Ho Ho Ho! Two Christmas Bentos
Last weekend I taped The Santa Clause 
I mean, now they have… but they hadn’t! Anyway, it didn’t matter, as Baby Girl thought it was so cool that your dad could turn into Santa that the whole thing kind of flew over her head, most likely in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Whew!
Today’s lunch could have been a little more colorful, but since I woke up late because I went to bed late (2:30 AM) because I rented and watched Julie & Julia, I had to throw this guy together as fast as possible. This took me about 10 minutes to do as the food was all leftovers and the only thing that took time was Santa himself. Hopefully I have time later to do the same Santa in another lunch.
At the end of today’s post, I’ll announce the winner of my drawing for a free copy of The Manga Cookbook
I must say that I did enjoy the movie. When it first came out it seemed like something I’d really enjoy because it involved food blogging and cooking and being a disaster in the kitchen, all three of which are right up my alley. I’d bought Mastering The Art of French Cooking
I identified more with Julia than with Julie though, mostly for the final scene, because when that happens to me, I know I’ll have the same shrieking reaction. ^_^ Plus, I had unfortunately read a bit about Julie Powell and how so many people actually detest her and her book, so I was a bit tainted in my opinion of her. I was a bit surprised to see that in the movie she’s portrayed as an excellent cook because the trailers made me think she started off crappy and Julia Child made her a brilliant chef. Instead she started off spectacularly, bombed in the middle, and finished off nicely but sadly.
Back to Santa…
He was very easy to put together. I have a little cloud cutter, which I used for his beard, and a scallop cutter that I used for his hat trim and ball. The trim was a bit too long, so I broke one ball off and used it for the tip. His face is a circle made of ham and I punched his face features from nori with my new nori punch. His hat is the outer skin of an imitation crab stick, which I cut with kitchen scissors. I was going to cut HO HO HO! out of the cheese, but couldn’t find my freaking ‘H’ cutter.
*mutter*
Santa rests on top of some nuked frozen brown rice and on the other side of the box is some leftover Beef with Broccoli that I made from Jaden Hair’s The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook
The dumbest part about me getting Jaden’s book is that I ended up gravitating to the one thing in her book that I already eat on a consistent basis instead of trying something new. I’ve had my own beef broccoli recipe that I have used since my college days and when I saw that her recipe called for balsamic vinegar I kind of flipped out. A couple of years ago I was into watching Good Eats and I trusted Alton Brown completely. When he did a pot roast show, I had to give it a shot. So I went out and bought a roast, balsamic vinegar, cocktail olives, and raisins. It was disgusting! I don’t know if I did it wrong, but I hated it and ever since then I’ve been leery of balsamic vinegar.
On the bright side, I kept the bottle, so two years later, I poured a couple teaspoons into the stir fry sauce and holy crap it was the best Beef Broccoli I’d ever tasted. I’m serious, this stuff was godly. Mr. Pikko stated that it was VERY good and we both overate. I was craving it again this whole week, so I made it for dinner last night, but with way more meat. We ended up cleaning most of it out.
Speaking of Mr. Pikko, I made him a bento as well.
His was done in manly fashion of course, with big hunk portions of stuff. I added an imitation crab poinsettia on top of the rice to make it festive, but he ended up not knowing what the heck it was anyway.
Me: could you tell what the red thing was
Mr. Pikko: oh.. no
Mr. Pikko: sorry
The middle is made of slices of the thinnest baby carrot I could find in the bag.
To get the skin thin like this, you need to buy a certain type of imitation crab. The right local brand here is the Okuhara one and incidentally, it’s also the best tasting one. I used to eat these as a snack by itself all the time. I simply cut a slit into one and peeled it off, then used kitchen shears to cut petals out. I’m sure my dad would get a kick out of this as he used to grow poinsettias. I have a pic somewhere of me and my brother in a sea of them. It’s pretty cool!
Now for the winner of my drawing! I had a total of 72 entries and the winner is…..
Iris’s entry was:
I would love to win this book, because I still haven’t found it in my country and because I have a 2yo cousin whom I babysit frequently and am in charge of making him lunch/dinner. It has become somewhat of a ritual because I ask him what he’d like and we have fun in the kitchen making him a “car” or “train” and animals too. I think it would be interesting he could watch the book at the same time, since most cookbooks have the actual pictures ^^
Congrats! I hope you enjoy the book and that your lil’ cousin does too!
I was in Costco this past weekend and while I was waiting for a sample, a girl recognized me and asked if I write a blog. I was a bit caught off guard, so all I really said was, “my bento one?” and that was about it. She likes my stories about the kids. Then later when I got home, one of my Twitter followers said he saw me there as well. I have to wonder now how many people in Hawaii recognize me. I’ll have to start brushing my hair before I go out and remember not to shriek too loud at the monkeys when they start throwing things out of the cart. >_<
Tomorrow is UFC 107 with BJ Penn, so me and the Mr. will be down at Giovanni Pastrami. Go BJ!