Valentine's Day Bentos (181 & 182)

Yesterday I went to go look at the screenshots of the new MMORPG coming out soon, Hello Kitty Online and I about died of anticipation. I realize that people in the Allakhazam community will likely look at HKO with complete revulsion and disgust, but I find myself mysteriously drawn to a world of pink and flowers and Pompompurin houses. You can make farms and grow crops and pick fruit from trees. A virtual gardener such as myself cannot stay away from such a game, especially since it's free! I used to be such a Sanrio freak as a teenager and from looking at these pictures, apparently I still am.

I woke up at 5 am this morning to cook rice and make tamagoyaki for my bento this morning and to make my first ever bento for Mr. Pikko. He usually doesn't eat lunch or just buys food, so I never bothered to make one. But... since the Kokua Festival tickets I had planned on giving are not here yet, I thought maybe a bento would be a nice, thoughful gift to give that wasn't costly.

This is Mr. Pikko's bento, which has 3 little chicken drumsticks and wings. Grandma J made a new recipe last night as a test for some function she is going to and I think these are called "Lip Smackin' Wings". To go with the chicken, I made a round onigiri dyed with red food coloring. I had initially wanted it to be all pink, but then when the coloring didn't mix too well, I thought the haphazard coloring came out really well. I cut out the two hearts from bell peppers and sprinkled black sesame seeds on to add more color.

In the middle is some sliced asparagus and then on the bottom area I have some pink tamagoyaki cut into sakura flowers. I added about 5 drops of red food coloring and then after it was cooked, rolled the egg into a circle shape with my bamboo sushi thing before putting it into the fridge to cool. I sliced it up and used my veggie cutters to get the sakura shape. Next to that I have some imitation crab and then a slice of orange. Behind the onigiri I put a little raspberry too! I was quite happy with the amount of food I was able to cram into this little box! The tradeoff was that I was pissed to find out that 4 of my romaine heart heads were frozen in my crisper drawer. GRRR!! What a waste!!


Here is my matching bento! It's basically identical except I have a grape tomato hiding behind my onigiri, one less chicken piece, and kiwi instead of orange.

We're giving the night off to the in-laws so we're leaving work early to pick up the kids and will probably take them to eat dinner at IHOP. If you're wondering why we're eating at a pancake house for dinner on Valentine's Day, it's because for a mom of two toddlers, I'm still pretty stupid about some things. Tuesday was Free Pancake Day at IHOP and so I stupidly started telling the family about this in front of the kids. Buddy's eyes glazed over and he starts waddling towards me chanting, "CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE... CUP CAKE..." Baby Girl starts in with her broken record repeating, going, "Mommy, I want paaaaaancaaaaake? x500" Yeah, big mistake. Never say any word that contains "cake" in front of toddlers unless you're ready to bust them out right then and there.

It was 9 pm, but I got us all to go there only to find it was dine-in only with a half hour wait. NO CAN DO! So this is sort of a makeup for the other night. An emergency trip to Foodland for frozen pancakes had to be made.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Beef Cutlet (180)

It's been miraculously sunny on Oahu for the past, I dunno, five days or so? It was getting to the point where on a day of sun you go out of the house and say, "Wait wait wait, what? IT'S NOT RAINING!?!" But then as soon as I'd go to fiscal or something, I'm about to go out the door when I hear roaring rain outside.

Someone mentioned an ice storm yesterday and I started joking that my brain couldn't process such a term. Ice is in your water or soda! Ice is what you eat when you go to Baldwin's or Waiola Shave Ice! It doesn't STORM ice!

Anyway, point is, the seasons we have in Hawaii are basically "Sunny" and "Rainy", but if I had to break it down into four pidgin seasons, I'd say:

Winter = "Stay Sum Cold Outside"
Spring = "Get Choke Rain"
Summer = "Frickin' Hot"
Fall = "I No Can Stop Sweating"


Today I have this three bowl contraption that I bought at Price Busters. I've used a green one before for my salad kit once long ago and have had this pink one sitting around in a cabinet for quite some time since. I finally busted it out to carry some soup to work. I have here some Chicken Long Rice, made by my MIL.


In the main dish bowl I have some green salad with grape tomatoes, which I dripped with 4 drops of Caesar Italian Lite. Then I have beef cutlet, rice, and corn. In the Hello Kitty bowl I put some katsu sauce.


In my last bowl I have fruits. I cut two kiwis, half an orange, blueberries, and raspberries. Adding the oranges really brought the other three fruit colors together. I was really happy with how it turned out. To cut the orange I sliced it in half, then made half moon slices, then cut those in half to make little triangles.

