Cat's cooking & crafts

Bento#2 & #3

Bento #2
Asparagus with balsamic vinegar & roasted garlic
Tamagoyaki

Bento #3
Menudo
Kamaboko

I'm soo happy. I received my second shipment from Ichiban Kan today. I decided to do my first bento for school tomorrow. It's nothing fancy but I had fun doing it.

I made teriyaki musubi. The stars, clouds, moon are made from kamaboko (fish cake) and some of the stars have cheese on them too. I had to fill the gaps and just added some ripe papaya, carrots and some lettuce underneath. Hm... what will my next bento be?

Car Egg

I got to try one of my new toys from Ichiban Kan...

Ah... it's fun to see my son easily amused. He actually played with it before we told him that it was an egg... I'm a happy mommy.

side note:
Last Saturday I found a small Japanese store that was selling bento items.
Here's my new stash.

(l-r) quail egg mold, a bunch of different sushi rolls.

The store:

Tokyo Discount

4960 South Fort Apache Road # 470
Las Vegas
Nevada 89148
Phone: (702) 227-3027

They've got lots of anime, hello kitty and Japanese cute stuff. I'm going back there soon.

Sushi Friday

I got my package from Ichiban Kan today! They were sooo cute! I coulnd't wait to try them out. Here's what I did...

cooking tamagoyaki (egg omelet)... Yum!

I got the recipe and instructions from www.lunchinabox.net

I used Alton Brown's recipe of sushi rice.

Below were made using the tiny cube mold

Using the flower mold

The first thing that Z said upon seeing them was "Flower!" and started eating the garnishes. I had over 10pcs total of the flowers and cube sushis. He ate the heart-shaped seaweed, carrot flowers and flower-shaped egg. I even had to make more flower-shaped egg. All in all we were stuffed!

.... couldn't.... help...... myself...

I ordered more items from Ichiban Kan... :P

*also posted on Cat's Quill

Roasted Tomato Pesto Pizza

One of the blogs that I follow posted a pesto pizza and I decided to do my own version yesterday for lunch. I used the pre-packaged pizza crust from Pillsbury, used some pesto sauce from Trader Joe's (fresh pesto would be much better but the basil I had on hand was frozen. I was also short on time.) I also had the bottled roasted tomatoes from Sam's Club. I added some button mushrooms and some swiss cheese. Baked it for about 20 mins. In 400 degrees. Mmmm…. Yummy!

* I didn't have the higher res camera and had to use my phone cam. sorry for the low quality image. I myself love great looking pics.

Homemade Shampoo

I found recipes for homemade soaps and shampoos.

Today I tried one of them & found it pretty good.

I made Orange Castile Shampoo. It said it was for Oily hair.

The ingredients are as follows:

1/3 cup distilled water
2 Tbsp. chamomile flowers
1 Tbsp. rosemary leaves
2/3 cup liquid castile soap
2 tsp. sweet almond oil
1/4 tsp. sweet orange essential oil
1 tsp. fine sea salt

I omitted the chamomile flowers & almond oil since I had none but followed everything else. It's not your usual shampoo since it's very watery and doesn't lather all that much. I've read that since castile is made from olive oil it doesn't lather well. We also have very hard water here & that also contributes to the foam-less lather.

I used around 5 handfuls since I wasn't used to not having any lather, but once I rinsed it off I could feel that my hair was oil-free. I would even say that it was kinda dry. I would suggest using a conditioner. The "For Oily Hair Shampoo" label is indeed true.

BTW, I purchased my ingredients from an online soap/lotion making store. The ingredients were pretty cost-friendly if you compare them to the off-the-shelf products, you just have to mix them yourself. Another plus is you know exactly what you put into them.

I am going to try homemade liquid soap next.

Candied Ginger

I made some candied ginger last night. I used Alton Brown of Foodnetwork's recipe.

It was real spicy coz I used an older ginger. Next time I'll make sure to get a younger ginger to get a milder taste.

Here's a photo while I was cooking it.