Adventures in Bentomaking

Okay, I owe everyone an apology for the long absence again. This week ended up turning into one long hectic string of things including a lunch meeting I forgot about on Tuesday, being part of an interview committee Wednesday, then a college meeting and lunch Thursday. I probably have an excuse for Friday, but I forget what it was. This should explain my state of mind lately. In between all of that has been plans for a big project of mine for FFXI, Allakhazam work, the kids, and trying to find out how to register for a class for the semester starting next week which I think I might leave til next semester. Not sure.

Before I get to my long eaten bento from last week, the winners!

I took everyone’s name and put em in a bucket and pulled out two. The first and winner of the Petty knife is Judith C.! Congratulations Judith! The second ticket drawn and winner of the mini paring knife is Wendy S.! Congratulations Wendy! I’ll be contacting both of you to get your information to send to New West Knifeworks and hopefully you’ll get your shiny knives soon!

I ate this bento ages ago, haha! It’s got a pork hash patty cut in half on top of furikake rice with takuan and a small ume on the side. In the little compartments I have blueberries and cucumber pickles. I have several of these bento boxes and though they’re butt ugly in horrid colors, I really love the inside compartments.

Mr. Pikko had to work on Saturday so I was left with our little monsters all day. It’s amazing I’m still here, alive, typing this blog post. In the morning I had a podcast interview with an FFXI site and that got done at about 8 AM or so. We had gotten flyers for this Family Fun Day event at the Momilani Community Center, so after doing some weed pulling, the three of us headed out there. I felt slightly gypped, as the flyer made it sound all free, but the rides cost $1 a ticket. They had fun on the big inflatables, but the petting zoo. Oh goodness, the petting zoo.

It was $2 per kid, but they’d been to the keiki petting zoo before and came out just fine. This was a little fenced pen with two bunnies, a dog, a pig, and three goats. I paid, we went in, they refused to pet anything. Then we spot the bunnies, so I grab Baby Girl’s hand and we walk over. Buddy thought I was abandoning him to the animals though, so he began to scream. Now, I’m not talking whining scream, I mean he was screaming. So we go back, but it’s too late. The screaming has now freaked out Baby Girl and when I try to drag them over to the little bunnies, a goat passes by. Her response is, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

You would think that I would panic too, with two kids screaming bloody murder in a petting zoo, but I just couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I tried to get them out, but then the dog comes moping past in slow motion. In her panicked state, the dog suddenly had grown devil horns, fangs, and red eyes and she began to shriek even louder as though a mountain lion was charging at her. I hugged them and told them it was okay in between fits of giggles, then took them over to pet the bunnies from the outside.

The Ryusei Taiko drum club performed, making me want to take classes. We’ll see! That’s probably a bad idea right now with my time crunch. I dragged the kids out of there eventually and took them to Home Depot, where in her report to Daddy, “We bought dirt.” We planted watermelon (in much bigger pots) and sugar snap peas, then transplanted my little basil sprouts to pots. I started seedlings of yellow tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley too. Let’s hope this garden turns out better than the last! I didn’t take pics, cause who cares to see pots of dirt?

I will be doing my knife drawing tonight at around 10 PM Hawaii time, so you better hurry and get your entries in!! I had originally planned this for Friday, but as you may have noticed, I suddenly dropped off the face of the bentoing planet. This is what happens when you stay home with a vomiting child.

When we picked up Baby Girl from school on Monday the teachers said she felt ill, but she was happily running around eating a cracker, so I thought this was just her wily way of getting a free cracker. Turns out though, that she really was sick. In the car she starts screeching and holding her throat, which was a good sign that lunch was coming back for revenge. I looked around and sadly, the only thing I could find to help her out was my cute pink Hello Kitty bento lunch bag. I made the supreme sacrifice and let her paint it with regurgitated food. Nice image to give you on my food blog, I know, but I had to let it be known that despite all my complaining I really do love my kiddies. Mr. Pikko was later horrified to hear that I would be washing off my bento bag, throwing it in the laundry, and actually USING the bag again.

Of course, I caught said bug. I spent around 20 hours on Wednesday just sleeping. Unfortunately Baby Girl miraculously recovered at midday and I was barely able to walk to the bathroom. She conned many licorice whips out of me that day. Thursday night Mr. Pikko caught it. Friday the in-laws got it. Buddy, the original source of the bug, simply helped out by leaking poop everywhere.

