Bento Sandos.

I haven't blogged anything bento in a while. I haven't really made any bento in a while, come to think of it. El Niño just isn't in to it. And Cheeseball has been making her way through the wilds of German kindergarten, and I didn't really want to do anything that would make her stand out more than being the sole only just-the-one American. But, I've been easing my way into slightly more bento-ish lunches for her. And one thing she and I both adore is the Sando de Panda sandwich cutter. Sando is how the Japanese say sandwich. We've talked about how we incorporate foreign words into English. The Japanese take foreign words and um...Japan-ify them.

The set from CasaBento includes two shape imprinters, a crust cutter, a sandwich-edge-squisher (yes, the technical term) and a little scoop. Soft innards like PB&J, egg salad, etc.. work best. Horribly unhealthy Wonder Bread type breads work best, but Wonder Bread is too small. Here in Germany, they sell what they call "American Sandwich Bread" and it's pretty much Wonder Bread but bigger. I assume they must sell something similar in Japan, which is why it fits the cutter. It also helps to microwave the bread for about 15 seconds, then it accepts and holds the imprint much better and doesn't tear in the center when you squish down the edges.

You can make one big whole squished-edge sando or fold the bread in half and angle the cutter to make half squished-edge sandos. (I can feel my intelligence radiating out through this post. Can you feel it?)


Not microwaved long enough. Still cute.


Perfecto.

In Training

My backlog of Things I Intend To Blog is only slightly shorter than my list of Crafts I Am Going To Get To. But, drop everything, the queue can wait a little longer...I got a package from Amazon today!

Are these the cutest training chopsticks you ever did see? I think they are.

I use chopsticks with any kind of Asian noodle and lots of other rice-based dinners, so the kids have been dying to master the art themselves.  A cool dude in a Korean restaurant whipped up some homemade learning chopsticks for them one night a while back, but despite these handy instructions, it hasn't worked out for us at home.

The super cute pair are working just fine, though! The kids requested a chopstick worthy meal, which I'll also blog...uh, one day.  For now, action shots...

Bento in bed.

I'm blogging from bed, cozily ensconced in flannel and down and I suspect no other blogging will ever be the same.

Little Man's bento of the day: rice, gyoza, octodog, apples and oranges.

Technorati tags: bento, lunch

Cooking and eating Koko.

One of the things I miss most about Hawaii is the food. I mean, you know, also this:


Source: TerryMcT, Flickr

And my family. But very much so the food. I've learned to make a lot of it myself, much of that cobbled together with approximations of the actual ingredients and even those I have to run all over town to find and pull together. (Can you hear the tiny violins?)

There are a ton of Korean transplants here and therefore a ton of Korean stores and delicious, authentic Korean kim chee available. But, the Japanese version of this is a much more subtle and delicate pickled vegetable called tsukemono. We call it koko for short. Now, when I say we, I have NO idea if "we" is just my family and we're the only nerds walking around eating koko or if this is a collective "we" referring to all tsukemono loving speakers of the Japanese.

But, whatever the case, one of the things I really miss is a pickled cabbage dish called Yatsumi Zuke. My entire life, I thought my grandmother made this stuff, lovingly pickling the vegetables for her adoring family but it turns out THAT WAS A BIG FAT LIE. She bought that shit straight from the farmers market, brought it home and stuck it in old glass mayo tubs. I love my Baba, she was fucking awesome. And if, as it turns out, she was completely full of shit, I guess the Internet was going to have to come through for me. Except! Y'all! It would appear that we (and this "we" refers to my family and my family alone) ARE the only nerds walking around eating koko. Just try searching koko, you guys. Unless you're trying to cook a gorilla, you're going to be out of luck. (And even then, not a lot of recipes.)

Anyhow, blah blah blah...had to talk Mom into making a trip to the old Ward Farmers Market...blah blah blah...long story short...finally got the real name Yatsumi Zuke and found one lone recipe on these here Interwebz. Slightly modified, like to hear it? hear it go:

3 medium mustard cabbage
1/4 cup alaea hawaiian red rock salt
2 tsp grated ginger
2/3 cup shoyu
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
crushed red pepper to taste

Mustard cabbage is also known as mustard greens (although, not the same as what they call mustard greens here in the Souf), mizuna, gai choy and lord knows what else. It's a weird looking cabbage with a couple of giant leaves surrounding a teeny tiny little head.



On a side note, it totally stokes me out that the Korean grocery I buy my giant leafy leaves and little friends from grows them out back and thus makes this one of the few steps I can make in this area toward a 100 Mile Diet.

So, wash well, chop and sprinkle with the rock salt as you go.



With three heads of mustard greens, you'll end up with a giant bowl like this. Pictured here in human scale for perspective, because I'm helpful like that.