As most people know, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I just got back into posting my lunches at LiveJournal and of course, the bento challenge for this week is a V-Day theme, so I have to think today how I want to do my entry tomorrow! My eggs expire tomorrow, so maybe I can implement tamagoyaki somehow...

Teri Hamburger Patty (179)

Today I'm using a new bento box but I forgot to take a picture of the outside of it. It's a two tier box with a cute froggy on the outside. It even comes with a matching fork! ^_^

Today I'm eating a teriyaki hamburger patty with leftover shrimp fried rice. I was trying to eat this for lunch during my radio show on Sunday but didn't get much eaten for fear of making too much noise. I really have to remember to eat before showtimes. The rice looked great with the peas so I decided to leave the shrimps on the side next to the patties. The piggy bottle has soy sauce in it for the rice because it wasn't the tastiest of fried rices and I'm one of those people that thinks soy sauce makes everything taste better. The little food dividers were a gift from one of my blog readers, Stephanie. I finally got a chance to use them! So cute! Thank you again!

I'm a little upset that I didn't notice that open space next to the piggy. I hate having open spaces like that. ; ;


In my bottom tier I packed a lot of fruit. I have two sliced kiwis, some raspberries, and then a little silicone cup of blueberries. The cup is from a set of cups that I got from Nizdaar in the Allakhazam Secret Santa exchange we did. They're so tiny and a perfect size for the shallower bento containers I have. I have the regular sized silicone cups and they're only useful in my taller boxes. This set came from Amazon and the set contained lots of different colors. A great bento item since you can use them over and over!

I noticed yesterday that the Hawaii Chair video got removed, so I edited the post to display a new video!

Chicken Lettuce Wraps (178)

I was driving in to work this morning when I heard the radio hosts I listen to talking about a "Hawaii Chair". As soon as I got to work I looked it up and it just about split my sides open watching it.



That is just too funny. I'm lucky I wasn't drinking water when I saw it.

Today's bento is almost entirely from Costco. As usual, the Costco chicken was a big part of the weekend meals and I chopped up a lot of the white meat this morning and made the lettuce wraps I've made before. This time I added some diced bell pepper into the mixture to give it more color and veggies.


The grape tomatoes, kiwi, blueberries, lettuce, chicken, bell peppers, and raspberries are all bought from Costco. The only thing messing up the all-Costconess of it is the two little carrot flowers. Dang those carrot flowers!! ^_^ Here's a blurry close-up:


I ate some of the blueberries Saturday and I dunno why but they taste like they have sand in the middle. I'm debating taking them back and telling them this and getting an exchange. I know they don't normally taste this way but I'll see if maybe I just had a few bad berries in the bunch I picked up to eat.

I finally got some real gardening done this weekend and cleaned up all my dead tomato plants. While I was pulling weeds I discovered that a stray tomato must have fallen to the ground and then had the seeds dispersed all over the yard because I found at least 10 tomato plants sprung up all over the place. Some had no leaves and I didn't understand why until I found the gigantor caterpillar on a nearby plant. The most bizzare discovery though, was the little pools of shrimps. My kids have little play pots and pans in the yard that have been collecting rain water and I was about to dump one out when I noticed there was a bunch of tiny little pink "things" in it. Upon further inspection, I found that they were actually dozens of tiny little itty bitty dead shrimps.

At first I thought maybe they were there because of the little container of seashells Baby Girl had left out, but then I found more little containers nowhere near the shells container that had MORE dead shrimps. It was very weird and quite stink.

The yard looks neater now and hopefully next week we can plant some edamame plants. :D

I noticed that a bunch of my earliest blog entries were using pictures from my Swapsonian domain, which I have basically given up hope on. I'm so pissed with Ipowerweb that I'm never using them again. I continue to pay for a broken domain and cannot get my files off the server. I wait forever on the phone and in chats and no one seems to know how to help me. Ipowerweb can SUCK IT! Anyway, I fixed the pics to use my Flickr ones.

BBQ Chicken (177)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Today I have for lunch the Korean BBQ leftovers from Wednesday. I used my red bunny lacquer box because it was a nice, compact size and tall too, so it fit everything in nice and tight.


I put some furikake on the rice to help hide all the brown juices that leaked onto it from the BBQ chicken. I sliced the chicken to make it easier to eat and then put the veggies in on top. It looked really dull, so I sliced up some carrot very thinly and tucked it in to give it more life. A very simple fix and the bento looks more colorful!

I am happy to say that I am the prowd owner of Kokua Festival tickets, which will be featuring... Dave Matthews! Woo! This will be his first ever concert in Hawaii. Should be fun! :D

Kung Hee Fat Choy!

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

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

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

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

This is a very beautiful salad made by my boss:


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


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

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

"OHHHH! MANAPUA!!"

"OHHHH! PORK HASH!!!"

"OMGGGG MEAT JUN!!"

