Starting now, I'll be posting all food and bento related entries to a full food blog. I have just finished manually reflecting all existing food and bento posts to the new site. Please follow me at baonkobento.wordpress.com.
This will still remain my personal blog. :happy dance:
Yes, that's right. My favorite 100-yen store is now in my favorite mall! Saizen sells all items at Php 85 (~$1.84) regardless of size. The most important thing is that Saizen sells a lot of bento and cooking equipment not found in the other 100-yen stores. I already have bought some items from Saizen before.
Here's my loot:
Okay, this is not exactly bento equipment. This is a plate specifically for holding and serving cold soba noodles. The wooden mat serves to both absorb the excess moisture as well as lets water drip onto the plate underneath. This also comes in a pure black theme, but I got the red-and-black since most of my plateware is also red-and-black. I'm thinking of getting a second (and maybe a third) soba plate, just in case I need it.
Yes! I finally got myself a nori cutter. I haven't tried it out yet and see how this actually performs, but I have high hopes. The interesting thing about this cutter is it actually comes in a set of eight cutters (separately bought, of course). I chose cutter number 5, the bunny cutter. I plan to get cutters 1-4 and 6 as well, and skip the last two. The last two are a ship and a car respectively, which is not useful because my daughter isn't into vehicles at this stage. Too bad Saizen does not have any kao (face) cutters, so my bentos will go faceless for now.
Lastly, I also bought a set of sauce containers. These are basically small plastic containers with lids and comes in different colors and designs. I have so far been reluctant to take pictures of my bentos with sauces because I've been using ugly sauce containers. Now, I will no longer be ashamed! Freedom! :3
Here's a picture of those three items unwrapped. There are several other items that I am planning to buy: bento boxes to add to my collection; additional picks; the other cutters as I mentioned; onigiri molds; and cookie cutters.
Since I'm already in the process of sharing pictures of my loot, let me show you two new bento boxes I bought from two other merchants.
This is a two-tier bento I bought from Japan Home (another 100-yen store). It is quite small, and it comes with its own bento band and chopsticks. I'm planning to use this little bit a lot, to help me control my portions better. My other boxes are much much larger than this one. I bought this one for Php 88 (~$1.90).
Is it hard to imagine who this bento is for? The moment I saw this bento I knew I had to get it for my little T. The only problem I have with it is that it's HUGE. It might not fit in her lunch bag, but we'll see. I bought this one at Clipper in Trinoma for Php 99 (~$2.14).
Disclaimer: These items are bought with my own money and all opinions are my own. I have not been paid in any way to advertise by these merchants. Finally! I was able to make that rainbow work after a disastrous first attempt. This is by the way my entry for the Bento Summer School Homework # 3. Here it is:
I have a bed of rice and sprinkled some nori strips on it. The clouds in the bottom corners are made of steamed fish cake, cut using a heart-shaped sandwich cutter but using only the top part. The rainbow itself is made of grated cheese, some broccoli florets, sticks of steamed squash, and grated carrot. From another angle:
You'll see I'm just using a standard Lock n' Lock box here (one of my first!). I wanted to avoid distracting the eye with funky box colors, so I kept it simple.
I really liked the taste of this bento that I went ahead and made a similar one for today.
This is my entry for the Bento Summer School Homework # 2. The task is basically to assemble a bento filled with finger foods, or food that does not require any utensils.
This is my daughter's school lunch yesterday. It's basically made up of things that I just pulled out of the freezer and threw into the steamer, except for the makizushi, which I made on the spot. Clockwise from the left: there's steamed cocktail hotdog octopii, ham sandwich with a nori strip to make it look like sushi, a mushipan, a jumbo chicken sausage cut into flowers, and a roll of cheese makizushi.
Here's another view:
It has been reported that she ate most of it, which made me really happy! Yay! 2 exciting things in this entry: my second kyaraben, and my first recipe! This is my entry for the Bento Summer School Homework # 1. The task is basically to adapt a non-muffin/cupcake recipe and use a muffin tin to cook it. Then, for bonus points, to pack a bento using that recipe. 
