Bento and Kittens

So here's what I had for lunch this week:



Monday was yakisoba with soy sauce, broccoli, celery, mushrooms. Spinach bed with fresh mushrooms and grape tomatoes tossed in for fun (and color).



Cucumber slices, carrots, and quail egg resting on bed of spinach. Kiwi, raspberries, blackberries and Hello Panda chocolate creme treats.



Tuesday we have onigiri covered with furikake, spinach, carrots, grape tomatoes, quail egg, filled onigiri (soy sausage, celery, red bell pepper). Lower right has cucumber slices, avocado, raspberries. Lower left has blackberries, granny smith apple slices.

Wednesday was payday and also double reward points day at Qdoba so I had a vegetarian taco salad, which was delicious, of course.



For Thursday there was plain onigiri, spinach carrots, grape tomatoes, plain onigiri with furikake. Lower right hand has yakisoba with baby corn, mushrooms and broccoli. Upper right has blackberries, raspberries and granny smith apple shapes (made with my new cute mini shapers). The yakisoba was inedible. Okay, so it was edible, but not tasty which made it inedible in my book. I think the baby corn made it taste kind of icky. I'll have to rinse that crap off better next time or buy a different brand or something. Or just douse it in sauce, which this yakisoba did not have as I ran out of soy sauce on Tuesday and hadn't bought any by this time.



I didn't go to work today, so I didn't make my lunch in the morning to be packed. When I did make lunch though, I still made it bento-ish. So we've got the same yakisoba from Thursday but with teriyaki sauce and that made a WORLD of difference. Much much better. I ate it all this time. Avocado slices, quail eggs, flower-shaped onigiri rolled in furikake (the shape got messed up in the furikake rolling), grape tomatoes, babybel cheese, kiwi slices shaped with mini cutters.

Also, for gratuitous cuteness, I went over and saw Kyle's kittens last night. I wanted to smuggle them back to my home with me.



Playing with the string to my hoodie. The orange one is QT (Quentin Tarantino) and the dark one is Spielberg. (He's a movie fanatic and named his kittens accordingly.)



All tuckered out from playing. They slept in my lap for quite awhile, it was terribly cute. I had forgotten what it was like to not move even if you're uncomfortable because you've got a pile of furry cuteness on your lap. It's a nice feeling.

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

I read this for my book club. It honestly isn’t something I would normally read, but it was very good and I’m glad that I read it. It’s a quick read and The Last Lecture is available as a video at www.thelastlecture.com. Even if you just watch that I think you’ll get some good from it.

44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith

Great book. I love the way McCall Smith writes and in conjunction with the format of the book it comes across brilliantly. Slicing into the lives of the characters and seeing how their paths cross eventually is fantastic. I believe he has written more in the series and I would very much like to read those as well.

Creativity and Food

So Friday night I worked on some Artist Trading Cards. I don't think these will be for trade, though. I wanted to do a series, as I've only done completely unrelated ones before, so I set out six cards in two rows and sat thinking for a bit. I decided to make little reminders about what I enjoy and am proud of in myself. I wound up only doing four, but I like them anyway.


I'll probably take these down in a few days because it's kind of creepy having the corners of the mirror masked, but I thought this was a particularly good place for them for the time being.

Caring, Loving, Kind.
This is my least favorite, but that's okay.

Optimistic.
Yes, those are little jingle bells on the card. It's very fun.

Open-minded.
I was going to put a pair of open hands in the white space, but I like the idea of leaving it open, for whatever happens to come along next. (No, I didn't mean to stamp the E on backwards, but it turned out well anyway.)

Creative.
This is my favorite.
Last night I started pulling all my altered book/scrapbooking stuff out so I can start working on an Altered Book Swap/Round Robin thing. I couldn't find any of my hard back books that I had saved for the purpose of altering them, so I figured I'd go get some today. I couldn't for the life of me remember where a good place to get alterable books was though and couldn't think of a used book store to go to. Then I was reading about them online and remembered that thrift stores are the best place for them. I couldn't believe I had forgotten that! In any case, I went this morning to scour for alterable books and found a handful (four) for $2.34 total, so I'm pretty pleased with that. I still don't have a theme for mine, but maybe the books will inspire me.
Then I went over to the Pacific Ocean Marketplace to see if they had anything for my bentos. They did!


The Loot. Please ignore my roommate's giant martini glass filled with gum and assorted breath fresheners in the background. heh. I spent about $45 on all this.

Yay for molds! I couldn't find any sauce bottles though, but I'll still keep looking.

Sweets and Quail Eggs. I picked up more sweets than I needed, probably, but they looked fun. The quail eggs are way cute, but I still have to figure out how to hard boil them since they're so much smaller than regular eggs.

Baby corn (whole and cut), seaweed paste for onigiri fillings, furikake (rice seasoning), black sesame seeds.

Cute shaped macaroni, 50-sheet pack of nori, japanese style noodles.

I made this for lunch when I got home from the stores. 7 gyoza, one onigiri with soy sausage, red pepper and celery filling, 7 grape tomatoes, three Hello Panda choco-cremes and a vanilla wafer. The Hello Panda treats were way better than the wafer.

This was Thursday's bento. Flower-shaped plain onigiri, cucumber slices, broccoli, leftover salad, grape tomatoes, avocado slices, gyoza.

I think I'm going to do a weekly bento entry with pictures from all my bentos for the week there. Sounds good to me.
Anyway, I'm going to go try to figure out a theme for my altered book.