When you wake up unable to choose between making onigiri and california maki, you have to reach a reasonable compromise. Like an onigiri with california maki fixings inside!

(Actually, I started writing a short short story to start this entry off, but halfway through it, I realized I won’t be able to eat my lunch, not after I gave the onigiri personalities. I mean, it was an insecure baby onigiri crying to his okasan! How can I eat something like that? -_-;;)

bottom tier:
A pair of onigiri stuffed with shredded kani surimi, sliced mangoes, and kewpie mayo, then wrapped with nori. To garnish, I placed carrot flowers with gouda cheese centers and mint leaves. For seasoning, I slipped in a pair of ichigo-shaped containers of soy sauce.

top tier:
Fruit & Veggie tray. Carrot sticks, jicama sticks, and mango slices. Can you say 5-a-day?

snack bento:
A pair of chicken pies from Conti’s (a really yummy deli-style bakeshop / resto), adorned with marshmallow stars & flower.

And because my sakura i.kotoba bento’s finally making it’s debut, here’s the pic of it all together. I ended up buying another tier because a single layer wasn’t enough for my daily food needs. I bought the matching chopsticks and furoshiki, but since I couldn’t find the matching bad, I had to borrow the red band from my usagi urara set. My Miffy bento’s feeling neglected lately so she sneaked in to get her picture taken too.

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Note: Oh yeah, Filipino bento bloggers, if you have time, please go visit this link. It connects to an LJ entry I wrote about the horrendous experience I had, shopping at Sakura Grocery, along Pasay Road in Makati.

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It was only after I had uploaded today’s bento pics when I realized that my bento’s theme was rolls! The lumpiang shanghai is a local version of spring rolls, and the enoke dake is golden mushrooms rolled in bacon.

top tier:
Lumpiang Shanghai Bites and Fried Rice. I like cutting the Lumpia into little bite-sized pieces before frying. Cutting not only makes them more fun and crispier, but also cuts the cooking time, specially since I usually fry them straight from the freezer. It’s easier for me to make large batches then just freeze them for future use.

bottom tier:
Veggie skewers! Crunchy cubes of fresh carrots and jicamas, strung alternately on cute animal tipped plastic skewers. My favorite is the cow tipped skewer, of course Served on the side is a dollop of Spinach-Artichoke dip (from Conti’s) on a carved tomato flower (or maybe crown?) with little basil leaves. To the right is a bunch of enoke dake, that’s enoke / golden mushroom wrapped in honeycured bacon.

dessert mini-bento:
Kiwi slices with a little marshmallow flower. Looking at it now, it sort of reminds me of a face with big googly eyes and puckered up lips.

add-ons:
A pair of green tea-filled marshmallows, for tucking under the bento top cover.

Needless to say, with a spread this yummy, I definitely can’t wait to eat lunch.

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It’s payday, so I trooped off to J-wave to pick up a new box as a gift to myself. Dropped by co-op and picked up a few accessories as well. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to get! The putifresh boxes were all so cute, and came in a complete set, down to the matching forks. I was so partial to getting the apple box. The yellow banana box was lovely, but I hate bananas. I was also considering the Feel at Ease bentos but the only ones they had were the yellow ones. In the end, I settled for a lovely 1 tier I.kotoba bento. Thinking of getting another one so I could stack it for a 2-tier.

Prices
I.kotoba set: P235.15 = $4.43
Sauce bottles & skewers: P150.00 = $2.83

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…and so he went off a-courting his geisha lady love.

Heehee, it’s quite obvious I had some fun putting my bento together today.

Top Tier:
Tuna & Kewpie mayo onigiri dressed up as a geisha. I used nori for her kimono, hair, and eyes, and a small romaine leaf for her fan (yes, that’s supposed to be a fan, hwehwehwe). Samurai-san is a plain onigiri with a shrimp stuck behind his head as his top-knot. This was the first time I tried making a hand-rolled onigiri since I didn’t know how to make the shrimp stick-out with an onigiri mold; I think Samurai-san came together pretty well, albeit a little smaller than his onigiri mold formed geisha love. Both onigiri are resting on a bed of bite-sized romaine. I added a shrimpy heart and a butterfly carrot as accents.