By Saturday, I felt worlds better. I’d lost 5 pounds but quickly gained half of it back once I discovered I could actually eat again. Mr. Pikko was on the mend as well and wanted to get out of the house, so I suggested we go to the Mililani Bon Dance. This made him feel sick all over again because though a proud Japanese American, he is allergic to obon.

I took video while doing the becho (or Fukushima Ondo). It was so much fun. I think Mililani is the best one I’ve been to on Oahu so far.

Good luck to all in the drawing and thanks for entering!!

Have you entered my New West Knifeworks sponsored knife giveaway yet? NO?! Click here to learn how!

I got scoldings from one of my coworkers already. She said I wasn’t supposed to mail the whole office about the giveaway! Oops! Meanwhile Kaolian, one of my Allakhazam co-workers began wailing when he saw how many people have entered so far. The giveaway will remain open for one week, closing this Friday.

I had a pretty spiffy weekend. Saturday was UFC 87 and we went to our friend Gonzo’s house to help him break in his new apartment. He told us it started at 3, so when we got there at 3:40 only to find out that something was wrong with the cable ordering, we thought all was lost. Fortunately, it actually started at 4 and Mr. Pikko was able to hax into his cable box by typing in the leet secret default password. Tragically, Mr. Hubba-Hubba Roger Huerta lost. *sniff sniff* In other news, GSP kept his title and Brock Lesnar is a dick. lol

We had a good ole Costco chicken for lunch and dinner yesterday, so I cut up some cubes and used the new teddy bear picks I got at Marukai. The chicken that was once at the indestructible price of $4.99 has now risen here in Hawaii to $5.99. A couple weeks ago Mr. Pikko sent me a link that said Costco would be raising its prices 15% soon. *sob* Six bucks is still cheap though. I’ll be making soup this week.

I made two onigiri from leftover rice and tucked them into a bed of lettuce. I added the above mentioned chicken skewers, bell peppers, carrots, two kiwi, and some sliced white nectarine. I took the photo on one of my newer fabric. I have a new font too, isn’t it gorgeous? :D

Tired of gas costs slicing into your food budget? Need a way to cut costs? A can of Spam on sale is about $1.88 now, it’s obvious Spam musubis are one of the many solutions to the economy knifing its way through your funds.

What? You don’t know how to make one?

This is a crying shame and I cannot allow this to go on.

I realize there are like 50 billion spam musubi tutorials out there, but I don’t have one, so I felt the need to make one. Especially since I had to make some for yesterday’s potluck. Unfortunately, my crap camera is still not focusing, so the pictures came out horrible. One day I’ll replace them all with better photos. :(

You will need:

3 cups short grain rice
1 can Spam
5 full sheets of nori
1 jar of furikake (I recommend Nori Komi)
musubi mold
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
scissors
rice paddle or spoon

Now when I say 3 cups rice, I don’t mean literally three cups of cooked rice. I mean you put three cups of uncooked rice into your ricepot, fill the water up to the 3 cup line, and that’s your “3 cups rice”. I don’t know how many ACTUAL cups that comes out to, though. Maybe 6?

I’m writing this assuming that you’ve done some planning and bought yourself a spam musubi mold. They sell them on Amazon and at several other stores online. I couldn’t find one that was non-stick plastic like the one I have, so I don’t have one to link. I can’t even remember where I bought my own! If you’re reading this with your spam all sliced and ready to go, then I’m not sure what I can do for you.

To start, we have my awesomely yucky Photo #1. A full sheet of nori can be cut into two pieces. Measure it with your mold and make sure it’s the same length. My nori sheets tend to have a slight bit of extra nori, so I end up with little 2 cm strips that I feed to the munchkins. I have ready here my cutting board, the nori, the mold, my baby rice paddle (I like these better because they fit right into the mold), my jar of furikake, and a really sexy knife.

Spam by itself fried is pretty good, but I require some sato-shoyu sauce simmering first. Usually this sauce calls for mirin, but I’m cheap, so I just use water. Pour 1/2 cup soy sauce (Aloha is good!), 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup water into a small pot and heat on medium/low.

After a bit of practice, I’m now able to eyeball cutting 10 slices of spam. You might end up with some fat slices and some thin slices at first, but you’ll get the hang of it eventually. Add the spam to the sauce and then go cook your rice. The spam should be about ready when your rice is. Make sure you turn them so the whole slice gets sauced up. If it starts to bubble, reduce the setting to low.