Let the greens and salt sit for about 30 minutes. In the meantime, heat up the shoyu (a.k.a. soy sauce), rice vinegar, ginger, brown sugar and crushed red pepper until it boils. Remove from heat and let cool.

Here's where you better hope you've kept up on your hand moisturizing. After letting the greens sit with the salt, squeeze excess water out and pack into a jar. Dry skin + salt = OW SHIT OW. Believe it or not, you can fit that whole bowl into a much smaller container. Again in human scale:



Once the mixture has cooled, pour over greens, seal the jar and let sit out for 3 hours.

Refrigerate, eat, refrigerate, eat, repeat until The Man eats all the damned koko and you say WHERE THE HELL DID ALL THE KOKO GO and he says you ate it and you say oh then blame it on him on the Internet.

Oh! And! Perfect for bento. Anything with vinegar in it is a natural antimicrobial which is a great addition to a portable lunch.

Technorati tags: tsukemono, Japanese cooking, Hawaii

A sweet new bento box and a very boring lunch.

This morning was one of those insanely hectic mornings when you have just exactly the same amount of time as any other morning but just. can't. seem. to fit all the same things in. I absolutely had to put my Little Man's new bento box into circulation today, so I threw together a last minute lunch - sloppily cut frog and mushroom shaped sammiches and cut apples soaked in orange juice.

I SO love this box and the kiddo - while noticeably less excited - quite digs it himself.

A Little More, A Little Less

Today's bento: Bulgogi (thin strips of Korean bbq beef), geometric shape onigiri, carrots, blueberries, broccoli and won bok kim chee. I did not pack enough kim chee. The child informed me that in the future he needs "enough kim chee for all the rice". Got it. Also, he'd prefer if I skipped the broccoli, carrots and blueberries. Not gonna happen.

I got my Little Man's awesome new bento box in the mail today! And some super cute cookie sandwich cutters. Someone will be super excited tomorrow morning!

He's a meat. ball. hero (with stars in his eyes).

This is yesterday's bento. Today, I was lazy and let Little Man buy pizza from the cafeteria. I was apologizing for not getting a lunch together as the child was skipping out the door, whistling and doodling I ♥ pizza on his notebook. Actually, I kid. He's not quite as indifferent to the bento as I make him out to be. It's just that I've got the bento love dialed up to 11 and how's he going to compete with that, really? This is the first time I've ever made meatballs, and holy crap they're tasty. I guess we'll be making meatballs again. There were only a few left after we finished inhaling dinner, so I had to cut one in half to make the sammiches even. Symmetry is important in my world, and also just in reality.

Rock STAR Bento

Today's bento is out of this world. It shoots for the stars. It's heavenly. A ha ha, ok I'm done.

Rocket shaped bologna sandwiches, cheese stars, moon shaped apples, blueberries, a bacon & fennel muffin and fruit snacks.

In other bento-related news, I finally ordered a real deal bento box and I can't waaaaait till it gets here!

Let's pretend these sad little bentos aren't the first of the school year.

I have no idea what's up with the bento bug - it bit me then it jumped ship. But I think it's baaa-aaack.

Yesterday: teriyaki burger, grapes, pickles and a tiny little monkey full of mayonnaise. Also, nasty cracking on the cheap azz gladware that is currently mortifying me. I really need to buy the child some actual bento boxes. (When I say buy the child some actual bento boxes, I mean buy me some bento boxes. To make me happy. Because that's how I roll with the bento. It's just good parenting.)

Today: tuna patties, fish shaped onigiri, grapes, broccoli, tiny chocolate action figures (that may well be made of rat poison and brown wax for all I can read the tiny kanji on the tiny packages), soy sauce and puffed rice:

I'm getting excited about it again! Little man: still ambivalent.

Ghetto eats, Pacific NW style.

