UFC 83 & Kokua Festival

I have no bento today since I am going out to lunch with my old friend who just moved back to Oahu and is working here at UH again. YaY!

Here is the picture of the miso ramen I had at this place in Manoa Marketplace called Nishi Mon Cho. To be honest, it wasn't that great. The bean sprouts were really bland and the miso was congealed at the bottom, so I didn't know where the taste was until I was halfway through the bowl.


This past weekend was pretty awesome. Saturday was UFC 83, Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra. I was, of course, rooting for GSP since he's mega hot and I can't stand Serra. He completely dominated him in awesome GSP fashion and it was great to watch. Rich Franklin looked great as well and it was pretty amusing to watch him fight against a completely gassed Travis Lutter.

My mom paid us a visit on Sunday and so knowing her love for movies, we went to see Horton Hears a Who with her again. This was Buddy's third time! He loves "BIG tv". We ate at Sumo Ramen and I had a miso ramen. People are going to be like, wow, Pikko is a ramen addict now. True story!

After that, it was time to drop them off and head down to the Kokua Festival. I had bought tickets online by making a donation to the Kokua Foundation. Go Jimmy Go, Paula Fuga, Mason Jennings, Tim Reynolds, Dave Matthews, and Jack Johnson were playing. No disrespect meant to Jack Johnson since he does have a great voice and lots of catchy songs, but we went purely for Dave Matthews. He'd never played in Hawaii before and the chance to see him live was just too good to be true. Things went pretty well, Dave didn't come on until 6:30, so we got to the area at around 4:45 or so. We turned into the zoo parking lot (against my advice) and amazingly, someone pulled out right in front of us. So.. parking was a breeze. So lucky!


We decided to go into Waikiki to find a place to eat and soon found out that there really weren't that many places to eat on Kalakaua Avenue. We walked for 20 minutes and then I figured since I'd dragged Mr. Pikko almost clear across Waikiki, we would be able to just eat at Kiwami Ramen which was A-OK with me! I got the Miso Ramen with Tasty Egg (which you can kind of see peeking out of the dashi). It was VERY good! The noodles were perfect and the soup very tasty. I didn't even mind the chili peppers. Their chasu is very soft, two big thumbs up!

We got back to the Waikiki Shell just in time and found our seats in time. The announcer called their appearance "epic" and "historic" and then just like that, Dave Matthews came on stage. Now, I have a thing for mellow male voices but there is just something special and magical about the voice of Dave Matthews. I actually had tears in my eyes during three of his songs. Maybe it was because it feels like he's singing to your soul.


I'd never heard of Tim Reynolds before this concert and they made a great duo. They played for a little under an hour and a half and I can happily say that my drawn out Valentine's Day gift was a smashing success with Mr. Pikko.


My only complaint was definitely the stage camera operator. That dude needs to get another job because every time they had him focusing in on the people on stage, I swear, he'd suddenly drop the camera angle down to the stage floor and they'd have to shift to another camera. My pictures didn't come out so great since we were kind of in the back, but I was able to take the above one by going down the aisle to snap one.


Luckily there was a big screen that we could watch whenever they'd zoomed in on him.


The festival was very sold out, so a lot of people camped out on the grass in Kapiolani Park just to listen to them from outside. I took a picture during a break.


Jack Johnson on the big screen. He played a lot of songs with his band, then later came back out to play by himself and with other singers. We stayed just in case he sang with Dave later in the show...


Here I am with Mr. Pikko, who is blotted out with a picture of Pokko's face. He doesn't like to have pictures online and so out of spite, I figure I might as well dig in the Mr. Pikko embarassment bit. ^_^

I got THE last Kokua Festival T-shirt they had there, taken right off the wall of the only merchandise booth left open. I love fitting into small size shirts. :D

120 x 520

I'm sorry for the lack of bento lately, but I've been really busy and tired this week! I have a lot of food to show though! I'm still missing one picture from lunch yesterday and can post that next week or something.

