The Last of the Mochiko (Bento 325)

Now that I’ve come up with such a cool post subject, I wish I’d done a Last of the Mohicans themed bento or something. Maybe before I eat it I can just yell at my bento, “I WILL FIND YOU!” The office might have me committed, but I’d sure have a great laugh.

Before I get to lunch, I wanted to share that I was recently quoted in an article by Lynn Andriani of Gourmet.com. If you have a chance, please take a look at it here: Bento Box Boom.

Hopefully by now you’ve figured out that this is the last of the mochiko chicken in my freezer. Usually I’m the type to remember food in the freezer when it’s started to look like an iceberg, but this year I’m trying to be a lot better about using all my food up. So far, so good!

Yesterday was my niece’s 5th birthday and both Grandma J’s and my sis-in-law’s cameras were dying, so I took mine out to take pictures of the cake and stuff. As is usual with my scatterbrainedness, I forgot my camera at their house. For that reason, I have no bentorial today. ;( These pictures were taken with Mr. Pikko’s camera phone.

My rice is mixed with liberal amounts of furikake today because I cooked a cup of rice yesterday and my rice cooker, which constantly vexes me by drying out and yellowing my rice after like 12 hours, wasn’t feeling very nice, as usual. I usually forget or am too lazy to put the rice into a tupperware, so I end up leaving it in the cooker to dehydrate. This morning some of it was still good, but it looked terrible so I did what I could to camoflage it. Not that I’m complaining, I love furikake. I put the mochiko chicken next to it and then added some cute ocean friends food picks.

Next, I took a frozen imitation crab stick, which I’d defrosted earlier and sliced it into three pieces, layering them nicely next to each other. I’m a big fan of odd numbered things, so I squeezed the third in. There are some cucumber slices cut into quarters put into a yellow silicone mini cupcake cup and then baby carrot sticks tucked in. One cherry tomato went on top of the cukes. The bento was missing some yellow, so I added two slices of takuan next to the chicken and finally some parsley.

In the second layer I decided to try a checkered apple. It was really easy to make, though as you can see I need some practice to make the rows come out square. There are also sliced clementine, grapes, and raspberries in that layer. I filled the spaces with parsley.

It looks like this stuff sticks out so much that the box won’t close, but I arrange things like this for better photographs. After I’m done, I turn the apple slice down so that it’s flat and then lay the orange slices down as well. I had to eat one grape and one raspberry to fit the cover down. The top layer wasn’t that hard to close since the crab is soft and there was some space underneath where it could move down when pushed upon.

I forgot to mention last week that Baby Girl didn’t get to eat all of her bento at school. They sent it home with a note with some bs about how she “had to be served state approved lunch” or something. We’re guessing this is another way of saying that they didn’t want to make the other kids jealous. If Baby Girl’s details are to be believed, when they told her she couldn’t eat her special bento, she started to cry, which led to them letting her eat the little girl onigiri because it was missing from the box. So… I probably won’t be sending Buddy to school with a bento on Boy’s Day. Unless I want to gamble that his teacher is that much cooler.

My trip to Hilo was short, but sweet. Me and my brother went to drive by Cafe 100 to make fake sobbing noises since they’re closed on Sundays. Then we drove by Y’s to sob for real because they weren’t open either. I signed up for Hawaiian’s guaranteed $43 one way airfare though, so maybe I’ll take a longer weekend to go soon.

I leave you with one of the best scenes from the movie. Caution: Scene contains some violence.

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