Pork Tofu Bento (202)

With Mr. Pikko and Baby Girl off to a lesson on Saturday, I trucked Buddy off to the supermarket to buy vegetables for my soup. I ended up trying the first Garden Vegetable Soup recipe I found. Though I didn’t need any, Buddy would not stop furiously pointing at the “brokko zee” until I picked up this one tiny little stalk that got broken off and gave it to him. This did not satisfy him because after I handed it to him, he demanded “BEEG WUN!” but then I put it in a bag and suddenly it was like, Magical Bagged Broccoli Extraordinnaire and we were able to move on.

Having not made a soup in quite a while, I opted for the whole head of cabbage instead of the conveniently cut-in-half ones. I figured, the recipe said “half a cabbage”, so I just bought one, thinking I’d just go double.

I do not recommend this unless you want a pretty good vegetable soup with ASSLOADS of cabbage in it. No, seriously. It tastes pretty good, kinda like the Campbell’s Vegetable Soup (which I love) but with enough cabbage to kill someone. I looked at other recipes this morning and found that you’re supposed to use 2 cups cabbage. Great. Good thing cabbage is cheap. I used vegetable bullion and don’t have nearly enough soup for the vegetables, so I’m kinda stuck eating mostly heaps of cabbage for the early part of this week so that at the end of the week, I can have a nice soupy soup. Next batch, I will use beef bullion, cause I had to add some extra salt this round.

I made Pork Tofu this past weekend. Grandma J makes a really good non-spicy Mapo Tofu and I use this recipe as a substitute for when I want some. It reminds me a lot of the Pork Tofu dish that Y’s Lunch Shop used to make on occasion. Let me tell you, that dish was made in heaven. Whenever I saw they had it, I bought it. Mine totally pales in comparison, the only thing similar is the look. I think maybe when the wedding comes around, I should beg my friend to bring me some Y’s before she drives over from Hilo side. The last time I went to my cousin’s wedding in Kona my aunty did that, bringing us musubi and fish. I’m drooling right now just remembering it.

Anyway, this is Pork Tofu with some diced carrot on top for color and my brokko-zee.

We bought champagne mangoes at Costco yesterday but I need to go get credit for it or something. I cut them open and they were black in the middle. These ones were the third mango I peeled and though it was still black, I just cut that part out. Added some strawberries in too, sliced up for easy eating. ^_^

I never did post more pictures of my wheat grass! It’s dying by now and I had to toss most of it out due to mold, but I will try again and this time will harvest them as sprouts as they look in this stage here:

They were actually pretty sweet and tender at this stage. Right now my last tray of grass is really stringy and tastes like… well, grass. The sprouts were much better. I still have a huge bag of berries, so I think I’ll just grow a batch, harvest sprouts fresh from my desk at work, and then start over. It’s really quite fun!!