Bottom Tier:
Home-made pinsec frito with sweet chili sauce.

Dessert Box:
More mango pudding. (Told you guys I made a lot, hwehwehwe.) Accented by mini-mini marshmallows, a marshmallow flower, and mint leaves.

Add-ons:
A container of milk for the pudding, and a container of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the romaine.

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It’s been horribly hot during the day lately, despite the rains that generally fall in the evening. So, a cold bento is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Sushi Tier:
California Maki. I can’t do reverse rolls to save my life though, so the nori stayed outside. And since I don’t have salmon roe lying around in the house, my maki simply had kani (the surimi kind), fresh mangoes, and seeded cucumbers, dressed with kewpie mayo and some wasabi. I added a strawberry container of soy sauce, and a little lump of wasabi. I generally don’t like my food moving around in my bento, so I stuck in a couple of green tea marshmallows.

Fruit & Veggie Tier:
I love seeing everyone’s rainbow colored fruit trays so I wanted to do my own version. However, I don’t have ready access to berries, nor to a lot of fruit since they spoil easily here in the tropics. So, my fruit & veggie tray has fresh carrots, jicamas, kiwi, and mangoes.

Add-ons:
A small Hello Kitty container of Mango Pudding, which I was too lazy to dress-up. Not shown is a small container of milk to drown my pudding in.

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Some of the folks from requested for the recipe for the Mango Pudding, so I appended the recipe to the previous bento post. Posting separately here though.

MANGO PUDDING EXPERIMENT v. 15 July 2004
Yes, last time I bothered tweaking the recipe was 2 years ago…it was also the last time before yesterday that I made some. Still not perfect though, but I need a bite of New World’s version again before I tweak.

1 cup (half-pint) mango ice cream
2 boxes clear unflavored Alsa gulaman*
3-4 pieces ripe carabao mangoes (or any ripe mangoes you can grab)
1 liter milk
1/3 c white sugar

1. Let ice cream soften until easily creamed. Stir in milk until smooth. Set aside.
2. Make 2 slices into the mango to get 2 fleshy cheeks and the pit. Using a melon stringer, strip the flesh from the mango pits.
3. Dice or scoop the mango cheek flesh. Set aside.
4. Mix the ice cream / milk mix with the mango pit strips.
5. Add sugar. Season as needed. (Add more sugar if you want :P)
6. Stir in the gelatin mix, making sure to dissolve well.
7. Bring to boil with constant stirring.
8. Remove from heat. Add diced mangoes into the heated mix.
9. Pour into custard cups or whatever molds you want to use.
10. Let set in the refrigerator. Serve with lots of cold, cold milk. (And I don’t mean to the pudding with a glass of milk. I mean to pour milk on the pudding, liberally.)

*For people who aren’t familiar with Alsa Gulaman, it’s a local gelatin brand. If you can’t get it, I suggest trying clear unflavored Jello. Using Knox would screw up the ratios. I never tried it with Jello either though, so just lessen the liquid according to your tastes, since Alsa has a tendency to be firmer than Jello.

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Had iceberg lettuce and fresh mangoes lying around the house, and since I didn’t want them to go bad, I decided to go with a light salad today. And some pasta because I couldn’t get enough of this yummy bottled sun-dried tomato pesto we purchased over the weekend.

Left: Bite-sized iceberg lettuce leaves, sliced fresh mangoes, sliced seeded cucumbers, & shredded kani sticks. The pink container holds kewpie mayo for dressing.

Right: Tri-colore fusilli with sun-dried tomato pesto, pesto bread, and a little container of milk for my pudding dessert.

Dessert: Home-made mango pudding (I made a big batch so expect this week’s bentos to have mango pudding :P) garnished with teeny-tiny mango bits, a bit of strawberry preserve and mint leaves.

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