Monday and Tuesday I had to help at the Pacific Rim Disabilities Conference. It was in Waikiki and so during lunch on Tuesday we went across the street to the Waikiki Shopping Plaza or Center or whatever it's called. There was a food court downstairs and we wandered in and I saw this place called Kiwami Ramen. It was full of Japanese people and the prices were great, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately I couldn't try their extensive menu inside at the bar (which served Kirin!) because two of my coworkers were eating elsewhere. I picked from their small take-out menu and got Shoyu Ramen with a Tasty Egg added in.


It was really oily, but it was REALLY good. This one had their "thin noodle" and it was perfectly cooked. The tasty egg was great, though I didn't eat the yolk. It seemed to be a hard boiled egg simmered in dashi. I definitely have to drag someone down there to eat with me sometime.

Wednesday I was extremely lazy and had this craving for cold tofu, so I brought bentos of fruits and veggies and a whole package of tofu. I didn't even bother to pack it in a box, I just bought the whole container and cut it open at work. I ate the whole block of tofu, LOL. And I'm not talking about the half block, I ate a whole block!


Baby carrots and edamame, carefully placed side by side.


Here I have a plum cut into wedges and then some green grapes we got at Costco.


I brought this for lunch yesterday, but we ended up walking to Manoa Marketplace to eat at the ramen shop up there. I forget the name of it and haven't done the picture yet, so I'll give more info on that later. So... this is what I'm eating today. It's beef broccoli and I garnished it with a tofu daisy and bell pepper flowers. I cut a thin slice of tofu and cut it out with my flower veggie cutter. Buddy ate the leftovers. I bought red bell peppers to eat with eggs, so you guys will probably be seeing a lot of red in my bentos in the coming weeks. :D


My second layer has strawberries and green grapes again.

I bet you're wondering what 120x520 is. That is my goal. The wedding is at the end of May, so I am aiming to be 120 by 5/20. Everytime I want to eat bad things or go for seconds, I will tell myself "120 by 520!" and hopefully that will keep me in line. It's my weight loss mantra. I was up to 132 last week, but with the mantra this week am back down to 130. 120 by 520!

One last thing... I know I have quite a few Oahu readers, so I thought I'd mention that my workplace has recently opened up their diabetes study to the entire community of Oahu. If you or anyone you know has diabetes and would like more information on how you can participate, please visit our website: Live Healthy... Work Well. Tell them you heard about it on my blog!

Curse you, teaspoons!!

I was pretty bothered by the teaspoon debacle since a few people seemed to agree on one thing: 1/4 teaspoon pepper isn't that much. I started thinking that they had to be right and something was very wrong in Pikko Teaspoon Land. On a hunch, I picked out my teaspoon, my 1/4 teaspoon, and my 1/8 teaspoon.


I KNEW I WASN'T CRAZY!! If you can't tell by the sizes in the picture alone, I will tell you that I was able to pour TWO "1/4" teaspoons water into ONE teaspoon. I found a different brand of measuring spoon in my drawer that said 1/2 teaspoon and when I poured the "1/4" teaspoon in, it filled it up perfectly.

That's not all that's wrong too! My 1/8 teaspoon is wrong too, since I can fit FOUR "1/8" teaspoons into a teaspoon. And it's not like I'm making a mistake with the lower case t and the upper case T because as you can clearly see, it spells out "teaspoon" on it. I'm very disappointed because I love this set of spoons and I've been relying on it for a while now...

At least now you guys can be like, "Wow, half a teaspoon of pepper in 2 large eggs. Yeesh!" ^_^

I will not have a bento until Wednesday, as I will be attending and helping at the Pac Rim Conference on Monday and Tuesday for work.

Beef Tofu (205)

I woke up this morning thinking it was Friday, so I became very bitter when I started eating my Cheerios and realized it was actually Thursday. Then I came in to work and turned on my computer thinking it was Friday again. Then I went to heat up soup and the thought of it being Friday snuck into my head again. Despite this stupid day insisting on being Thursday, I declare it Friday.

Unfortunately this means I will have to come in to work on "Saturday", but for today, I think I can live with that.

Since I was in a bad mood over this day thing, I didn't do much for today's bento. I had take some of the beef tofu dish leftovers and re-cooked it this morning with added tofu, then just plopped it in with rice from yesterday that Buddy never ate.