Here, I used silicone muffin cups and cooked chawanmushi in them. If you search online, there are several takes to the basic idea of chawanmushi, which is basically steamed savory egg custards. My own interpretation is as follows:
Pat's ChawanmushiMakes 3 small cupsIngredients and Preparation: 1 small carrot - Grate the carrot finely. 1 shiitake mushroom - Remove the stem. Slice into half inch strips. 1 medium/large egg 1/4 cup dashi stock (I used instant dashi granules to create the stock.) ~ 1/4 tsp mirin ~ 1/4 tsp soy sauce ~ 1/2 tsp white sugar * Mirin, soy sauce, and sugar amounts can vary according to taste.Break the egg into a small bowl. While pouring the dashi stock into the bowl, gently stir the dashi with the egg. (Note: Do not beat! We don't want bubbles into our mixture.) Add the mirin, soy sauce, and sugar and stir some more. Divide the grated carrot and sliced shiitake into three small silicone cups. Gently pour the egg mixture into the three cups. Some of the carrots and shiitake mushroom might float to the top; this is perfectly fine. Steam the eggs for around 12-15 minutes.  Bento break-down: Here you'll (barely) see that I put in a heart-shaped carrot slice in my chawanmushi, which is slightly submerged in the egg. I have a bed of carrot-rice beside the silicone cup (Carrot-rice: I put grated carrot, a bit of olive oil, and a dash of salt into the pot while cooking rice.) At the bottom is a row of steamed broccoli florets to represent grass. The flowers are actually flower cut outs off a steamed fish cake, with cheese circles in the middle. 
You'll notice that this entire bento is made using only the rice cooker. Prep time (including packing the bento) is around 35 minutes and the cooking itself is another 20 minutes. Today I made my first kyaraben. Here it is:
Composition: The bottom layer is basically just a rice layer with "オハヨウ!" written in cut-out strips of nori. Ohayou is "Good morning" in Japanese. Here, I wrote it in katakana instead of hiragana mainly because it's easier to cut out katakana because it's more angular. There is also a slice of hardboiled egg topped with cheese with scalloped edges (no, that's not the egg yolk), as well as a slice of flower-shaped cheese.
The top split-layer's left compartment is a veggie section (steamed cauliflower and broccoli florets around a fresh tomato). The right side has a bed of mac, cheese, and shrimp topped with two slices of hardboiled egg (egg whites only) with nori faces.
Thoughts: This bento is not quite the one I had planned a week ago. There is very little protein, because I had to ditch my original plan of using fried fish cakes. I bought these ready-made frozen fish cakes in Landmark and tried shallow-frying a couple. It actually turned out fine (and tasted like how I imagined it to taste like) but it spread smoke all over the house. I don't think I want a repeat of that, so I'm sticking to sauteing at the most when it comes to frying. No more shallow- nor deep-frying, so I'll need to find alternatives to cooking protein. I had planned to just boil the fish cakes as if putting in an oden, but I forgot to overnight-defrost the fish cakes.
In addition, I find that the actual bento is smaller than what I had pictured. I was envisioning more room to put things. This is actually a good thing, helping me control the portion size and thus help me eat less. Nori is also very hard to shape. Notice that here, I made only the most basic of shaping, which is basically just cutting strips out of nori and arranging them to form things I want.
On the positive side, steaming vegetables was a great idea! The colors are preserved beautifully, and they taste fresh too. I also got to use the picks I bought (link) earlier, here arranged as if they were the hair on the two egg-faces. Lastly, the mac and cheese was awesome!
Conclusion: I need to work on protein for bentos, as well as making better faces. I'm thinking of acquiring more food punchers and nori cutters.
What do you think is a good theme for my next kyaraben? Today I made another attempt at making sushi. This time I tried some variations. Here's what I came up with:
The nigiri-sushi in the upper portion are made using the mold that I bought recently. I'm not 100% satisfied with it because it used up an insane amount of rice for just a few pieces, and I needed to improvise on the strip of nori that goes around each piece. I made double-striped one on the right side with the leftover rice.
I was also able to make thinner sushi (all of the ones under the double-striped piece) by using half a nori sheet and only one kind of filling. Here I made two sets, one with tamagoyaki inside (the yellow ones on the right) and one with kani inside (the ones at the bottom). I also made two sets of the fat sushi I made before (the ones under the lone nigiri-sushi).
Along with that plate of sushi, I made a huge batch of mushipan. Mushipan are basically steamed bread-cakes that the Japanese eat as an afternoon snack (merienda). Usually it's served hot with toppings like maple syrup, chocolate syrup, or even marmalade or jam. I've determined that it's actually fine eaten cold and by itself and is perfect for bento.