Have all your nori sheets cut and ready to go. When I was a wee little level 1 noob Spam Musubier, I used to cut a couple, then go cut some more, then more. It’s so logical to cut them all at once, so I really have no idea what my problem was, seriously.

I appear to have skipped a step during my photographing and for that I apologize. You basically put a little bit of rice in the mold and pad it down nicely then sprinkle furikake on it. Fill the mold to just under halfway.

Add a slice of spam, making sure to let the extra sauce drip off otherwise you’ll end up with a lot of saucy rice that just falls out of the musubi. Sprinkle more furikake onto the spam.

Top the spam with more rice, lightly filling the mold up to the top. Don’t pack the rice in, just gently pad it on. There is such a thing as way too much rice in a musubi. You need the perfect ratio of rice and spam. This is part of the reason why I prefer this type of spam musubi to the usual ones you see with the spam on top the rice with a nori belt. Those are terribly annoying to eat because people usually put waaaay too much rice and you just feel like you’re eating a hunk of rice and run out of spam. Plus they require (ugh) saran wrap to keep it all together. I don’t recommend that style of musubi unless you’re eating the ones at Y’s Lunch Shop in Hilo. They use a magic wand to make theirs, though. Since those are not easily obtainable, this is your next best option. With the spam in the middle of the rice, you have nice even spam and rice distribution. In my opinion, this is vital to your spam musubi consuming experience.

Take the mold top and place it in, then smash down the rice. Do this gently! There is no need to add all your body weight to this step or anything, we don’t want to kill the poor thing. Hold down the top and slide the mold up and off the musubi.

You should be left with a nice ice-cream-sandwich-looking musubi sitting on top the edge of the nori strip. Bring the nori over and tightly wrap it around to the other side. Wet your fingers with water (PLEASE do not use spit, gah) and swipe your fingers over the place where the nori end will go. Pat the end down onto the wet spot and swipe over the top with wet fingers again to ensure it seals up nicely. Place your finished musubi on a plate and finish up the other 9.

Once you’ve done them all you can wrap them up in wax paper to go or you can cut them in half like I prefer to do. If you’re going to cut them I highly recommend you let them steam for a little while. Your rice should have been hot and they need to moisturize the nori so that it’s nice and soft. After that, take a nice, sharp knife and cut them in half. Waiting for the nori to get soft also makes for better eating because the nori will just tear when you bite into it rather than making you rip it apart with your teeth, thus causing rice to ooze out everywhere. Or in the case of kids, this will cause rice drizzles all over your carpet. Not fun at all.

Cut musubis are much easier to pack in a jubako bento box, though this particular size doesn’t fit 10 so I let the little beggars have one yesterday morning before packing it up for our monthly potluck. Now, don’t those look a lot better than those saran wrapped horrors you see sweating in 7-Elevens and supermarkets? I can’t stand that because to me, the taste of the plastic wrap gets into the musubi. Oh, the horror!

Surely by now you are all thinking, “What the heck is she bolding all those words for?!”

Last month or so, I was contacted by someone at New West Knifeworks. They wanted me to try out a couple of their knives in exchange for a review. Who can say no to something like that? Anyway, I’ve been using the two knives for my bentos for the last month now, having a grand ole time cutting everything without needing to swear and bust out my sharpener. I’ve cut everything from bell peppers (these normally put up a real stink for me when chopping) to sweet potatoes to meat to eggplant. The petty has given me no problems with any of it. And did I mention it’s sexy?

One of the biggest problems I have when it comes to cutting musubi is the knife. The rice sticks to it like crazy and I normally have to wet the knife after every single musubi I cut. This drives me oh-my-freakin’ gawd insane. However, the Petty knife pictured in Photo #1has passed Pikko’s Ultimate Musubi Halving Test by letting me slice my way through 10 musubis straight with no washing needed.

So while you may think of commercials cutting cans or whizzing through tomatoes, cutting through the spam musubi has ended up being the foremost factor in my glowing review of the New West Knifeworks Phoenix Petty Knife.

The best part of all of this is that New West Knifeworks is sponsoring a giveaway on Adventures in Bentomaking!! Woohoo! If you would like to own a brand new Petty knife, all you need to do is click the knife picture above to visit their site, check out all their knives, then come back here and post a comment to this blog posting detailing which of their knives you like the best. Feel free to comment on the handles and any other things you see and like.

