Treebear Bon and I went to the local plaza this afternoon and had coffee and hot chocolate at Barns and Nobles whilst reading the hotly off the press “The Grand Design“! (by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow). The book was thinner than I had imagined it would be… as it was suppose to be about the “Answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything!”, much like the non-fiction version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’d think it’d be encyclopedia size. But then I guess life may be much simpler than we think it is? Anyways…after a good half hour of reading… it started to feel like a very very long review article… and not half as funny as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I guess it was non-fiction… (^^;)) Flicking through to the later chapters though, I think things would pick up pace and get more interesting.

The answer to life, the universe and everything?

Anyways… after that~ as we were walking back to the car we encountered the very Aussie clothing store “COTTON ON“!!!!  We’d never imagine that it’s finally made it’s way to the US market~ :’) Remembering the days as a poor student back in Australia… COTTON ON would be the only store that we could find affordable clothes that fit our tastes! Sooo~ of course we had to go in and do some splurging! XD Just like back in Australia, there were really cheap sale items at the back ranging from $5-$20!

This one wasn’t a sale item.. but was so cute  with the bat wings that I just had to take a picture of it~ X3

sabi trying on top with bat wings! :D

I did end up buying two items~ :D And together it only ended up costing around $15 (after tax)!! Yay COTTON ON!! Welcome to USA~ X3

sabi's buy #1

sabi's buy #2

Over the long weekend my Aunty came visit from overseas and gave me a box of GODIVA chocolates~ so divine~ X3 Expensive chocolates (by my budget) do taste a lot finer than the regular blocks. While I was indulging on my 4th little piece of heaven, feeling very loved and happy, I noticed the nutritional facts on the back of the box…

suggested serving size: about 3 pieces.

% Daily value of total fat (based 2000 calories diet) 21%

Eeek~ (>.<;) 1/5th of daily fat intake eaten in less than 10mins~ (=.=lll)

For the past two weeks, our Xbox has suffered from the “Red Ring of Death” syndrome~ :(  This usually means that there has been a hard disk failure and “would require internal service” (as put by Wikipedia)

sabi Xbox fixing

Well this evening after dinner… TreeBear Bon started to disassemble the Xbox… he’s been all sad and low in energy these days due to the lack of playing his favorite game FIFA10… and I don’t blame him, playing FIFA is his way to release the day’s stresses. At first we had thought the Ring of Death was due to the lack of thermal glue, which is used to conduct the heat from the CPU (?) to the heat sinks… but it turned out that wasn’t the case… (=.=;) After a whole lot of googling and trial and error… it turned out that because the Xbox was sent to service before for overheating problems some wires had been cut and reconnected which usually wouldn’t be… and it was those wires that were loose… in particular the wires were power sources leading to 1. the fan… 2. the DVD reader… 3. the hard disk (?)…. And after a whole lot more fiddling around… we finally managed to get power to all that required power….  and TreeBear is now happily playing Milan vs. Real Madrid! Yay~ for the apprentice housewife! Not bad for someone who don’t know her computer stuff aye~  (^-^)/

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Today’s lunch~ starring Tom the Kokeshi lunchbox~

2/9/2010 bento

sabi bento combo #2:

• Stir-fried noodles with green bell pepper and minced beef
• shredded KFC chicken (leftovers… (^^;))
• meat ball (leftover attempt of the mini cabbage rolls from maki’s website)
• Seaweed (ready made from Asian market)
• Boiled veges and giant cherry tomatoes
• Fruit: pineapple and watermelon

Last night I also tried maki’s cabbage mini-rolls… but instead of using Chinese cabbage we only had iceberg lettuce at home… the wrapping part was pretty ugly already due to the fragility of the lettuce… but after the boil/steaming in the rice cooker… the lettuce turned a bit see-through and made my “lettuce” mini-rolls look brown and even more ugly… :’( meh~ I should follow the recipe more closely next time.. (^^;) Here’s a picture of my failed attempt that we had for dinner~

sabi's failed "lettuce" mini-rolls

Update: 3/9/10: mini “lettuce” rolls in the bentos today~ :)

sabi 03.09.2010 bento

The very very cute Kokeshi bento box (from Bento&Co) which I spotted off maki’s Just Bento website as a giveaway.

