Bento #3

Bento #3: Onigiri with ume, kim chee, edamame, crab cakes (2)

This was today's lunch. I'm sick but I had a hankering for crab cakes because 1) Someone else had frozen crab cakes from Costco on their blog, and 2) I haven't set a date for a housewarming party but I find myself mentally planning the menu. I thought about these crab cakes as one of the pupus, but they came out a little funny when I first made them. I first made them within a few months of getting married and I wasn't as comfortable in the kitchen as I am now so I decided to give them another go. They turned out fantastic and I didn't have to reheat them today. Right before I left the house I thought about taking some of that Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce with them and filled a little sauce bottle at the last minute. There's no picture of the sauce bottle because I packed my lunch last night and didn't leave enough room for it.

My first bentos

A few weeks ago I followed a link on Brandi's blog to Adventures in Bentomaking and I was fascinated with the really cool bentos that were posted and I got it into my head that it would be fun to bring bentos to work. One of the benefits to making and taking bentos to work is that it saves money and is healthier because you don't have to buy lunch. I usually bring home lunch anyway because I'm not a fan of school lunch (and geez, the price went up!) and I don't have enough time to drive down the bloody hill to the nearest food place (which is McDonald's so really not the healthiest choice) so I wouldn't save money or reap any health benefits by bringing a bento to work. However, I would waste a lot of precious sleeping time, as bentos are generally made in the morning. I'm really really not a morning person and I have a hard time getting myself to work on time as it is. So bringing bentos wouldn't save me any money, wouldn't be any healthier for me, and would cost me precious sleeping time. So why was I suddenly obsessed with the idea of bringing bentos to work? Because they were pretty. Yes, that's right. Because they were pretty.

So here I was, obsessed with the idea of bringing bentos, but knowing full well what my limitations are in the morning. And then I discovered Lunch in a Box. I really liked this blog because it was interesting, the writer's pretty good, and I really liked the writer's view on bento. The writer makes bentos for her son but doesn't like spending a lot of time on them. Her bentos are appealing without the time consuming stuff. After reading a few of her entries, I decided that I too could manage to make bentos without killing myself. I've been obsessing about making bentos for weeks now and now that the convention's finally over, I can finally devote some brain power to figuring them out. I took a bento to work twice this week. The first one was sort of an experiment. I wanted to see if I could pack most of the bento the night before because I wasn't exaggerating when I said I wasn't a morning person. It turns out that most of it can be packed the night before so that's really good for me. Anyway, the first bento has onigiri with ume inside and little shoyu hot dogs that my dad made. In the blue silicone cups there's shelled edamame and pickled radish (the one that the Curry House sells). There's also three shrimp shumai, which was the only thing that I had to heat up in the morning. I was really concerned that the onigiri was gonna taste yucky since it spent the night in the fridge, but it was still really good. I think as long as I pack it fresh the night before it'll be okay. The second bento has another onigiri with ume and left over chicken from the oyako donburi I made the night before. I put kim chee in the silicone cup and popped in a couple of grape tomatoes as fillers. I actually packed the whole thing the night before and it was fine when I ate it for lunch.

I'm not planning to bring bento everyday because I do still love sandwiches and leftovers and I don't think I have enough energy to pack a cool lunch everyday, but I'm gonna try and bring them at least once a week. As I said, they're pretty (well, they will be once I get the hang of it) and I really love typical bento food like onigiri and pickled vegetables. And to be honest, sometimes I just need something to look forward to at work. Don't get me wrong, I love my job...most of the time. But sometimes the kids (and sometimes their parents), the other adults, and just the overall nature of my job can get to me. I admit, sometimes lunch is the highlight of my day.