Sunday night, I try to knock out a few dinners so life will be a little easier during the week. It's been a while since I foodblogged...er, non-bento foodblogging anyway...so I'm sharing with you a super simple kiddo favorite. Well, it's a Little Man favorite anyhow. Unless it starts with chicken and ends with nugget, it's not even very high up on Baby A's list. One day she'll discover that all those chicken nuggets she thought she was eating were really soy tricken nuggets and she'll become a vegan and cooking for her will be even more of a pain in the ass, but whatever. I'm prepared for that. Hello lovers, my Salmon Croquettes. As far as I can tell, croquette is a fancy name for patty that you get to use if you toss some potatos in the patty. Or maybe it really just means patty and I should rename these my Pretentious Salmon Patties. Ingredients (it's a short list): Salmon Potato Onion Garlic Eggs Garlic salt Pepper Soy sauce Parsley White corn meal Canola oil Start with the salmon. This is very important - use the foil packs. I made the mistake of buying the cans once, and by the time you're done picking out all the little soft, cooked bones and peeling off the skin, you might as well have paddled up the Columbia in a kayak, snatched the salmon out of the water with your bare hands and cleaned the fish with tools you stole from those Geico guys. Boil the whole potato until it's nice and soft. Set aside to cool. For a while. Unless you'd prefer to live life without fingerprints. If you're plotting the perfect crime, feel free to break right into that spud. Toss two packs of salmon in a bowl and break it up with a fork. Peel off the skin at one end of the potato and mush about 1/4 to 1/3 of the potato over the salmon in little clumps. Mince some onion (maybe 1/4 cup) and some garlic (coupla cloves) and throw them in the bowl. Crack 1 1/2 to 2 eggs in. Sprinkle in as much garlic salt, pepper and dried parsley as you like along with about 1 tbsp of soy sauce. Mix, cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for a while to firm up. What did you do to my chicken nuggets? After a while, start up some canola oil over mediumish heat. Form little lemon sized balls, coat them with white corn meal and then smush them down into patties...wait, croquettes, dahling and recoat with white corn meal. Set down in the oil, fry until the sides start to brown and flip. Fry in a roiling sea of fatty azz oil. And, just for good measure, I threw together a bento to take to work. I miss the bento. I've been pining over From Japan, With Love, coveting all the super cute stuff that I have no use for right now anyway.

Wherein I discover what this blog is REALLY about.

I said this wasn't a bento blog. But, I guess I lied. Little Man is off to the zoo tomorrow and needs a snack. So I got out his favorite little Pokemon bento box and put some Corn Pops in the bottom layer. I've been informed, however, that they are not Corn Pops. They're just Pops. Did that change? I swear they were called Corn Pops when I used to stare at them longingly on the grocery store shelf while Mom tossed yet another box of Cheerios or Shredded Wheat in the cart. Ok, no. I just checked. They are in fact Corn Pops. But the "corn" is teeny tiny perched atop a giant red "pops". So, I guess that was a pointless diversion. Hey! That's what this is. A pointless diversion blog. I can get behind that. Where was I? Oh, right. The bento. I made a peanut butter and nutella sandwich for the top layer. I was digging through the cookie cutters to figure out what would best fit and the hubbin said "I'm a big hairy hookerface." Or, he might have said "do NOT send the poor kid off with a heart shaped sandwich". It sounded about the same. Dog bone shaped sandwiches would not have fit, and flowers and stars were also vetoed. So, I had to just cut out an inverted peanut butter parallelogram. It was near tragic. I may have dramatically proclaimed that "this is not how I make sandwiches." But, that would be embarrassing. So, I didn't say that. I did sneak in a cute little handstanding elephant pick, though.

Shhhh, little Pokemon. Aaaand a bonus picture of the hairy child. Gettin' comfy.

Although we've come, to the end of the bento...still I can't just not post.

Score if you know the song that title just murdered. Bonus points if you owned the matching flannel. Ohhh, that threw you off.

I made the last bento of the school year this morning. Sniff. And I made the second to the last bento of the school year yesterday morning but didn't get around to properly memorializing it. Where to start, where to start...

Yesterday, I sent the munchkin off with a veritable zoo full of teeny tiny bologna sandwiches. Also, his first ever Babybel. I took care to give him a mini-tutorial in the morning lest we live out the terrifying vision of him taking a big honking bite of wax and pitooooeying it all over his fellow classmates, sparking an epic pukefest of Stand By Me proportions.

Also received further confirmation that the child is a near exact replica of Mom in many ways. My tweet the other day:

I wish all my snacks came in little red, wax wheels. Expand, Babybel peeps. What else can you stuff in a circle?

His reaction last night:

I liked it. What else comes in a circle?

Awesome.

For today, he asked for what he calls dumplings. What I call gyoza. What his father calls pot stickers. We should get together on that one. He also asked for fish shaped onigiri, preferably with a dog face. I am nowhere near adept enough to halve a seaweed dog face on a fish profile. But, I appreciated the confidence nonetheless. He'll peel off these non-dog faces in exactly the same manner as he'd peel off the dog faces and really nothing is lost in the switch.

I added a little turnip kim chee on the side and a container full of dipping sauce - rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and that chili garlic stuff with the green lid that looks like it might be made by the same people that make Rooster Sauce but the writing is all in Vietnamese (or something) so really I couldn't say. He has strict instructions to allow his teacher to pry open the sauce tupperware lest we live out the terrifying vision of dipping sauce sprayed all over his fellow students while they clutch their eyes and shriek as the hot chilis burn through to their brains.

