle mango out of it. I dunno, maybe I'll have better luck this summer.

I was 131.8 this morning, so I've got my work cut out for me this week. Leave it to me to blow last week's progress all in one day! 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...