The veggies in the middle are bamboo shoots and onions. I didn't cook it, Grandma J did. :) Very yummy, like a beef version of pork tofu but without the thickening. I still have to make my katsu sticks! >.<

Tonkatsu (204)

I type this with blurry eyes. Buddy woke up at 4:15 AM, asking for "chicken and rice" since he didn't eat much dinner the night before. I went to the kitchen and like any other good, kind, caring bento-minded mother woken up at 4 AM would have, gave him a wonderfully nutritious and beautifully prepared breakfast: chopped up microwaved hotdogs. LOL

Did I have you going? I suggested everything from Cheerios to strawberries to pancakes to grapes to peanut butter whole wheat toast. He wouldn't have any of it while he waited for the rice to cook so that I could make him some Costco chicken fried rice, so that's what he ate. And then when the rice was ready to fry, he was "full" and wanted to watch tv. Typical toddler, living in the now, which changes every 5 minutes.


Today I'm having tonkatsu. I had meant to cook some chicken I didn't get a chance to use over the weekend and try chicken katsu in a different way, but fell asleep putting the kids to bed. This looked a lot better before the sauce all oozed together, but unfortunately I took too long to take the picture. The katsu is cut into small pieces, there's rice underneath, and the asparagus lays nicely on top.


In my second tier I have a salad. I topped it with some Costco chicken so that I didn't need dressing, but I might go trolling into the work fridge and see if there's some healthy dressing I could sprinkle on.

Someone commented yesterday with a really great link to a blog post by Biggie on how to do thin omelets in the microwave. It made me think back to when I had lots of time to read everyone's blog and see all the great lunches and I really miss doing that. Biggie has such a wonderful, helpful blog and if I ever get around to constant reading again, hers is definitely on the top of the list. When I first got into bentos a year ago, hers was always a favorite of mine. Please take a look at her site if you haven't seen it yet. ^_^

Sesame Omelet with Shrimp (203)

I had this recipe in some little Japanese food cookbook at home and had been eyeing it for a while. The recipe itself made little sense to me though, asking for 2 large eggs, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper. Do you have any idea how much salt and pepper that is?!?! Either the "large" eggs I buy at Foodland are like Japanese people to mainland people or this lady really loves pepper in her Japanese food. The recipe is called Sesame Omelet with Shrimp and I modified it a bit by cutting down the mayo. (it asked for 3 tablespoons)


I messed this up in many ways, as usual. First of all, I actually listened to what she said and added 1/4 tsp pepper. Maybe fresh ground pepper is less, but I added the already ground one and holy bob damn my mouth lit on fire when I tasted a piece. Then I used a pan that was too small, so my omelet was thicker and smaller than it was supposed to be. I also didn't have watercress, so I used broccoli, which turned out to be very difficult to roll.

I rolled it up, put it in the fridge to set, then sliced it into nice sushi-like rolls. I'll have to modify it and try again, maybe tomorrow since I still have lots of shrimp. I know it's weird to have a shrimp roll and then shrimp on the side, but I really wanted to eat some with cocktail sauce, which is in the little yellow container. It didn't look colorful enough to me, so I tucked in a couple slivers of carrot in the middle. The edamame was pre-cooked and frozen, so I just defrosted it in water and placed them in nicely.

Pork Tofu (202)

With Mr. Pikko and Baby Girl off to a lesson on Saturday, I trucked Buddy off to the supermarket to buy vegetables for my soup. I ended up trying the first Garden Vegetable Soup recipe I found. Though I didn't need any, Buddy would not stop furiously pointing at the "brokko zee" until I picked up this one tiny little stalk that got broken off and gave it to him. This did not satisfy him because after I handed it to him, he demanded "BEEG WUN!" but then I put it in a bag and suddenly it was like, Magical Bagged Broccoli Extraordinnaire and we were able to move on.

Having not made a soup in quite a while, I opted for the whole head of cabbage instead of the conveniently cut-in-half ones. I figured, the recipe said "half a cabbage", so I just bought one, thinking I'd just go double.