He was just starting to get as into the bentos as Mom. Ok, not as into them as me. That's probably not logistically possible. But, a little into them. And now, we have just enough summer ahead of us to get him right back to whatever, Mom. So, that's cool.

Wherein it becomes a sickness.

Ok, now I just can't stop myself. I usually pack little man's bentos in the morning but I was all fired up, didn't want to dirty any extra tupperware, yada yada yada. I already packed tomorrow's lunch - leftover taco stuff, monkey full of hot sauce - which means I get to "sleep in" an extra 15 minutes. Wahoo!

Gooooooooooooooooooooooal!

After spending the better part of the last week admiring dillions of bento photos on Flickr, I've been inspired to push on. I've also noticed some tricks of the trade - a bed of lettuce works wonders! Here's the little man's Monday Tuesday lunch - homemade chicken nuggets, rice, soy sauce, turnip kim chee, carrots and grapes. Those carrots are shaped like giraffes and an elephant. No joke. I freaking love them. They're a little frosty because I froze them. Sunday Monday night, I thought freezing them would be like putting mini blue ices right there in his bento. Monday Tuesday morning, I realized this was inane. I also realized that these organic carrots are not going to cut it. Give me some GMO, steroid fueled giganto-carrots to cut silly shapes out of, please! I was SO unbelievably thrilled to have finally turned out a bento I could be proud of, I could have let loose with a cartwheel right there in the kitchen. My excitement was met with a nonchalant "I'm probably not going to eat the lettuce, Mom." Ha! No sweat, kiddo, Mom's high on bento. ADDED: Whew, this is going to be a short week. My brain is convinced it's Monday. UPDATED: The child is charmingly weird. The carrots, grapes and half the chicken nuggets came home. The turnip kim chee? Gone, baby, gone.

Gettin' a little better...

Still nowhere near awesomesauce, but gettin' better all the time...

This one was actually for me - salmon croquette, cauliflower, carrots, a tiny monkey bearing hot sauce, a bitty fish filled with soy sauce and FAIL furikake on rice.

I used a stencil for the furikake, but when I lifted it off, all the extra little bits fell right down around the cute little bunny head shape. Oh well. Saved me from the embarassment of co-workers noticing a cute little bunny head in my lunch.

Serving Up Some Lame for Lunch

I've made myself late for work the last two mornings in a row, trying to put the Japan into lunchtime for the kiddo. Frankly, I blame it on the bento. The whole point of bento is to create a portable meal that's as attractive as it is tasty. Therefore, I am utterly missing the point so far. Go me! My first two attempts have been full of fun stuff but also woefully pathetic (not to mention, kind of unhealthy). I figure it should only take me a little while or a good 43 years to build up to this kind of amazing. But, whatever. Here goes. Day 1: Anthropomorphized musubi (i.e. rice balls), fried bologna, turnip kim chee, bananas, grapes and all kinds of ugly. Day 2: Slightly more colorful, no less unhealthy. Nutella pinwheels, half-fake sausages (wannabes), a car shaped boiled egg, radioactive goldfish and Hershey kisses.

Sorta pinwheels anyway.

As I predicted, I'm way more excited about the whole thing than he is. Now I just need more stuff! Real bento boxes! Veggie cutters! A new kitchen to store it all in!

Kawaii desu nee!!!!

Kawaii = cute. And, nobody does cute like the Japanese. Yet another reason that we are the superior Asian race. Ha, I keed. Anyhow, I found myself extremely bored with packing plain old brown bag school lunches for the Little Man. I haven't made a sandwich that wasn't cookie cuttered into a fun shape in months. I'm also partial to these ridiculously cute "octodogs". Actually, I get far more excited about the octodogs than he does. And now I've found something else to be far more excited about than the child! I put in a big order today on Jbox.com - a great resource for all things Japanese.

I bought an egg shaper. You put a hot, boiled egg in the mold, stick it in the fridge for a little while and voila!...eggs shaped like cars, fish, you name it!

An onigiri shaper. These are designed to shape a "rice ball" into a fun shape. I already have bear heads, flowers, moons...but I didn't have a fish!

Some cute little ocean animal shaped picks.

The thing I'm most excited about - nori punches! You use these to punch little shapes out of sheets of seaweed that you can then use to anthropomorphize rice balls. Awesome, no?

Little monkey shaped sauce containers with banana shaped spoons.

And, last but not least - little fish shaped soy sauce bottles. The boy is a shoyu hound.

Actually, I ordered a bunch more stuff. But that's all the patience I have for a blog post.

I am ridiculously excited to start packing him the coolest bentos on the block! Actually, the only bentos on the block. But, still! I even paid $35 in shipping just to get them from Japan to the Dirty Souf lickety split. Let's just hope he's even a tiny fraction as stoked as I am.