Kawai bento

Amazon books finally arrived~ kawai bento is awesome and I made a bento last night when I thought I would be too lazy

Menu: mini hamburger, aparagus wraped in ham, sautéd capsicum, rolled omlette and baked sweet potato with a fruit salad side dish.



The sweet potato was most different and I am interested to see what it taste like.

Am looking forward to the new year and making lots of cute bento! Now to see were I can get a toaster oven...

Christmas baking

So last night I was busy in the kitchen baking mini muffin Christmas cakes. I chose a recipe that looked perfect but on baking did not turn out like the picture T.T

The icing was a humidity resistant type and was amazing! I think it's the best icing I have ever made~ but since my icings normally fail ... I could not get the icing the pretty red from my designs and ended up with hot pink >.< however I forged on, creating stencils and using hundreds and thousands to make pretty images on the cakes. At first I thought they looked bad but with practise they improved and all together they were attractive.



I want to cover them individually with green cellophane with a red ribbon but I don't know if i will have the time tonight. Landrin and I are going to see Avatar and then I really need to wrap christmas presents~ maybe I shall just decorate a basket...

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Grandma Christmas cake

Grandma made landrin and I a Christmas cake~ I feel soo lucky

It's very pretty with a ribbon and decorations and her signature bunnies at the bottom XD

Grandma is so nice she even remembered my favorite colour is green. I am going to take the cake to a Christmas eve dinner to share it needs to be admired by lots of people before it is eatten.



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Christmas fruit salad

Menu: fruit salad, lamb balls, mint sauce, mash potato and stir-fry vegetables.



Because Christmas is a summer event for me nothing says Christmas quite like a selection on summer fruits; apricots, peachs, cherries, plums, and grapes are always welcome~ because I made too much fruit salad there is a morning tea side dish today as well.

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Santa bento

So in the spirt of Christmas I wanted to make a colourful Santa bento.

Menu: rice with ham and cheese Santa, chicken with Ginger and shallots, coleslaw, taro hashbrowns and capsicum and carrot sticks with mayo.









Landrin wanted his Santa to have a goatee like him where I tried for a more traditional beard. Since I don't eat processed cheese I went with tasty cheese slices, it took the food colouring well.

When I saw taro at the local supermarket I brought some with no idea what to do with it, but lastly I enjoy turning all root vegtables into hashbrowns. The taro hashbrowns are quite good!

With the last bit of rice left over I made onigiri, cream cheese and ham flavoured. I made two with the left overs but landrin said he had too much food, and I only needed one.. So Shadowreaper became my test case, he was not sure but after a bite he said it worked well~

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Mini christmas cakes

Menu: salmon, coleslaw, cream cheese, cucumber and bread squares. I had wanted to make salmon and cream cheese onigiri however I was short on time and just want for a traditional salad feel.



I found a minute and took a photo or two of landrin's early Christmas present: a manly bento box~. It has two levels and built-in chopsticks, it is defintley larger in capasity to my own bento box. I have not had a chance to fill it yet..









Why was I so busy yesterday? Well I am not into giving out Christmas cards but I want to give out something cute to my co-workers. I decided on mini muffins with mixed fruit and spices to give a christmas cake feel, and then iced in green or red and used silver balls as decoration, and wraped in cellophane with a ribbon. I was not very happy with the icing but it's all practise and I shall do better. Still they look pretty, now to give them out at work~



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Non traditional bento

Fridays bento is an uber healthy menu but very pretty in the colour mix



I have found that a peach can be sliced to fix perfectly in the gero container ^^ and a little taziki to enjoy with the vegtable sticks.

Mondays bento is dinner left overs, but with this menu I am very pleased with leftovers! Experimening has found me a great easy rice-cooker recipe for mushroom risotto ^^ add a little pearl meat in lemon and parsley and it's just too tasty! With eggs I moved up to jumbo size and it's too big... I am going to have to look very closely next time I am at the shops and see if I can find the perfect size. And to round the meal out a couple of cute carrot sticks and flowers. I did see more vegtable cutters on eBay, slightly smaller shapes with I am going to have to get cause the carrots around cannot make too many flowers. I look forward to seeing what other shapes are about.