I do not recommend this unless you want a pretty good vegetable soup with ASSLOADS of cabbage in it. No, seriously. It tastes pretty good, kinda like the Campbell's Vegetable Soup (which I love) but with enough cabbage to kill someone. I looked at other recipes this morning and found that you're supposed to use 2 cups cabbage. Great. Good thing cabbage is cheap. I used vegetable bullion and don't have nearly enough soup for the vegetables, so I'm kinda stuck eating mostly heaps of cabbage for the early part of this week so that at the end of the week, I can have a nice soupy soup. Next batch, I will use beef bullion, cause I had to add some extra salt this round.


I made Pork Tofu this past weekend. Grandma J makes a really good non-spicy Mapo Tofu and I use this recipe as a substitute for when I want some. It reminds me a lot of the Pork Tofu dish that Y's Lunch Shop used to make on occasion. Let me tell you, that dish was made in heaven. Whenever I saw they had it, I bought it. Mine totally pales in comparison, the only thing similar is the look. I think maybe when the wedding comes around, I should beg my friend to bring me some Y's before she drives over from Hilo side. The last time I went to my cousin's wedding in Kona my aunty did that, bringing us musubi and fish. I'm drooling right now just remembering it.

Anyway, this is Pork Tofu with some diced carrot on top for color and my brokko-zee.


We bought champagne mangoes at Costco yesterday but I need to go get credit for it or something. I cut them open and they were black in the middle. These ones were the third mango I peeled and though it was still black, I just cut that part out. Added some strawberries in too, sliced up for easy eating. ^_^

I never did post more pictures of my wheat grass! It's dying by now and I had to toss most of it out due to mold, but I will try again and this time will harvest them as sprouts as they look in this stage here:


They were actually pretty sweet and tender at this stage. Right now my last tray of grass is really stringy and tastes like... well, grass. The sprouts were much better. I still have a huge bag of berries, so I think I'll just grow a batch, harvest sprouts fresh from my desk at work, and then start over. It's really quite fun!!

Meat Loaf (201)

I bet a lot of you have been like, ZOMG, where the hell are the bentos?! Maybe Bento 200 KILLED PIKKO! Ahhhh!!!!

Nah.

I've just had a slew of lunches this week. As I mentioned, Tuesday we went to a Thai restaurant. I ended up not taking any pictures because we ate family style and I didn't know all of the people very well and I thought they might think I'm some kind of freak if I busted out my camera to take pictures of our food before they were allowed to eat it. Plus, the lighting in the restaurant was quite poor. The food was great though! Our waiter was very entertaining and at the end, he brought us out this heaping plate of ice cream on top of warm sticky rice. It was a truly wonderful dessert and we asked him what it was on the menu and he said he'd made it up right there, which I admit kind of disappointed me because I thought it would be a regular dessert I could get at any Thai restaurant. I was very happy that only a couple of the dishes were spicy. I can't handle things that make me want to call the fire department on my mouth.

Wednesday one of my co-workers took me to a birthday lunch, which was really nice. We walked up to Manoa Valley and ate at a little Chinese restaurant called Asia Manoa. I had a Chicken with Vegetable plate that tasted really good. I don't know why, but they served it with I swear, half a pot of rice. My eyes practically fell out of my head when they brought it to the table. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said it was around 4 cups cooked rice.

Thursday we had our monthly work potluck, which I have pictures for after my bento.

Last night we had meat loaf, which I've found to be one of the most difficult things to bento. Then I realized that I could do this food TODDLER STYLE! Toddler style means you chop the food up into little itty bitty bits and mix it all up together with rice. This isn't a bad idea for bento really, since you can mix it all up, add garnishes, and bing! Nicer lunch than you might have had with a hunk of hamburger. Though I dunno about eating the carrots to be honest. Carrots and ketchup just isn't something that sounds good to me. Maybe I can just lick the ketchup off and then eat the carrots? Anyway, that's what's in the main section.

On the side I have cucumber kim chee, takuan sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds, and pickled eggplant.

On to the potluck!


First up is salad from The Boss, made with I think Nalo greens, avocado, and a Costco chicken! With the chicken I didn't need any dressing, which is always a bonus in my opinion.