From these comments I will have a drawing. The first winner will receive a Phoenix Petty Knife and the second winner will receive a Fusionwood Mini Paring Knife, which coincidentally is really great for medium detail work on special bentos. The blade is a little thick, so I think I still need my X-Acto knife for the very fine details. That little guy is really good for peeling the skin off of baked sweet potatoes, though!

A couple of rules:

You’ll need to leave your name and last initial so that I can tell you from everyone else. ONE entry per person.

Be sure to tell your friends!

I’ve decided that I don’t need to return to Buca di Beppo anytime soon. After eating at their restaurant and then consuming the leftovers for two days afterward, I’m completely convinced that these three meals have led to me eating my butter and cheese allowance for the next three months. I had the last of the Fettucinne Supremo yesterday and after I ate it, I saw that the bottom of my plate was COVERED in melted butter. Ech! I felt sick all afternoon.

The in-laws are in Vegas right now, so yesterday we took them to eat dinner at Ninja Sushi right by the airport as a sending off gift. We ordered a bunch of their rolls, which were all really good. We got a California, Tempura, Osaka, and Tobiki. California and Tobiko rolls are basically the same, just with tobiko, so you don’t really need to get both if you want to order like we did. That was a great meal!

With the Buca horror of yesterday, I told myself I needed another all veggie bento today.

Sorry, but there’s nothing cute about it. I’ll start getting back into my cuter stuff soon, I swear! My co-worker came to lecture me the other day. She was like, “I can’t believe you just abandoned your blog! The nerve!” LOL

I had to use up a ton of bell peppers cause they were starting to grow fuzz, so I cut off all the bad parts, washed furiously, and sent them to the frying pan with eggplant, olive oil, and garlic salt. My grandma always taught me to soak my eggplant to get the acid out and I usually only do that with the big round ones, but a couple weeks ago I could taste the sting. This morning I soaked the slices and sure enough, the water turned brown. I will have to remember to do that for all eggplant I eat now.

For my second tier I sliced up 4 kiwis: 2 green, 2 golden. I love the golden ones! They have a pretty distinctively different taste than the greens. Smaller, but oh so yummy.

I found Buddy in the bathroom this morning again only this time he was trying to dispose of the evidence of his crimes in the toilet. He’d gotten a hold of my dental floss and had ripped out maybe 50 feet of floss by the time he heard me coming. The box was still attached to the floss though, so he was having a hard time getting all the floss to stay in the toilet cause the weight kept pulling it back out. Ewwww!

Yesterday was my dear Mommy’s last day officially “living” in Hawaii. *sniff sniff* We took her to a goodbye dinner yesterday at Buca di Beppo where we had the most monstrous plates of pasta I’ve ever seen in my life. No, seriously, they even give you spoons the size of small shovels to serve with. Me and my weird ass brother and my weird ass mom took a bunch of weird ass pictures with these gigantor spoons. I was then instructed to post them here to scare my blog readers, which I am more than happy to do.

First up is me, showing off my saucer size eyes:

Next up we have my bro:

He’s trying to make Baby Girl laugh and was doing an excellent job as she couldn’t stop giggling hysterically. Last of all we have my mother, who gave me the crazy genes:

I love her and all, but that picture will seriously haunt my dreams for weeks to come. Add in that she made a forced cameo on The Mog House yesterday and you have one red-faced Pikko.

With that story aside, I had leftovers from our many plates of pasta and chose to have lasagna for today’s bento.

Buca has really good bread and even better garlic bread, but we ate all of that so this is just the regular table bread. I used my onigiri mold as a cup for the blueberries, haha! It fit perfectly height wise too, I was so happy. I threw in some of my garden tomatoes too, just for kicks. They look a bit out of place though, like they crashed the lasagna bento party.

This weekend was pretty fun. With mom in town staying at the hotel my brother works at, me and the kids went down to swim in the pool and play in the sand on the beach. I entrusted Mom to suntan lotion my back, which turned out to be a mistake since she’s apparently forgotten in her old age (she just turned 54 last week) that you’re supposed to apply lotion underneath the straps. So now I have crispy, bright, red areas in all the areas that my bra just so happens to rest. Oh, it burns…

After baths, naps, and ramen (at Kiwami!) we all headed to Manoa Valley to attend the Koganji Temple Obon. I went to this one a few years ago with my French co-worker Delphine and she absolutely loved it. Koganji is a really good dance to go to for beginners because they have really beautiful lanterns, lots of food booths, and they play their songs twice so that you can learn the dance in the first one and have another go at it during the second one.

