Football Bento (437)

Yesterday, we went over to my in-laws to let the kids hang out with my niece and nephew and in between accidental naps and trying to get children to put their clothes back on, I was trying to think of themes to do for lunches this week. I tried envisioning what January means and couldn’t really come up with anything, until I realized that what we were watching on tv was exactly what I was looking for.

Obviously, we were watching the football games. I’ve done a football bento before, but wanted to think of others way to do it than that. I’ll probably end up doing another cutlet one, since the design of that one is from two years ago and thus, not very creative. To start off this theme though, I went with a football onigiri.

The football is made with brown rice, to help with the coloring. I mixed it up with some Katsuo Mirin furikake, which you can buy online from the company who makes it, Mishima. I mixed some in with the rice for flavor, then shaped the football with my hands. I sprinkled more furikake in a bowl, then rolled the top part of the onigiri in it, removing the pieces of nori.

The end result was a nice dark brown onigiri shaped like a football! I placed it in the middle of the bento box, which I’d lined with lettuce, then filled in leftover mapo tofu, tamagoyaki, cherry tomatoes, clementine slices, and sweet potato.

Here’s a closer look at the football. Once I was sure it was cooled, I cut strips of white cheese for the laces. I’d wanted to make my tamagoyaki more yellow, so I used one egg and one egg yolk and it seemed to work well. Usually my tamagoyaki comes out much paler, so I was happy with the result.  I tried to use the leftover egg white to make thin omelet for the laces, but messed that up as usual.

Not to be an ass to New Orleans, but judging from the way they played, the Colts are going to run all over them. The ‘C’ flag is not my way of picking a side, these flags only come in A, B, and C. I don’t have an ‘S’ option!

I’ve been bitching and moaning about the vog on Twitter a lot lately and the responses I get are always the same, “WHAT is vog?” You can read about it on Wikipedia, but here is a photo I took on the way in to work.

Normally, you can see the mountains clearly, but this is how it’s looked here for the last few days. This morning it was particularly bad, though. Funnily enough, Jenn tells me that due to rain, LA looks really nice and clean. I often wonder if this messes up LOST shooting at the beach.

Speaking of LOST, this Saturday is the premiere at Sunset on the Beach and I plan to be there with Mr. Pikko, the kids, and my brother. We’ll probably spend the day at the zoo, then head over to camp the spot my brother will be holding. I’m going to have to bring a mega stash of goodies to keep the kids from going nuts waiting around that long.