Lunch Lag

I’ve been so busy lately on all fronts that I’ve been forgetting to post my lunches the days that I eat them! D: This lunch was from last week, I can’t even remember when! I’m clearly losing it. I think it was Thursday. Yes, Thursday, since Friday was a holiday!

I blame the absentmindedness on the kitchen. I decided I had better appease the Mr. and clean up the kitchen and in a thorough fashion for once. I despise cleaning the kitchen and since I ended up re-organizing the entire thing, this is probably why I’m so frazzled. And I’m not even done! AUGH!

The positive side to this is that my kitchen is now very neat, the counters are clear, the stove has had 3 years of grease rubbed off (I know, eww), and all my bento boxes are now stored in one area with my accessories in the cabinet above. Here is my bento box collection now:

This looks insane I know, but I do have more on the upper shelf that I didn’t photo. And look at that empty space! Prime real estate for the next awesome box I see! Here are my accessories, “nicely” re-organized:

My onigiri molds are on the far left, along with my hot dog cutters and mini straws (for cutting little eyes and stuff). Next to that I have a mesh basket that I bought to hold all my other onigiri molds, egg molds, veggie cutters, etc. Originally this fit quite well, but then I kept finding more and more things to put in until finally it looked like this. I had to go back to K-Mart and buy a different container to keep my egg molds in. On the right I have a pink mini drawer set. In the top drawer, I have my food picks. The bottom drawer holds my fanicer soy sauce bottles. The container on top of that holds most of my fancy cupcake cups. That, too, is overstuffed. On top of that I have one last little container that holds my food dividers (non-sushi grass types).

Doesn’t it look great!? I assure you it will look like a disaster in a couple of weeks. And those nicely arranged bento boxes? Buddy will get to them eventually. Need more evidence that this is inevitable?

Right now you are thinking, “HUH?” Yes? I stuck him into his eating chair while he snacked on cereal and when Mr. Pikko declared “Buddy is up to no good…” I went to him and discovered the above. That is my hairbrush. WITH CORNFLAKES IN THE BRISTLES! I never was a cornflake girl. Until now, that is. The raisin girls are just not the right crowd for me anymore.

Okay, so back to my lunch last Thursday! I needed something Core, so I took garlic, onions, bell peppers, shrimp, and whole wheat rotini pasta and fried it all up in olive oil. It looked blah, so I threw some tomato sauce and pepper onto it, wondering if it was going to taste edible. In the end, it turned out pretty good! I was happy with the result.

Today I had to use the last of my kim chee crab, so I made a KCCA salad with cukes and corn added to the top to make it a little snazzier than usual.

I made spaghetti Sunday night so this is all that was left. Since there is brown/white rice, I decided to use up the last of an opened packet of pasta and combine it with whole wheat pasta to make it healthier while not completely overwhelming the dish with the wheaty taste. That turned out really nicely! As you can see, I’m still in love with those Hello Kitty flowers. I made 3 colors out of bell peppers.

I packed this into my metal Zebra tin, which got me oohs and aahs at work for bringing a plantation era bento box. I cut a corn on the cob into thin slices to garnish the sides.

I haven’t shared any garden pictures in a while, so this morning I took pics of my nasturtium flowers, which were in the top portion of Mr. Pikko’s Mother’s Day gift to me. They sit on top of the upside down tomato plant, which isn’t doing too well because of some annoying little white bugs. Mr. Pikko is very upset about this tomato plant dying because it’s like his first attempt at growing anything.

Aren’t they pretty??? The best part: they’re edible! I can put these into one of my bentos!! The tomato bugs are eating these too, the jerks. I also have some red ones:

The reds look a little sickly. 🙁 They do bring a nice touch to our otherwise horrible yard area. I really need to tackle this after I’m completely finished with the kitchen. Since that’s even crappier than cleaning the kitchen, I don’t know what crazy things I’d start doing then…