Pau

I'm exhausted. We finally had our convention on Thursday and Friday. It went fairly well and ran fairly smoothly. We had a few minor snags, but it all worked out in the end. And it's the snags that help you learn and we've already started jotting down notes for next year. We had a lot of good feedback from our members, which is rare. We had big plans for this year's convention, but we didn't want to make too many changes too fast. As new chairs and as young chairs, we knew had something to prove to the board and to our members before we started implementing some of the bigger changes. So we made small changes that we think made a big difference. Hopefully now that we have one successful convention under our belt, we won't run into too much resistance from the board next year. Planning the convention wasn't as stressful as I thought it'd be. I had an awesome co-chair who moves a mile a minute, a fantastic committee (who were some my wonderful friends from grad school), and a whole bunch of other people who were just so willing to help. The one damper to the convention was that the person who convinced me and my friend to be the convention chairs was not very, um, pleasant during the convention. She's generally not a pleasant person to begin with and I understand that she may be upset we did so much better than the last two conventions, but it would've been nice to have her support. I understand that I cannot change the person that she is, but I can't help but be a little disappointed. I don't understand why she doesn't get that it reflects well upon her if we do well.

Anyway, my co-chair and I have a few more things to take care to finish up this year's convention. Once we get that stuff done, we're taking a break until the end of April. We'll start working again in May but first we'll have a much deserved break. Now that it's almost done, I don't quite know what to do with myself. The convention has taken so much of my time and energy and now it's over. What to do, what to do. I'm kinda excited. I wish that spring break didn't already happen so that I could really have a break. I ended up working a lot on the convention and on the house and on the wedding, so I didn't have too much of a spring break. That's okay because the break from work was still nice and I did manage to get some breaks in during spring break:

Lance was invited to participate in a boat tour of Pearl Harbor because he school works with a lot of military families. It was cool to see everything from the harbor and I enjoyed going to the Arizona Memorial again. I haven't been there in years. During the break I also:

Went with Lance to our annual trip to the zoo. We went to the Honolulu Zoo on our first date and we return there every year for our anniversary. We also:Went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I mentioned last year that I wanted to go to PCC because I only went once when I was young and trust him to remember.

So I didn't just work during my spring break, but there was some other stuff that I wanted to do but didn't get get to. Now that this year's convention's more or less done, here's the list of stuff I have planned to fill up my now free time:
1) Knit (big surprise here).
2) Clean my house. With the renovations and my recent busy-ness, my house is a mess and it's driving me crazy. Must. Clean.
3) Party. We've lived here for a year now and haven't had a house warming party yet because we immediately started working on renovations. I really want to have a house warming party though I don't know when it's gonna be. Maybe I'll have a small barbeque as a test run. Heh, I guess Matt's on the guest list regardless of what kind of party I have. He's a wee bit bitter that he hasn't seen my house yet.

Regardless of what I end up doing, I'm gonna enjoy myself while doing it. I've always been a bit of a work horse but as I stated earlier, I'm trying to live a more stress reduced life. I'm so not good at relaxing, but darnit, I'm gonna try.

April 1

This day used to be one of my favorite days of the year. When I was younger, I was the proud owner of fake bugs, funny glasses, a whoopie cushion, and of course, the good 'ole snake in a can. Ahh, the fun I used to have. My sixth grade teacher was a smart one and she prided herself on being "unfoolable." She was on to my snake can so one day I switched out the snake and put a bag of peanuts in. I offered it to her and of course she declined. So I opened it, ate some peanuts, and walked away. I quietly switched the snake back in and got her to open it later that day. Good times.

In high school, I made up elaborate plans to trick my friends. They always fell for whatever April Fool's Day joke I had cooked up and it got to the point where none of my friends believed anything that came out of my mouth on April 1st. My senior year in high school I actually resorted to playing my April Fool's Day joke on April 2nd.

So what did I do this April 1st? What grand joke did I play on my students/colleagues/husband/dog. Absolutely nothing. I completely forgot about this day. Sadly, it's not the first year that I've forgotten to play a prank. Sure, I've had "fun" with people on other days of the year, but I've been forgetting to celebrate this day for years now. I just get so caught up with life that days like April Fool's Day and St. Patrick's Day and Girl's Day just get forgotten. It's sad. I need to remember to not get so caught up in the everyday stuff and make more time to mess with people...