I tried to help Baby Girl dance to Tanko Bushi and she seemed to actually be into it this time, only Buddy kept whining to get out of the circle, yet refused to stay with Uncle. He ended up just pout-following us around while we tried to dance.

I think next week is Mililani, so we’ll definitely have to go to that one, hopefully with my cousins and their kiddies. Mililani is one of the churches that plays Fukushima Ondo, which is simply called “becho” back home in Hilo. It took me like two summers to figure out these silly city bon dances. They don’t play this song at all the bon dances, but if I go to a lot, at least I can hear the beautiful flute from the memories of my youth again!

Yeesh, this is bento #244. Before I know it, I’ll be at lunch 300! +_+ What should I make for that? A Sparta bento with 300 toothpicks for spears? THIS… IS… BENTO!!!! Hahahahaha!

No.

The new school year is starting for the kiddies and so we attended the open house this week to meet Baby Girl’s new teacher and see her class and stuff. She’s going to have homework each week, which means *I* have homework each week. They’ll study letters and bring home pages to paste pictures of words starting with a particular letter. I’m actually rather excited about when they start studying ‘B’. That page will look nuts for sure.

The curriculum is much more academic than her previous class and her teacher seemed very seasoned. I asked the dreaded question, “What time should she be here?” and the answer that came was, “Punctually at 8 AM!” We looked at each other and I knew we were thinking the exact same thing.

“Shit.”

Taking them to two separate preschools is a massive pain in the buttocks. I think this means that if I don’t do my bento at night, there will be no fancy food for lunching. I must rethink my bentomaking strategies!

Since today is Friday and I’ve had these alphabet cutters sitting aroud doing nothing for forever now, I decided to write a little message in my curry.  I found a little article on Aloha Friday for people to satisfy their curiousity. There’s a very catchy song to go along with it but I’m too lazy to link it here from YT because I have to do some special thing to make it work that I don’t remember! If you have the time and are on YouTube for something else, try searching for it. :D

What I did for this bento was quite simple. I took out the carrot chunks, washed them, sliced them up, and cut them out into little letters and flowers with my cutters. I made the rice into flowers using an onigiri mold my Aunty K sent me a while ago and dabbed some red hana ebi (shrimp flakes) into the middles. They looked a little sad just sitting on the curry so I tucked some romaine lettuce leaves underneath them.

Buddy has developed a burning desire to wash his hands and brush his teeth ALL the time. I send him to time out for screaming bloody murder about not getting a third cookie and 20 minutes later someone will say, “Hey, where’s Buddy?” and we’ll go to the bathroom and find him there brushing his teeth or washing his hands. One time this week I found him making little wet balls of toilet paper and paper towels to throw into the toilet for awesome splishy splashy fun. I’m hoping this is just him being a boy and not early signs of him becoming a hypochondriac.

Alrighty so someone finally commented asking if I’m on vacation so I figured I better quit the silence bit and get off my butt and post something before you all start to think I died or even worse, that I lost interest in bentomaking. *gasp*

I’d mentioned that I would be attending Square Enix’s Premier Site Summit 2008 for Final Fantasy XI and so that’s what I’ve been busy with. Add in a office luncheon, prep work, and some Brownie of Doom baking and you have a long hiatus from bentos. The summit took place in El Segundo on the 25th and Mr. Pikko and I traveled up there together so we could enjoy a little monster-free time together. Rest assured that my little munchkins were not without victims while we were gone as it seems like they sufficiently terrorized Grandma and Grandpa. Many thanks to the in-laws for not putting them up for adoption during our trip!

We landed at about 7:15 AM and took the shuttle to the hotel where we were lucky enough to get early check-in. We settled in, checked our Tribal Wars villages like the complete nerds we are, and waited around until it was time to head out to The Bridge to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. The community rep from Square had warned me to buy tickets ahead of time but me being the dummy, I didn’t listen and we ended up sitting in the second row. Still, I wanted to see it and felt the experience was worth it. I’d really want to see it again too! And maybe without Heath Ledger practically touching my nose.

