Monday, June 28, 2010

bentos (con't)

6/30 Pizza Manapua

















Lil P likes pepperoni. I picked some up a while ago and used it for pepperoni roll from previous post but didn't use them all up so I put them in the freezer. I pull them out of the freezer yesterday and bought pillsbury biscuit dough and thought instead of pizza roll, I'll make it into mini manapuas!

Mini Pizza Manapuas

Pillsbury mini biscuit dough
spaghetti sauce
Pepperoni slices (chopped)
Shredded cheese

1) The dough is already individually cut up, so I flattened it.
2) Put in the center a penny size spaghetti sauce
3) Top with some chopped pepperoni, then shredded cheese.
4) Pull the sides up to cover the fillings, it's hard to close it, so I flip it over so the seal side is on the bottom.
5) I did 6 of these then place them on the pan to bake in the toaster oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.
6) I then pull them out, added more shredded cheese on the top of the buns, place it back in for another 3 min or so to give the cheesy look on the top.
7) Or, if you want a shiny top, simply brush beaten egg on top of each bun.

You can do more than just pizza!

6/29 "Froggy Business"


















Yesterday I felt a bit lazy and was just going to pick up musubi at the okazuya this morning. But I got half an hour to kill last night so I told myself to save money and make my own spam musubis. The only cutter I have that is small enough to use for the spam is the frog cookie cutter. So I cut 3 slices of 3 frogs last night and put the rest in the freezer. This morning I fried up the 3 slices of frog spam (1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp shoyu, 1 tsp mirin), microwave leftover white rice, and cut up some nori strips to make the musubis. I had some eyes cut out from cheese but I decided not to add any more details as is as I was afraid lil P might not eat it. My friends saw the pics and quite a few of them were asking what it was. I guess I should have made eyes for the frogs. :( and cutting the nori thinner would help too. 3 mini musubis wouldn't be enough for lil P, so I added in fried chicken from the leftover I made couple days ago. The fried chicken recipe was from a japanese bento making book. (marinte bite-size chicken in shoyu, ginger juice, and mirin for 10 min, then drench in flour and then fry. note: I would suggest to drench them with flour and cornstarch mixture. The flour alone didn't make it crispy enough)


6/28 Pikachu Turkey and Cheese Sandwich

















Cut out pikachu shape with cheese, cut of eyes, ears, nose, mouth with nori. add cheeks with ketchup, add mouth with turkey.

Planning is everything, if you know what you're making and know the steps to do them, it'll make your cooking time much faster. For lil P, I wrote out the things I could make (in less than 20 min) and ask him to tell me when he wants them, and I put the schedule on the fridge. For example: Day 1 is fried rice, Day 2 is musubis, Day 3 is ham and cheese, Day 4 is meatballs with fried noodles, Day 5 is peanut butter, Day 6 is hot dog, etc once I'm at the end of the list, I just start over again. The truth is, not even I follow it to the tee (probably because lil P doesn't care as long as I make things he'll eat), but it's good to know you have variety without pulling your hair off trying to figure out what to make, or having sandwiches everyday.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

More Bentos (plus Julie and Julia)

conquered more bentos this week!

6/21 "Basketball"















American cheese single, use a cup to cut the cheese in a circle, then use a tooth pick to cut out the lines of the basketball.

6/22 "Fishy Fishy in the Sea"















Use cookie cutter to cut out the shape from the bread, spread peanut butter or Nutella and sandwich together. Using toothpick, draw the eyes and mouths using Nutella. Add graps and soy beans to act as 'bubbles'.

6/23 "Catapillar"

Line meatballs (ready made) to look like a catapillar, cut two small carrot pieces into "L" shape, poke it in the first meatball top as antenna, place 3 pieces of shredded cheese for eyes and mouth.


Julie and Julia (semi review)
While I was folding clothes the other day, I turned the channel and found Julie and Julia on HBO. I didn't see the beginning, neither did I finish the movie before I get called out to finish up other chores. But I did watch about half an hour of it. To my surprise, it was a pretty good movie! Part of it is because I love cooking, but also because it was just entertaining! Maryl Streep played really well as Julia Child and I love the frustration and melt down of Amy Adams trying to work on a recipe but couldn't get it the way she would like. Reminded me of the time I had to make a dinosaur cake for lil' P's bday party and it turned out to be a disaster! I cried and sobbed and good thing mr. P was comforting. Speaking of which, he hasn't been comforting lately. hmph! Anyway, I am planning on recording it so i could watch it entirely. As a matter of fact, that book is at the "lending" library at work. I was tempted to borrow it to read it....but I never finish a book. sigh....

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Bento Making

I have been reading alot about bentos, I have become virtual friends with Susan Yuen who's had her second bento book out already. I enjoy reading her blog with cute bento ideas, and I absolutely love her recipe portion of her book. I often seek for her advice. Lil' P started summer fun and I needed to make him lunch daily. I thought, "maybe it's time for me to start making bentos" and asked her what she would recommend for older boys. She responded with a post just for me!!! How awesome is that?!!?!

http://susanyuen.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/transformers-sandwich-bento-98/

Let's see if I could make it happen...


6/16 Summer fun bento: Autobot Chicken Quesadilla with Extra Fiber Poptart

Thanks Susan!!


















6/17 "Stampede of Dinosuars" titled by lil' P