Fishy Print Kinkachu Bag

It's Sunday! Which means I didn't make bento, but I made something for it! :D

I bought this fabric over a year ago at a cute little store in downtown Seattle. It was going to be for a purse, but I never got around to it. And then, yesterday I found this tutotial.

Here are the results:

It's hard to see the handles in this one. But they are there.

A view of the inside lining.

This bag is HUGE compared to my other bags. It holds my big ol' purple lidded fit'n'fresh AND sidecars at the same time! I'm so looking forward to using it. ^_^

And now time for some faces

I just love my onigiri mold! It's basically my most useful and most used tool. *hugs*

Bento #54 (Mine) :

Left: Rabutans, red and green bell peppers

Right: White rice onigiri with nori faces and handles

Tiger: Leftover "Fiesta dip"

Another thing I love is my nori punch. I think lunch is so much better when pieces of it have faces. XD Some of my friends make fun of me, others are in awe of my lunches. They really shouldn't be though. Seriously, this bento was another speed one. Took about 10 minutes. This was a great way to finish off my Friday. First week of school is over and I finished all my homework for the weekend! :D

First day of school and the first day of Fall

Hello! I've been gone for so long! Just haven't had time to post. Now that school has started, I'll be making lunch pretty much everyday again. Yay! I missed my bentos.

Bento #52: (mine) First day of Fall

It's hard to see but we have: Turkey and pepperjack on maple leaf shaped skewers, bird shaped onigiri sprikled with umeboshi furikake, maple leaf/acorn shaped mushroom slices, romaine lettuce, and a small bottle of italian salad dressing. Everything packed in a Hello Kitty lock-and-lock style box.

My phone camera pretty much sucks. Even though I got a new and nicer phone. Anyway, although this may look like it took a while, it actually was a speed bento. 10 minutes total. I cut up the mushrooms and put together the skewers while the rice was reheating. The cheese was pre-cut from dinner prep so less work at the time of packing. Score! I threw in a flag with the encouraging word: FIGHT (がんばりましょう) on it because school has been pretty overwhelming. Even on the second day. Mostly because of Japanese class. Oh, I wish I remembered everything from the Spring. D:

Bento #53 (Mine)

Left: Fried rice with tofu, edemame, corn, narutomaki, and mushrooms

Right: Green and red bell pepper slices, rambutans

Tiger container: Fiesta dip for peppers

Brought out my good ol' lock-and-lock set for this lunch. The bag fits in my backpack so nicely! The rabutans are a new thing. just picked them up yesterday at the Great wall mall. They're really tasty! Kinda like Lychees, but not quite as sweet. The fried rice was made with a bunch of leftover vegetables as well as some tofu and Narutomaki (Steamed fishcake). Narutomaki is great because it can be frozen forever. Plus it makes ramen so much better! :D

I sort of got the recipe for the dip online, but I changed a lot. Mostly because there was hardly anything in the house to make it out of. I actually only put a little bit of mayonnaise in this batch. (I had to scrape it from the container.)So I'm not sure how it would be with more of it.

Kaitie's Fiesta Dip

1/4 cup light sour cream

Less than 1/4 of olive oil Mayonnaise

2 Tbsp cayenne

2Tbsp Chili powder

1Tbsp taco seasoning

Mix together and add more of the cayenne, chili powder and taco seasoning until you like the level of spiciness.

Packages Galore

I finally decided to order from Ichbankan. Everything is so cheap and the package came very quickly! I got a nori face punch, Mink the monkey bento belt, chopsticks and chopsticks case. The wall hooks were a free gift they threw in.

This week also brought 2 packages from bento swaps This swap was just for the 3 mayo cups and she surprised me with the rest-which includes homemade greeting cards. :D
The bowl I got in this one makes me laugh so much. XD But the real prize in this package was the Totoro chopsticks and case! Totoro = <3

On to the bentos.

Bento #52 (Mine)
top tier: Rice with nori face, zucchini and fried tofu in korean barbecue sauce.
Bottom: Shrimp and krab salad and grapes.
Top of box had pocky and a milk candy. And there was a sidecar of mandarin orange segments.

Bento#53 (mine)Top tier: Zucchini with Korean barbeque sauce, cornbread and mini flan pudding cup.
Bottom: Hamburger, and garlic mashed potatoes.
Sidecar of mandarin orange slices.

Both lunches were made mostly from dinner leftovers. The Zucchini was cooked for 2 minutes in my microwave steamer and then tossed in the sauce. Both were also packed in a two tier Clickety click Mink the monkey box.

Lynnwood Daiso and Enchanted boxes

We were down at the Alderwood mall yesterday so we stopped at the Daiso there(of course!). It was bigger then the Federal way store and lots of fun to look around. They had a ton of boxes


I grabbed mini chopsticks, some sauce bottles and veggie cutters. But the best thing I got yesterday was at the Disney store.







Duh duh duh duuuuuuuh! I <3 Enchanted! And these boxes were in a pack for $5.50 or three things from the shelf for $12.00. I was tempted to buy the cars boxes too, but decided against it. I'm disappointed that they don't close very well but I can use them for dry sidcars. I'm happy anyway. :P

Happy Boxing Day!

(Written yesterday and forgot to post. Oopsies.)
Today's lunch is in honor of all the people who got gifts they didn't want. :P
Bento #35


An egg, sweet potato, radish, and steak on a bed of rice packed in my pink Hello Kitty box.(Don't know the ml. I should find out.)

I actually didn't spend as much time on this as you might think. It was my way of using up my leftover dinner from last night. The egg was mixed with soy sauce and cooked in my new Tamogoyaki pan.

I had a very Bentotastic Christmas. I got several pairs of chopsticks, a tamogoyaki pan, Bento box in the Heartland, and some other books (from Mom) coming in the mail.

Sushi Bento

Took a trip to Daiso and H mart today with mom and picked up lots of goodies. She's employed me to make a sushi plate for Thanksgiving. She really enjoys Asian stuff now and we're both learing a lot about Japanese culture. I'm reading this book aloud in the car. It's really charming and fasinating. I highly reccomend it for anyone who's interested in Japanese food. speaking of Japanese food...(see what I did there. Oh, so clever. :P)

Bento #28 (Josh)


clockwise from top left: Vegetable maki from H mart, homemade spam musubi, munster cheese, container of ranch dressing, white bread, cutie (clementine) orange, baby banana, walnut pancake, grape tomatos, and celery and carrot sticks. Phew...a lot of ingredients. I made Dad bento too but the only difference was some umeboshi (pickled plums) instead of bread.

Easy, easy lunches. I made a large batch of Spam musubi this week and froze them. Just tossed them in the microwave for a minute and they were perfect. They're so easy to make. I don't have a musubi press yet, so I used my onigiri mold and cut the Spam smaller. I got the recipe from www.cookingcute.com

One more thing. Check out my photos from our trip to the Federal Way bonsai collection today. More photos to come soon. http://www.flickr.com/photos/16063815@N08/sets/72157603241039666/

A Little Under the Weather

Not feeling that great today and today's bento reflects it. I wish I could've had fresh hot rice though. That is my ultamite comfort food.

Bento #27 (mine)


In the yellow box I have granola, dried mango and a tangerine in the bottom and about half an Asian pear in the top. The round container has some saltines, 2 packs of hot and sour soup and a green tea bag and the hello kitty bottle is full of apple juice.



And here it is all closed up. I love that bag. I got it for a dollar at Target and was suprised with how big it was once unfolded. Score! :D