The parking meters in LA are pretty rude. I put a quarter into this one and it starts blinking at me:

FAIL

FAIL

FAIL

FAIL

All right already I get it!

That night we had dinner at a place called FuRaiBo on Sawtelle Blvd with my Allakhazam co-worker Thayos and two friends from last year’s Fan Festival, Pachichachi and Susperia. We visited this store called Giant Robot and passed by what Pachi referred to as the “Best Ramen in Los Angeles”. Why didn’t we eat there? They are CLOSED ON THURSDAYS. Left to right above is Thayos, Pachichachi, Susperia, and me. I tried natto for the first time and hated it. Thayos had a bit of a hard time with the chopsticks at first, but he quickly got the hang of it. Then he tried to eat his rice. lol

Later we met up with someone from our Garuda linkshell Imperial, Kaerwyn. He’d wanted to join us for dinner, but apparently some old guy at the theater he works at tried to pee on him, so he had to go home and shower off any old man sprinkles that might have gotten on his legs. I know, eww! He finally joined us at Beard Papa and then followed us back to the hotel where we hung out for a bit.

Here we are in the lobby, half a linkshell party. We just need some DDs and we’re ready to go. Mr. Pikko had never been to In N Out so we figured that we should take him to the one down the street despite having just eaten. All the hype messed things up though as that food sucked. The fries were really weird and pasty tasting, the shakes weren’t shaken, and the drive thru line was so long our food took forever and a day to be ready. Hopefully next time it’ll be better!

I’ll have the writeup for the summit itself done on Allakhazam and I’ll post that link once it’s done for you all to go read and look at pictures and stuff, though I don’t expect foodie fans to find it exciting unless you’re either into FFXI or just enjoy Square Enix games.

Saturday my cousin picked us up at around 10 and took us out to see the Getty Museum. They have a really nice tram, which I’m sure my nephew would have freaked over. Had he been here I’m sure there would not have been any chance to see the museum itself.

I thought about it a little bit and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a true art museum before. We’ve got the Bishop Museum over here, but I only go for their special exhibits. I really have no idea what they normally have there. There’s the Lyman House museum in Hilo, but that’s mostly Hawaiian things, not really global art or anything. The Getty was really pretty and omgbright since a lot of it was white. Here’s me and my cousin, yay!

It’s got a great view as you can see. Me and Mr. Pikko are here posing in front of smoky Los Angeles. I loved the garden area and I took a lot of flower pictures and even one of a daredevil snail crawling along on the top of a hedge, but I figure I better leave pics like that for some other time.  Susperia says I have to get Mr. Pikko over his mad extreme privacy thing or people will start thinking that I’m such a Final Fantasy XI freak that I actually found and married a tarutaru. Standing next to Thayos, I’m sure he felt like one.

I won’t leave you all with just pics of my gaming geekdom, I have food that’s been backed up that I never wrote about!

I made this all veggie bento sometime in the last two weeks. Unfortunately I can’t remember when that was, but I can assure you I ate it! I’ve got pan fried asparagus with garlic salt and olive oil and eggplant in the same thing. Then I have some baked Okinawan sweet potato sliced and cut into various shapes of stars. The two sauce bottles contain soy sauce for the eggplant. I’m really loving eating eggplant like this without the batter. Yum yum!

I made this one for Monday’s lunch. I think. It’s all a blur! All I know is I didn’t eat it on the day I made it for cause we ended up going out to lunch at Spaghetti Factory. I got me some yummy mizithra cheese, which my co-worker kept referring to as “mithra cheese”. As FFXI players can guess, this cracked me up, but since I was alone in a sea of non-gamers the joke would have been completely lost on them. “Hey, you know, mithras are actually these sexy cat warriors in the computer game I play!”

The meat in it is sliced Costco chicken breast. I actually didn’t get a chance to make this one into soup so it’s still sitting in my fridge, calmly awaiting it’s tossing into the trash. Next to it I have sliced bell peppers. I’m going to have to step up consumption of these because I know they’re about to turn slimy even though I did my best to store them well this time. Maybe I should tell the Iron Bento people to make a bell pepper theme soon so I can go nuts.

I’ve also got cheese and cherries and blueberries and OH YES! Golden yellow kiwis! I saw this in a Don Quijote ad and I was like oh my holy crap I have to get some. They’re so cute! They match so nicely with the green kiwis. Since I stuck a penguin food divider in between the fruit and chicken, I stuck more sea creatures into the other fruits.

