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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