In gaming news it's been a very world of warcraft weekend~ I dragged Landrin to every instance known to man and have collected in the vacinity of 250 badges in a weekend. My gear ha been completely upgraded to the best I can get without the new raids! I even tanked, 10/25 ToC and half ToGC! very exciting and scary but I want to tank raids now and I have to say I have seen an improvement in my tanking just from running so many instances~

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Two days of bento

So yesterdays and today's bento are pretty similar but this happens a lot :-)

I decided to go with more salad and no rice today as I was too lazy to cook such a small amount of rice for my lunch. I am improving with making sausage characters but I need to look up best techniques on cooking ... Pengues face fell off! Yesterday I forgot some sauce for my vegtables so today I have added some Japanese mayo (yum) and selected only an octopus sausage as yesterdays bento seemed a little too full. Hrm I needed to read up on packing styles more too. Soo much to do to improve my bento~



Tuesday bento



Wednesday bento

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Carrot sakura

With most of my order from eBay arriving Friday I was very excited about the making of bento on Sunday! I got to play with my vegtable cutter and am very happy with the results, carrots will probably feature a lot in my bento. I also used the rice moulds and have a cute flower in my bento, Landrin got a love heart ;-) but I think he will just sigh, honestly boys are no fun.

The last thing I played with was the sausage cutters. The first set I took out I let defrost completely and *fail* :-( but I remembered what I had read on the lunch-in-a-box forum and pulled out another set. This time I only let them defrost a little bit and woo~ it worked! Now since I was being careful they are not perfect yet but practice shall gets there!









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Stuff arrives!

So Thursday night as I packed my lunch I was depressed as I did not have any really awesome ideas and wanted the stuff I had ordered! I needed the enthusiasim and tools to get creative.

Low and behold~ Friday when I check the mail two of my parcels have arrived!

Wish it was Sunday night so I could be packing a cute bento already~



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Octopus sausage

Tuesday night went well a little crazy busy and with the wine flowing~ this of course is my excuse for not taking photos of the food :-P

I did not post a photo of my bento as it turned into hastily packed leftovers and there was no design involoved. Tasty though.

Today's bento menu is: carrot and assparagus, golden sweet potato pancake, an octopus and 'manly' sausage, finishing with a boiled egg.

I am still experimenting with the little sausages and now having tried frying twice next time I shall play with boiling. I like the fried sausage but I think I need to turn the heat in the pan down.



In other news, the rainy season is hitting and here is a photo of the wind from Tuesdays rain



Not much happening in gaming news, my warrior in World of Warcraft has been respec to dps over pvp. Now I just need sometime to learn to play dps ^^. I decided to re-read Fruits Basket last night and got 2 volumes in, it's actually very good to re-read as little things missed in the first reading stick out now. But Kyo is still just too cute~

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Aussie bento

Since last night was soo busy (in the kitchen!) I only made a bento from what was on hand.

Menu: sliced steak, potato salad and mordern Australian salad. Dressing in seperate container.



The mission for pie concluded with Landrin's help <3 he was my kitchen prince as he rode to the rescue for the pie~ he got the pastary sorted and on top to the filling placed slice strawberries to make the pie more attractive. Not to be happy with just that he lattaced the lid and got them in the oven baking!






Since two pies where made one was for the big dinner Tuesday night and the other was split in halves and taken into repective work places.

So what kept me busy? Preparing a dinner for 8-10 people, for a night when I have volleyball and not at my own place! So everything needed to be easy to prepare on the night and if not complete before... So I made grandma's easy potato salad, a mordern Australian salad (which I roasted the pumpkin and croutons myself) and three quarters prepared turkey balls in salsa sauce (just needed to be heated in the oven, the final stage). Which does not sound like a lot but it all adds up when you like to do as much as possible from scratch!

I had not time and everything was not finalised but I shall post photos tonight before everything goes no the table. Though my lunch is a preview ;-)

Then somehow I found time to watch Signs (never seen before) which was interesting, and defeat the second gym boss and finalised my party for the next leg of adventure!

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Busy Sunday

So not only am I making mixed berry pie (including the Brazilian cherries, found the name today) and dinner prawn curry! I love Japanese curry prawns! So I am looking forward to dinner and bento lunch.