Next, we have some ham and turkey wraps, which were REALLY good. I love wraps, but the meat in these were the thin sliced deli kind and were really tasty. I had two. >.<


Here we have some pork tenderloin, which was really good! I love stuff with black pepper, that's one spice I really don't mind.


This is a wonderful Salmon and Egg salad with cheese sprinkled on top. Really tasty! Next to that is my bowl of Healthy Rice. I brought my rice cooker in to work so that I could make it fresh here before the potluck. I ate way too much of this stuff. >.<


Here's a veggie platter alongside a cabbage/celery/apple salad which I really liked, though I hope the mayo was light! Next to the veggies was another salad and then a chocolate cake in the back from Safeway. That was good stuff! :D


Lastly, we had some really good banana muffins. I'm not sure what the banana slice on the top meant, but I took one without and it had yummy bits of apple in the middle. Maybe the banana slice one had nuts! If so, I should have taken one, I love nuts.

This has been one heckuva bad eating week, but thankfully, I am still at around 130. This is still not good, but better than I thought. I've been thinking about making a gigantor batch of Cabbage Soup from the Cabbage Soup Diet to eat during the day to fill me up so I snack less.

Before people freak out, I realize that the Cabbage Soup Diet is only water weight loss and not fat. I did it once a few years ago and despite the need to use the bathroom every 15 minutes, I thought the soup tasted pretty decent and the recipe itself is basically all vegetables, so it's actually all Core anyway. I just have to tweak the seasonings enough where I like it a lot and I'll have a large supply of something to eat whenever I get salty tummy rumblings. Plus it's not like I'm giving up bentos, this is just something to eat on the side.

Aloha, Aloha

The State of Hawaii received some very crushing news this weekend when it was reported that Aloha Airlines, who has flown Hawaii residents from island to island with a friendly smile and a little jug of guava juice for 61 years, would be flying its last flight tonight. I have always flown on Aloha Airlines if I could help it. I don't know why, but I've always just preferred them over Hawaiian for some reason. I still remember the old Aloha planes with the orange and yellow plumeria flower. 1,900 employees are out of a job. Sad, sad times.

I blame go! Airlines of course. They came in a couple years ago and started a price war that was obviously going to cripple the two local airlines. Lawsuits, CEOs that publicly admit to keeping porn at work and whatnot. As far as I'm concerned, they can just go! away. I have never flown go! in the past and you can be darned sure that I never will because I'm officially boycotting go! Airlines. Hawaiian will get all of my interisland business. That's just one born and raised Hawaii resident doing her small part to stick it to the big bad wolf. EAT THAT!

Anyway, no bento today as I'm attending a going away luncheon today at Manoa Marketplace. I'll be sure to take pictures of my food and update this post later!!

The Road to 200

Alrighty, it is now 1:52 AM on Friday and I am obviously tired out of my mind and starving to boot. However, I brushed my teeth to ensure that I wouldn't eat something just before going to bed. No guarantees on correct spelling and grammar in this post though.

As I mentioned yesterday, the kiddie terrors put a damper on my Thursday plans, so I had to continue my bento tonight. This one took me a lot longer than the first, mostly because the food preparation took so much time. I took three hours yesterday to cook food and today I took another three hours to complete the embellishments, bringing this gigantic mass of Sanrio lunch to six hours preparation time. Here it is!! (click it for bigger photo)



Before I start describing just how messed up in the head I am, let me just say that I'm not all that pleased with the results I got from this landmark lunchie. I had envisioned something much more vibrant in color and my favorite character, Pochacco, ended up looking the worst of the little guys. I think it still looks cute and all, but it's nowhere near the one I'd put together in my head.

There is food underneath the characters and so at the top I have oyako donburi sprinkled with chopped wheatgrass, since I had no green onions. I thought this was amusing since we watched the finale of Celebrity Apprentice last night and so much attention was given to wheatgrass, which I just so happen to be growing all over my house and at work. Too funny!! On the right side there is some vegetable yakisoba, on the bottom I have little squares of Okinawan sweet potato. People ask me about the potato all the time and to answer the inevitable question again: No, I do not dye the potato. It is naturally colored that way. On the left I have shelled edamame.