I made my mushipan using silicone cups instead of a colander as most steamed bread recipes use. The bigger square shaped ones are roughly twice as big as the small circular ones (because it used twice the amount of batter). I'm still in the process of finding the right sugar content; the original recipe called for a small amount and is almost bland. This batch I made had 1.5 cups more sugar, but still Gaeb says it could use a bit more. Tesla liked it, though. I was able to go for a bit of shopping yesterday for some bento equipment. All of these were bought from Saizen, a 100-yen shop at Robinson's Galleria, where everything is sold at Php85.00. I like Saizen because of the sheer variety of items that they offer.  This is a popsicle mold for four. Since Tesla loves ice cream, I figured I could make her some using this mold. It's also rather nostalgic, since the kids from my era are used to making homemade ice drops by freezing fruit juice.  This is a nigiri-sushi mold. I am told that my maki were good, so I'm planning to make more. This mold will help me make differently shaped sushi.  I also bought these bento picks. Admittedly this is on the decorative side of making bento, I am hoping also that this will encourage Tesla to eat her packed lunches. This is a set of 50 vegetable-themed picks (actually they are more fork than pick).  Here I displayed the picks along with the opened sushi mold. As far as I can tell, there are five different designs of the picks. Aren't they adorable? A better independence day to you!
And to greet my independence day morning, I totally forgot to bring the bento I prepared this morning! That seriously disrupted my entire day's rhythm, not to mention I would have to shell out money that has already been planned for something else.
I needed something cheap but filling for both breakfast and lunch. I ended up going to the 7-11 in my office building and got the following:
For breakfast: Banana 12.00 Pack of sliced apples 39.00
For lunch: Hotta rice meal (Bicol express) 39.00
And I also bought a couple of strepsils for 10.00 because I have a cough. Now, all of these for 100.00 does not seem so bad considering they fed me for two meals. I also wanted to include photos but I don't have my phone right now, and the food got eaten before I thought of writing about it.
Hopefully the rest of the day pans out better.
How is your independence day so far? I made this bento to last me for both breakfast and lunch in the office yesterday. I used one of the bento boxes I bought earlier.
I have rice and two sliced kani sticks in the bottom layer (the one still in the carrier). In the middle one (shown on the left in the picture) I have 3 slices of tamagoyaki and a corned beef-and-macaroni dish I learned from my friend Seth. The top layer has four chicken-and-shrimp siomai with a soy sauce dip.
I had the corned beef and macaroni for breakfast and the rest for lunch. All of the components took well to being nuked in the microwave for a minute, and it was all the better being warm.  | Sushi! | Jun 2, '10 5:58 AM
for everyone |
Made sushi today. Didn't come out too badly, I think.
Crabstick and egg sushi rolls. Made 4 rolls total with 2 cups of sushi rice, 2-egg tamagoyaki and around 8 sticks of kani.
My newest hobby these days is cooking. Specifically, cooking for packed lunches, also known as bentos. I also like the different types of lunch boxes available out there, and I would like to grow a respectable collection. Prior to this, I had only been using standard plastic containers like Lock n Lock.
I found these beauties at the department store in Trinoma. Who would've thought they sold quality bento boxes?
The first box is a two-tiered green box with a hidden compartment for a spoon and fork set. Alternatively you can replace that with chopsticks. The box itself seems pretty sturdy and leak-proof, so there will be no fear even if you put this in your bag along with other belongings.
This second one is a three-tiered pink-and-white set with an accompanying spoon in the first layer. Unfortunately, it doesn't have its own compartment for utensils. However, this is designed to be carried on its own, as the pink part already acts as a carrying handle. As you can see in the picture, the plastic is not that thick.
I am excited to try them out! After taking Tesla to her school today, Gaeb and I decided to be adventurous and eat at this inasal place in Katipunan called Chix and Treats. It's actually on the side road where Bo's cafe is located, and Chix and Treats is beside Reyes Barbecue. It's a pretty unassuming restaurant, with barely any signs that it's actually there. It's small and quiet, and there's around 3 parking slots in front of it. The food is pretty good! I ordered a pork sinigang, Gaeb got chicken inasal, and we shared a plate of lumpiang ubod. The sinigang was great! There's not really a lot of it, but in my opinion, a small amount of delicious food is waaaaay better than a lot of sucky food. The lumpiang ubod at first looked weird because it didn't come with sauce. It turns out that the sauce is already incorporated -inside- the lumpia, making it a little gelatinous, but very very tasty. I haven't tasted the inasal, but Gaeb tells me that it was great as well. Another surprising thing was the iced tea. It was actually bottomless pandan iced tea selling for only Php45 (not expensive as far as bottomless goes). It tastes very interesting, a cross between the sweetener of taho and lemon iced tea. It's one of the better iced teas I've tasted, and that might be the thing that'd make me want to come back to Chix and Treats. My entire meal costed around Php175, probably because I had a side dish of the lumpia, as well as a bottomless drink. However, this isn't very bad if you were looking for a great sit down inasal place. They had good music going on too. The only foreseeable trouble you might encounter is the very limited parking space. PERSONAL GOALS FOR 2009
