A couple weeks ago, I was asked to do a review on a bento book coming out later this year. Curious to see the latest attempt at a bento cookbook, I of course said I would. The book arrived quickly, taking about a week to get here. This is more than I can say for my copies of 501 Bento Lunches, which is still “in the mail”. *grumble*

My scanner is disconnected, so I had to just take a picture of the cover. I’m at home watching Baby Girl today because she has a fever, so I figured now was a good time to get this out there.

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The Princeton Plainsboro Aquarium has two new fish in it. I don’t remember what they’re called, but they’re white, bottom feeders, and have little whiskers. They swim around very quickly and I find them very cute. I’ve never owned fish before and I’ve found it to be very calming and relaxing. I wake up at 5:30 AM and when I come out to the living room, they gather up at the glass to stare at me with hungry eyes. One of the female betta is usually cranky and her stripes show.

This is the bento that I wasn’t able to post yesterday because of my forgetfulness. I know the bunny doesn’t really have very bunny-ish features, but she’s still cute anyway, so I like her.

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I’m so mad at myself. I sketched a cute bento last night, made it on time this morning, snapped the photos, then forgot to upload them to my gallery, and left my camera at home. Then I got to work and thought, “Hey I can take pictures with my point and shoot!” I did, then realized there was no memory card, so I’d need a USB cable, which is currently in my camera bag at home. BOOOO!

Anyway, without that picture to post, I figure now’s a good time to announce my 500k Bento Contest. I must sheepishly admit though, that I still haven’t gotten my 200k prize to Stefanie because it got sent back to me all the way back from Germany. *sob* The Mr. & Ms. Bento prizes are going out on Saturday.

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Someone commented yesterday to say that my plant looks like radish seed pods, so I looked it up and the flowers matched and the pods look the same. I went outside to check again and sure enough, there’s a pathetically skinny looking daikon under the dirt now. Apparently people like to eat radish seed pods, so I’ll have to see if I’m brave enough to do that!

We ate Chinese food for dinner last night, so I’ve got some leftover minute chicken along with a brigade of little triangle onigiri, made with a Petit onigiri mold. The box I’m using is a new one that I saw recently on J-List, the Strawberry Mix box. You’ll have to go to J-List to see the cover, which is adorable!

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I still have no clue what the mystery plant in my yard is! To give people more clues, I popped open one of the small pods and found a single brown round “seed” thing. I popped it and liquid came out. The smell was slightly vinegar-ish. ??? The fish are still fine, though Mr. Pikko had a near-fatal pump accident that caused almost all the water to pump out. Foreman was fine since he’s a bottom dweller, but House is now fin-crippled, which is bizarrely fitting…

Today I’m having egg salad sandwiches and I tried out my Panda Sandwich Cutter from J-List. As you can see, I need practice at it…

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We had a busy, busy weekend that started off with a family potluck at my aunty’s house. It was the first time almost all the second cousins were together to play, yay! Saturday we took the kids to the Urban Garden Center in Pearl City. We’d seen the place all the time from the freeway but until something popped up in the paper, we had no idea what it was. We liked it, but it was massively hot out that day, so after we’d had enough of melting we went to Home Depot to buy gardening stuffs. I bought seeds, Mr. Pikko bought more fishie stuff.

After I got in a bunch of stuff from J-List and Amazon, I realized that the amount of unused bento goods I have right now is getting rather ridiculous. It inspired me to actually sketch out something in particular for using one of those neglected items. Today I went with my Cinnamoroll onigiri mold.

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I was going to post this last night, but then my darned USB card reader had to go and die after less than three months use. I made sure to give it a big poopy review on Amazon just to get even. This morning I was complaining about it to Mr. Pikko and how I wasn’t able to get my pictures off my camera because my computer won’t read the card directly until he finally asked me why I don’t just use my USB cable.

“Oh.”

Yeah, I totally forgot about that thing.

Meet the newest members of our family. Mr. Pikko had bought a betta and put him into the little kiddie pool outside, but he had no name yet. He wanted to buy females yesterday, so we went to the pet store and bought a tank. The kids picked some fish and I picked the decorations.

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When we went to eat at Spicy Ahi last week, we saw a place with a big NOW OPEN sign and much to my delight, it was a ramen shop called Ichiben. There was a woman outside handing out flyers, so I took one and we decided we’d eat there the next day for dinner.

Ichiben offers four types of food: ramen, fried rice, grilled meats, and curry. They offer side orders, mini versions, and appetizers. Their Ichiben story was kinda cute and being new, the place was immaculate.

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I’m truly sorry for the lack of postings lately and for my lateness in drawing up my Mr. Bento winner. It’s safe to say that my brain has been overtaken with thoughts of FFXIV, the site we’re building, and our community outreach efforts. I’ve got a bento I never posted from last Thursday, but I’ll get to that later. I know you all want to know who won!

After receiving a total of 204 entries, the winner is #51, ktycat! It’s funny that ktycat won because she’s actually the one who made the most of this contest’s multi-entry feature. Ktycat had the most entries, putting her name into the drawing a total of 23 times! Congratulations, your persistence paid off! :D

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest, keep a look out for more this month!

As for the bento, I had a rather large lunch of spaghetti topped with a little white elephant. He rests on top a little slice of tomato from my garden. Next to the spaghetti is some steamed broccoli, a boiled egg (plain, I know, zzz), some strawberries, blueberries, and cherries.

It was very simple and quick to put together. I used a new item I got at From Japan with Love, but it’s something I’ll have to blog about some other time. Like I said, I’ve got massive FFXIV on the brain!

This morning when I looked in my pantry, I discovered five boxes of Macaroni and Cheese that expired in February, so I decided I better get started on eating it up now. It turned out better than I expected in a bento.

I’d have posted this a lot earlier, but have been busy with work today. Plus, at the Sony Press Conference at E3 today, Square Enix announced the title of their new MMO, Final Fantasy XIV Online! Like every other FFXI player out there, I about crapped my pants right then.

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