First up, to get rid of my shame early, is what is supposed to be Pochacco. I think I just picked a bad picture of him to copy and it was too small as well. He's made out of nori, pear skin (shirt), egg, and toasted sesame seeds. All the little characters sit on a d'anjou pear star. I thought afterwards that I should have dyed it yellow to add more color, but by then I had already stuck Bad Badtz and Keroppi on, so it was basically too late. *sob* Also, I had wanted to use my star shaped Whale of a Punch, but it's gone AWOL. I suspect either Baby Girl or Buddy have hidden it in a secret place and have forgotten where already. So anyway, that star is freehand!

I had previously used white cheese or d'anjou pear to make white things but finally figured out something even better! Boiled egg whites! With all the boiled eggs still sitting in the fridge, I realized that it would make the perfect white carving material. It worked out great for all the characters. I am so unhappy with Pochacco that I wasn't going to take a close-up picture of him. But then I realized that he's sitting on top of my donburi and I didn't want him to get offended and pee all over my food. He is a dog after all...


Monkichi is a rather old Sanrio character from when I was in high school. I'm not sure a lot of kids nowadays would recognize him. I made him out of hotdog skin. You can kinda see how he is slightly curled, which actually turned out good because it made him look more 3D. The lighter parts of him are hotdog as well, only the inside part is showing outwards. I forgot to make him his two cheeks, but after six hours I no longer give a crap.


Picke Bicke is another older character that you don't see around much anymore. He's a cute little mouse that should have a tail with a red ribbon on it, but it was too microscopic of an effort for me to undertake. His ears are made out of Okinawan sweet potato, his body is made out of sliced ham, and the white parts on him are boiled egg. His eyes and nose are toasted sesame seeds, which I trimmed to give them less of a pointy shape.


Chococat was nice and simple and I took us to McDonald's and made Mr. Pikko run out and grab a straw for me to cut out his eyes easily. I should have had my own straws at home, but since my children like to drink with at least 5 straws at a time, we run out pretty quick. His eyes and mouth are made out of boiled egg and nori. I used a hole puncher to make his nori pupils. His collar is boiled egg dyed yellow and his nose is a little bit of hotdog. He's quite happy to be sleeping on a bed of edamame!


For some reason, Keroppi was very difficult to photograph. I had to try 4 different angles and finally got one that didn't have too much shadow. Same as the last time I made him, his face is made out of d'anjou pear skin. This time though, his eyes are made with boiled egg instead of cheese and his shirt (tomato skin) is not striped this time. I forgot to give him cheeks too!! :(


I have saved the Badtz for last. He's such a great character and if Pochacco is my cutie pie favorite, Bad Badtz is my favorite Sanrio character with attitude. He's of course, being a rascal and sticking tongue at you, no doubt thinking several kinds of @*#& thoughts. I cut him out of nori and then put egg white eyes and tummy on top. His beak is the same as Chococat's collar, egg white dyed yellow. His tongue is made out of tomato skin and nori. He was by far my favorite to make!!

In the middle of all of them I have the Queen of them all, Hello Kitty. Her ribbon is made out of red-dyed pear. The onigiri is to eat with the donburi. I lined the whole box with lettuce to make it look a little more frilly. I still wish I'd thought early on to dye the pear stars yellow. That would have looked great! I had tried to make colored egg omelettes to wrap my food into so that I could have brightly colored sections of egg wrapped food. The egg stuff just wasn't meant to be for some reason.

For one, I was cracking the five eggs needed for the donburi and on the fifth egg, I crack it open and blood comes pouring out. I was SO disgusted and didn't feel like scooping it out. What a total waste of 5 eggs. And then, I'm preparing the omelette mix when I add in the red coloring to make it pink. What do I get? ORANGE EGG MIX! Grrrr!! I tried cooking it, but it just didn't look good. I ended up using it to wrap some string beans in. You can see a few down by Badtzmaru. I'd also wanted to use a pink bento box, but I didn't have any that were big enough for what I needed.

I had more to talk about, but right now my eyes are closing involuntarily. I hope you guys like it. Tomorrow I probably won't eat anyone except Hello Kitty. I'll line them up in the bento cover and they can watch me eat lunch.