Added to the oysters in mirin and my night is complete! I have not had this much seafood in ages XD

Hrm the jam filling should be finished tonight and I shall make the pie tomorrow :-)









In gaming news, tried Majesty 2 yesterday and it kept tempting me to try a new level. I had never played a fantasy kingdom sim before and I really liked the idea that I did not control the Hero's and had to bribe them to do quests XD

Otherwise I tried the demo of World of Goo on the Wii, was very strange but in a good way! It freaked me out a little when one would die cause they all had faces~ but the demo was enough to convince me to buy the full game. I also tried Final Fantasy demon lord demo, but after a few minutes I found it annoying and delete it.

In pokemon diamond news ... I still need to take out the second gym, cause my traded pokemon refuse to listen to me :-( though I am having a good time! I was having a look at the new Pokemon game that is going to be coming out in April (US edition) and now I really cannot wait for that~ I need more time!

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Mmm cherry pie

Thanks to a guildie on WOW who made an awesome starwberry pie, this weekend I wanted to bake a pie! Good thing is on my mother-in-laws property there is an Australian native cherry tree, ripe and ready for pie making! These cherries are more tart then normal cherries.

So now the cherries have been collected, this took me doing some bush bashing and fighting green ants and even a spider or two! And this does not include the scary leaves and bush that was propably hiding a lot more!

I am thinking I need to let them mature for another day and find a recipe now~ more tomorrow



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Friday bento

So I have been busy in the kitchen again. But this time I wanted to share what I cooked for dinner to show how lunch related.

So dinner was baked barra with capers and salad. Was nice but I think I prefer salmon.

So to make lunch a little differnt I added my first atempt at an octopus sausage. I tried the fried method mentioned on lunch-in-a-box site (which I joined the fourms recently). Otherwise I kept lunch pretty simple with salad and a boiled egg. I was going to make onigiri with some leftover rice but it was too separated and so I just mixed a little fish and soy sauce to give it some extra flavour. Last but not least a couple of pickles in a container.

Presentation wise I think it's a little empty but that could have been improved with use of containers ... I keep wanting my new eBay items to be here even though I only just ordered them :-)

A side note I gave into playasia pressure (how they twist my arm) and preordered the new Zelda ds game Spirt Tracks which comes out early next month but with christmas post won't be here until Jan sometime. And since I had a good coupon I could not resist adding an Animal Crossing Totakeke to the order XD.

But now for some photos:







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My first blogged bento~

So last night I remembered to take a photo of my finished bento XD.

Menu: tonkatsu with curry sauce, rolled omlette, mushrooms and asparagus with miso sauce and finally rice with pickles.

So I was not happy with the rolled omlette ... But it's been a while since I have tried to make it normally soo I am sure I shall improve~

The curry sauce added another difficultly as the sauce container was open o.o but I don't have enough choice of containers yet! Wait until my eBay order gets here XD






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An update

Soooo mostly I have found out that I am lazy ... But I have recently found a new way to keep myself from getting too lazy! I am also going to post bento that I make for my everyday lunches.

I have just been spending monies on Amazon and eBay ... But I will soo have some awesome tools for my bento! Since I already have a good collection of boxes and once use containers I did not need too much more really. I brought two books from Amazon: The Manga Cookbook and Kawaii Bento Boxes: Cute and Convenient Japanese Meals on the Go. Both are aimed at children's lunches but I dont mind cause I like cute lunches. And hopefully with give me lots of ideas. From eBay I got:

Rice molds
Bento picks (zoo animals)
Sakura and ume vegtable cutters
Crab and octopus sausage cutters
Sandwich sealer
and last some Furikake single packs.

So mostly just little bits and pieces to keep me going. Though I think I am going to run out of my paper containers ... Need to find a good place to get them from ... And I want egg molds, and I am sure next year in Japan I shall spend a whole day searching department stores for the perfect bits and pieces to take home.

I do have some photos I need to dig up from a wonderful dinner in Singapore, so I will try and dig them out soon!