This range of bento boxes is fashioned off the Japanese traditional Kokeshi dolls, which are crafted from wood. More info about these dolls can be found at the Wikipedia website. ;p (yes… i’m tired and am too tired to research on them… (>.<;))

Anyways~ I bought the “Tom” version of this very cute little person bento box and it arrived in a really timely manner despite me choosing the cheapest and slowest delivery option.  Now I’m tempted to get the Chinese little guy~ X3 Just too cute~

photo taken by sabi

Also here’s the picture of today’s lunch bento~ First time that I made Mr. TreeBear’s bento also~ I need to work on more recipes so there’s more variation to the bento… (=.=;)

photo taken by sabi

sabi recipe #1: Stir-fried Beef Patty with Veggies and Shrimp

Serves 2 small portions (1 serving equivalent to a bento serving)

Preparation time approx. 20mins (?) — I forgot to time myself (>.<;)

Ingredients

• frozen 1/4 pound beef patty (left over from the wedding BBQ few weeks ago~)
• 1/4 green bell pepper, chopped into cubes
  
• ~1 Tablespoon finely chopped green onion
• some frozen shrimp (maybe ~10), chopped up into bits
  

Method

• Heat up pan at medium heat with the frozen beef patty sitting on top to defrost at the same time
• Keep flipping the beef patty until it’s defrosted enough to break it up into little bits, so that it becomes mince (so obviously mince can be used instead of hamburger patties… but that’s just what i had in the fridge)
• Cook it til the pan is covered with the beef patty oil and remove the beef from the pan leaving the oil there. (the beef doesn’t have to be cooked totally at this stage yet)
• Using the beef patty oil stir-fry the green onion, green bell pepper and shrimp in that order
• Continue stir-frying til the shrimp starts going pink and then add the minced beef patty meat back into the pan and stir-fry some more until done~
• Enjoy~ :3

Anyways~ I had 1 serving of this for dinner together with some stir-fried veggies (forgot it’s name… (>.<;)) with garlic and some GIANT cherry tomatoes! (plus some side-dishes that i bought from the Asian supermarket~ :3 The rice I didn’t even have to cook since I had just microwaved one of last night’s frozen aliquots~ X3 I’m really liking this bento thing more and more~ and just before end of the day at work I’d be so excited to get home to see what I can cook up for dinner and tomorrow’s bento~ (I hope this enthusiasm lasts… (^^;))

Again… I’d have to wait til Mr. TreeBear gets back before I can upload the pictures… (=.=;) *sigh*

Ciao~ (^-^)/

Growing up like the main girl character in Hotaru no Hikaru I’ve always found it hard to be the ideal girly girl. In this particular Japanese series the heroine, who has been described as a “dried fish”, tries to become the ideal girlfriend by trying to break her old habit of lazying around at home bumming around in her spare time. Yes, like her… I also love to do nothing at home. And incidentally, like the heroine in her second series that just came out recently… I got married! (well… she might be by the end of the series.. we’ll see…)

Anyways, so in effort to become the virtuous wife that I never imagined I’d be… I’m going to try and learn things all virtuous wives should know and be masters of. (hope I can keep updating this blog… unlike my other empty blog sites… (^^;))

Lesson number 1: Cooking

I thought I’d start with something easy, useful and that would save the budget. Bentos~ (^-^)/ I don’t know why… but everytime Mr. Bon is away and I’m home alone… I ALWAYS end up buying something that I wouldn’t normally buy. (=.=;) Last time I bought an camera… this time I bought a matching set of cute bento boxes with little rabbits on the top. (Please remember that I’m not a girly girl too… (>.<;)) Anyways…*cough*…  my current addiction craze is bentos!! X3

Thanks to the masterful works of maki owner of the Just Bento and Just Hungry websites, I managed to come up with some sort of bento materials~ :3

Bento combo #1:
rice
1 egg tamago (maki’s recipe)
tuna tofu miso mini burgers (maki’s recipe)
boiled broccoli, mini-carrots and enoki mushroom

this is the trial run that I ate for dinner~ X3 not bad at all… except maybe the tuna tofu miso mini burgers should be been cooked a little longer… it was kinda like medium rare state inside.. (^^;) the 1 egg tamago came out really really well! (I’ve tried some proper tamago recipes the few nights ago.. and there was no layering going on at all… plus it got burnt… (=.=;)) I also managed to freeze away little aliquots of the tuna tofu miso mini burgers and the rice like maki said to do! :3 so once i start building up more stashs of food bento making will become easier~ X3

P.S. (>.<;) I couldn’t upload my pictures from my camera because my computer couldn’t read my SD card… :’( will have to wait til Mr. TreeBear gets back… meh~

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26/08/2010 Update: It took me maybe 30mins to pack my lunch this morning~ that includes cooking the tamago (which came out really good~ X3 note to self: add less soysauce for the vibrant yellow you see on other peoples blogs), pan-frying the tofu burgers and boiling the veges~ Onwards with the bento adventures~ ~~~~(*^^)/