I’m still busy doing write-ups and settling back into the daily routine of tornados flying through my house every night when we get home so I’m not sure I’ll be having everyday bentos for the rest of the month, especially since my mom is coming to town this weekend. She’s moving away to Las Vegas. *sniff* Of course, this makes for a fantastic excuse to fly to Vegas. Not that I’m a Vegas kinda person but if AllasVegas ever happens, I can always say I’ve GOT to visit mommy. :D

Everywhere you look and all over talk radio, people talk non-stop about the economy. With gas prices being what they are, who can ignore it anymore, right? All this has led to Mr. Pikko getting me into food storage. Last night I went to K-Mart and bought a hundred canned goods. Every week now I peruse all the supermarket ads to find the best deals and then take us on market trips to stock up on whatever I can find on sale.

Yesterday I was reading through the ads that came in with Midweek and I saw the most hilarious product ever. A Hinode brand bag of “hapa” rice. It’s basically a bag of half brown/half white rice. For my mainland readers, the word “hapa” is a term referring to a person who is part Hawaiian and part Caucasian. I’ve heard this term used for people who are half Asian/half something else, but I can assure you the term is supposed to refer to someone who has some Hawaiian blood. Anyway, that aside, I had a great laugh about that. Not that I’d buy it, though. I can mix my own damn rice!

Since Lowe’s is right by K-Mart, I stopped by and bought another lamp. This time it only took 2 employee inquiries before I found them. Home Depot took 5, which drove me insane. “You can do it. We can help lead you all over our massive store on a wild goose chase!”

The reason I mentioned the hapa rice is because I have some today! This mix is something my grandma has done for years and years and is a great way to satisfy your need for white rice while still eating the healthier brown rice. This probably works really well for brown rice sushi, which I know can have stickiness problems.

I wasn’t feeling very inspired for my lunch today, so I just jammed some jungle animals into my little forest of beef broccoli. Those lil guys better not be doing bad things to my lunch!

A lot of you gave me great suggestions yesterday for my pan horrors. My cousin (who it turns out, gave me that pan) emailed to say that she had bought one for herself too and that eggs give her that same problem!! It’s genetic!!!

My apologies for the long absence, but I have been out sick since last Friday due to a nasty infection from a certain male toddler living in my household. The little guy is all better and has returned to his daily mommy-menacing, leaving the rest of us all croaky and sniffly and grouchy. On the bright side, I did get a lot of much needed sleep!

I continue to be vexed by my poor egg cooking skills. I switched to using a Calphalon pan that I got as a wedding gift but had hidden away in frustration and have had some success cooking breakfast in it. I was having a grand ole time thinking that I’d finally found a pan to cook breakfast in when disaster struck.

I’m sure some of you must remember those old drug ads from the 80s about “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.”, right? That popped into my head right away when I was cleaning up my latest pan horror.

This is my pan:

This is my pan on eggs:

AUUUGH! This kills me. Kills me!! I’ve tried Pam, I’ve tried oil, I’ve tried both. Yet sometimes this still happens. I’m ready to turn my eggs over to Buddy and watch him exact revenge upon them on behalf of his egg-deranged mother.

Anyway, I shall move on from my egg-ony and get to my lunch.

Thanks to my helpful readers, I went out and bought the materials to build a lightbox to help with my lighting problems I wrote about last week. I’d done this before with a cardboard box but without much success. I found this guide to be much more concise and so now I have a nice pretty lightbox in which to take my photos. I was unable to secure more than one light though, so this photo still had to get run through Picasa and Photoshop before being presentable here. Still, the quality looks pretty good and I’m sure it will only improve when I get more lamps! Thanks! You guys rock!!

I’m eating mapo tofu and black pepper chicken, which is leftover from when my dad was here on Saturday. Hopefully we didn’t get him sick. My mommy was also here before she left for Vegas to go on a scouting trip to move up there. It was raining cigar mangoes this weekend! I was in heaven!

I’ve been thinking about making a raised garden in the yard now. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not allowed to grow anything in the ground! I’m always getting busted for weeds cause I guess this is considered “growing things in the ground” too. Anyway, I thought maybe I could build something and start an herb garden or something. Then at least the stupid weeds wouldn’t have sun and would leave my yard alone! I’ll have to do research and find myself a Raised Flowerbeds for Dummies book or something.