Mon Cher Ton Ton <3

After leaving Disney I headed into Tokyo centre and grabbed a hamburger from a random burger joint in a department store. There was a little too much sauce as it went every where but the mustard used was good as it had just a bit of a kick ^^



But the main event was Mon Cher Ton Ton Roppongi! I have been to the Shinjuku branch before and could not resist going back this trip. However I was feeling more confident and took my camera this time! Also as we had a bigger group we were given a private room ^^ A quick FYI this meal is cooked infront of you by a chef assigned to you for the meal.

The Mon Cher Ton Ton set menu was selected for all parties ^^ I had a hot lemon drink to start as it was very cold when we came in, and the chef started cooking the garlic on the hot plate.



A selection of chilled vegetables were served, all perfect in ripeness and colour.



Next dish was the beef sashimi with a sweet onion on top, the beef was excellent and the onion complimented the flavor! The girls in the group where given a sweet pumpkin cold soup to go with the dish that was extremely yummy!



The next dish was Foie gras, not something I would normally choose to eat but as it was part of the set menu I decided to enjoy it. This reminded me of an extremely fatty chicken liver but again was very tasty! I am not sure what the sauce was but it suited the foie gras excellently.



The next dish was abalone, to which everyone had one to themselves! It's hard to explain the taste but with the anchovy butter melted on top the abalone melted in my mouth!



The salad was excellent and the dressing particularly good, as I make Japanese style dressing at home I paid close attention and found that it far out paced my attempts :P The flavors were much more subtle ...



I forgot to take a photo of the main until I had taken a few bites, but I think that just tells you how good it was! The steak had three different choices of sauce, onion, salt and I forgot, I enjoyed the salt the most, the onion the next and the other one the least :P But the steak was perfect by itself!



Served at the same time as the steak was spring cabbage that was some of the best cabbage I have had in my life! It was juicy and tender and all thins I never knew cabbage to be!



To follow was miso soup, rice and pickles. A perfect ending to the meal ^^



However there was still more to come! A Crème brûlée served with tea in the lounge.

Eating well at Disney Tokyo!

As I ate my way around Disney I did try to partake in the special menus as much as possible.

Dinner was Magellan's, which I have eaten at before and I had high expectations. As I had hoped they did meet that expectation! I did not get the special menu as it did not appeal to me to, but the normal set menu had heaps of great choices.

Starter was escargot, which was the first time I had tried this and I enjoyed it very much!



Followed by mushroom soup, which was very creamy!



My main was a steak (medium rare) in port sauce, each bite melted in my mouth ^^



Finally the meal finished with cake of the day, which was a New York cheesecake, that was light fluffy and prefect!



Additional photos : other choices were the lamb and the Crème brûlée:




The next day started with room service for breakfast.

I was a bit disappointed with the scrambled eggs and bacon... The bacon was not even a little crisp and the eggs seemed to be kinda flat instead of my preferred light and fluffy.



But the fruit, juice, tea and pastries made up for it!



I promise I did not have a second breakfast, but this was too cute not to take a photo of; Mickey Mouse waffles! Also very tasty I am told ^^



Since we were in Japan I could not resist trying out Restaurant Hokusai, and they had a very nice looking special lunch! Also there was a special dessert on the menu and since someone else was feeling hungry they order it for themselves. I figured I would just steal a bite so I could make comment on it ^^

The bento special lunch was great! There were lots of great items included though out of all the items I did not finish the savory custard ... But I gave it a go! The included dessert was red bean paste was very tasty.



With everyone feeling very full the special dessert arrived! And it was bigger then we expected! I would give four large slices and six small slices... However as it was a sponge cake we managed to make a decent go of it. The cake was very good though by the end of my slice I was a bit creamed out...



Dinner was at the Blue Bayou Restaurant, once again we got the special menu. The starter was prawns wrapped in a light coating. This did not leave much of an impression on me. I have a feeling that this dinner suffered coming after the excellent dinner the night before. It was not comparable :P



Steak for the main, again could not compare to the steak I had had the night before.



The dessert was prob the highlight of the meal, as it was a cute mousse made into the shape of a treasure box.



The lighting did make taking photos hard ...

The following room service breakfast was omelet and sausages, once again the eggs and meat did not really taste great but the other parts of breakfast made up for it.