Mac and Cheese Bento (367)

This morning when I looked in my pantry, I discovered five boxes of Macaroni and Cheese that expired in February, so I decided I better get started on eating it up now. It turned out better than I expected in a bento.

I’d have posted this a lot earlier, but have been busy with work today. Plus, at the Sony Press Conference at E3 today, Square Enix announced the title of their new MMO, Final Fantasy XIV Online! Like every other FFXI player out there, I about crapped my pants right then.

The HD trailer is available online at the official website. They had just showed the trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, so that was exciting as is. Then the guy on stage is like, “Oh but wait, we have footage from Final Fantasy 14 now!” and I swear in my head I heard the whole gaming world gasp. Anyway, I’m excited. The ZAM Network will be doing a site, so keep an eye out for that. Woohoo!

Anyway, back the bento. There really wasn’t much to it. It took me less than 10 minutes to put together not counting cooking, but even that was simple since all I did was boil noodles and fry ham steak. I let it cool for a while, then added it to the left compartment of this Sugar Babies bento box. I lined the other side with lettuce. I cut three large sakura blossoms out from ham steak I got at Costco and pan fried them until they were slightly browned. I put the scraps underneath and the flowers on the top. As a final touch I added four slices of tomato from my garden!

I had wanted to take a picture of my tomatoes since three were ready to harvest at once, but when Buddy helped me put them away, he took off all the pretty stems that I like. Boy, was I bummed. I think those are the prettiest part of the tomato aside from the color!

We went to eat at Spicy Ahi in Pearl City yesterday after I heard about it from the Bat Pat and read some good reviews on Yelp. It was definitely pricey, but the food I got was great. I went with the misoyaki salmon and ahi/vegetable tempura combo.

Baby Girl loved the salmon, so that was great. Mr. Pikko got the Butterfish and Chicken Teriyaki, but he said the butterfish was rubbery. The ahi tempura could have used a bit more flavor, but the thickness of the fish wasn’t something you could easily ignore. Mr. Pikko liked their free additional rice policy too. He got a bowl of brown rice and was pleasantly surprised by its freshness.

After that we went to Yogurtland right across the restaurant. I’ve found I really don’t like sweet frozen yogurts much and from now on I’ll only get the tart flavors. Here’s mine:

I got original tart, blueberry tart, and raspberry creme. I didn’t like the raspberry creme. I had to eat it with the kiwi, blueberries, and strawberries to offset the sweetness. I drizzled condensed milk on top.

Here’s Baby Girl’s cup. She chose vanilla, chocolate, and coconut. I made sure not to give her too much yogurt because I didn’t want her overloading. It’s a good thing too cause while we were there we saw a three-year-old shrieking banshee on a sugar high. She made yogurt soup, cause to her mixing it all up is best.

This is Buddy’s, which is just strawberry. He ate all the gummi bears and chocolate with his grubby toddler paws, then said he was done. Before I could say no, Baby Girl was scooping his out and dumping it into her soup. So gross.

This is Mr. Pikko’s. As you can tell he used to love sugary cereals as a kid and still does. He said he was full after he finished about a quarter of it, but still ate it all anyway. He got Bananas Foster, chocolate, and something else. I thought the Bananas Foster was nasty. It was like dipping overripe bananas into confectioner’s sugar and pureeing it with high fructose corn syrup.

This morning I was brought back down to earth by my little son. As I was taking him in to school a big black bumblebee came whizzing by, scaring the crap out of him. To distract him, I started cheerfully asking whether the bumblebee had said anything to him. He said no. I asked, “He didn’t even say hello?”

“BEES DON’T TALK.”

Well excuuuuse me. Next time I’ll keep my comforting to myself.