1. Lose 10 lbs. 2. Pay better attention to my car. 3. Do significant improvement to the house.
PROFESSIONAL GOALS FOR 2009
1. Pass scorecards. 2. Complete updated resume.
I have honestly not been blogging because:
1. WoW has been eating my free time for most of 2008.
2. I was introduced to microblogging (specifically Plurk), and I had been blogging there, instead of here.
3. I really had no inspiration to blog about.
4. I was (and still am?) really tamad about uploading my pictures I took with my phone.
Hopefully, with the start of the year (and hopefully this is not just a result of that), I would be able to go back to blogging. I am currently looking for ways to post to multiply from work (which, incidentally, is blocked) through email or other such "allowed" methods. If you have suggestions, I'd appreciate it! Last week was a pretty interesting time for me. The first was that I finally succombed to the same illness that befell Gaeb and Tesla both, when we first arrived back from Cebu. High fevers mostly, but mine was different in that it lasted for an entire week! Fevers in the range of 39-40... T_T
While I was convalescing at home, I woke up one afternoon to find our house flooded to the first step going to the second floor! To my further horror, the car I thought I parked in front of the house was now located several meters down the street, immersed in floodwater up to the windows!!! T_T
The flood receded around two hours later. The house was a mess and most of everything that was on the floor was pretty much...dead. >< It was really a pretty sad state of affairs.
Thankfully everything is more or less back to normal. All I've got to do now is to catch up at work for missing 1 week! Ahahah!
...this blog.
Viridian has been severely ignored for the past few weeks, but she has not been forgotten. And now that I don't have any reason to post, I will.
What's been up with me? The most recent update would be finally getting phone+dsl in our house. That's where I'm currently posting for now. ^_^ I have yet to see how the dsl performs in gaming, but with browsing/downloading it seems to be doing well for now.
A couple of weeks ago we went to Ocean Park Manila with Tesla, and she seemed to have enjoyed looking at the aquariums. Pictures to follow...
Work is same same, though I have not been getting much sleep. I don't think I really like this current schedule.
Well, three weeks have come and passed. I have still yet to get really into the groove of being a team lead. I really don't know how the other TLs do it, but it seems like there are too many things to do, and too little time to do it. One moment, I just arrived at work, the next moment, I'm being chased off my station as the closing TL scheduled to use it has arrived already. The first challenge I faced was the fact that the team I am currently handling was already a team before I became a TL. I had understandable comprehension of not being able to blend in. I even had the fear that the team would develop an antipathy towards me, since it's pretty much expected that I would be compared to their previous TL. Well, things pretty much turned out better than I feared. The team seems to have retained their previous cohesion, and they are having as much fun as they can in the environment that we are working in. At the very least, we seem to have the same brand of humor. (Hehehehe!) The next challenge: integrating the three newest members into the team. *sigh* Finally, training is done. My batchmates and I all graduated successfully last friday (at around the same time of that Ayala rally, hmf!). I got to emcee the ceremonies, and even received recognition for finishing MDP with the second highest score (yay!). It had been exhausting - the training, the exams, the classes, the mentoring, everything. But I really think it's worth it. Now, it's time to see if the baby can swim when thrown in the water. Wish me luck! Today was my second to the last day in my management training class, and the integration session was done in MMLDC in Antipolo. (Don't ask, I have no idea what MMLDC means. Hehehe..) The main activity was Paintball, wherein we were supposed to get some insights in handling teams during the games.
The paintball grounds are HUGE! It was a very rough terrain full of actual trees, rocks, and the usual things you find in nature. Including the bad parts like brambles, nettles, and big red ants. Aside from those challenges, the terrain was uneven as well. It had mini valleys and mini hills, and you have to build your strategies with those in mind as well.
To cut things short, we had a very fun time of it. The only bad thing was, I injured myself during one of the sorties. I was running to hide behind what appeared to be a hill of earth, only to discover that there are actually rocks embedded on the hill. And I had to discover that with my leg. Needless to say, it developed into a 2-inch long open wound. Oh well.... T_T At least it got treated right away, but it still hurts whenever I put any weight on it.
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