Hehe.

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

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


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

Parent/Teacher Conference

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

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

I can imagine the meeting already.

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

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

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

Beef Curry w/ Croquette

A couple days ago I found out that one of my favorite "secondary" TV shows, The 4400, had been cancelled. This severely pissed me off as it had been in my opinion, one of the best shows on USA. Granted, it was also the ONLY show I watched on USA, but that's neither here nor there. The theme song by Amanda Abizaid is my cell phone ringtone. It's a great lil tune!



So anyway, yeah, I'm mad. Especially since this is the THIRD good, quality show that has been cancelled in the past year. (the second being Journeyman) However, I was happy to find out that there is a movement to save the show, much like the one that successfully saved Jericho. If I'd had my way I would have picked The 4400 over Jericho hands down. You can buy sunflower seeds to send to the network to protest the cancellation. It's 5 bucks though... so I'm still debating. lol Some fan I am.

For lunch today I am having beef curry rice with curry croquette. I plucked out the carrot slices and cut them into flowers with my veggie cutter and then shoved the leftover carrots underneath. The flowers are a little thick, but I didn't have time to slice them up. I had fried two croquettes, but burned the first one by accident... It wouldn't have fit in the bento box anyway!!

My ear has become a mess. I've got this bumpy rash all over it and I totally blame my little eye makeup remover snafu. I can't even tell if it's swollen because all I can think about is how badly it itches. If the rash doesn't clear up soon, I'm definitely going to see my dermatologist.

Gyoza (175)

I don't really have a full fledged bento today as I ran out of time in the morning and decided to buy lunch at the little shop in my building at work. They usually always have spaghetti and pasta sounds like a good thing to eat today. I'll probably microwave it though, as I like to have my food on the verge of singing the skin off my mouth.

I made 3 pork gyozas with furikake rice for a little "filler" bento today. I desperately need to go to the market as I have basically no fruits and just carrots and bell peppers for veggies. I need lettuce (I'd have put some under the gyoza), parsley, broccoli, berries, and maybe some shrimp.

Usually what I do for the lettuce is buy romaine lettuce. The inner, lighter colored leaves taste better, so I use those for salad. The more bitter outer leaves I keep to line my bentos. This works out really well as I don't like to eat them, but I don't waste them either! They make great liners for bento boxes and add so much flair to a lunch. :)

The Mog House went well yesterday, especially since it was Superbowl Sunday! I have to admit, I was really disappointed in the commercials. Other than the E-Trade baby ones, I didn't really like any of the others. Some made me laugh, but they were only marginally funny imo. I didn't really care who won since I don't follow pro football anymore, but I'm sure once Colt is drafted, I'll have more interest then. :D

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon (174)

Last night was the season premiere of LOST and I have to admit that I was very happy with what I saw. Last season was such a drag to watch and the only redemption in the whole year was the finale with the flashforwards. Without spoiling anything, the premiere continued on this flashforward trend and with that, has brought life back into the series. And boy did it need it. Manual labor cracking rocks? Locked in cages and tricked into having sexy time on camera for your doctor crush to see? It really did sound like some silly fantasy a girl has as a teen. Hot doctor/hot bad boy love triangle on a remote island. Oh yeah, baby, who didn't wish for something like that when they were 13? I sure as hell did.

Okay now that I've got my schoolgirl fantasy confessions out of the way, we can move on to my lunch.

Last night Grandma J made Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon, a recipe which I actually remembered to ask her for this time! Woohoo! And even better, I have a picture of her to share with everyone. The majority of my bentos contain the food she so lovingly cooks for three families, so I think some credit is due. She protested the picture, but Mr. Pikko insists that under the surface she likes it. So if she meets us with a screech this afternoon, I'm so blaming it on him.

I've also decided to start referring to her as "Grandma J" because when I named the pic of her "MIL", Mr. Pikko's brain did some flipflops because it's too close to "MILF". Anyway, this is her! She's holding up a cookbook on the page with the recipe for the salmon, which follows:

Teriyaki Wasabi Salmon

1. Drizzle salmon with Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce. (or other teriyaki sauce)
2. Spread mayo on top of salmon. If desired, mix some wasabi into the mayo.
3. Sprinkle Aji Nori furikake on top.
4. Place in microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Check the salmon and if needed, cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Pretty quick, huh?? I am not a wasabi fan at all, but I tried the wasabi one (she makes with and without) and it tasted really great. It had the wasabi taste, but not the hotness. It's a quick 10 minute recipe, give it a try! ^_^

I forgot to mention that my ear is still swollen. I'd done the Neosporin and it seemed to help, but then last night I was cleaning my puffy ear when I realized that I was cleaning it with eye makeup remover. GOOD JOB, ME!