Cinnamon Roll Bento

My friend kinda requested for a Hello Kitty or Cinnamon Roll bento. I didn't really have enough time, and she said Cinnamon Roll would be easier. So... here we go, Cinnamon Roll bento!

They're really basic. The ingredients are:
- rice
- nori
- ham (for the blush and the bento box lining)
- meatballs
- frozen mixed vegetables (the corn, carrot, green bean and green peas come in one package, so I had to separate them one by one)
- cherry tomatoes

If you notice, I kinda run out of my creativity. I've been using the same ingredients over and over again. There are plenty of reasons to that, but the main reason is that I'm a college student who lives in a single apartment. That just means that I can't buy a wide arrange of food ingredients. They'll go bad before I can finish them. Take a cucumber for example. It's going to take more than 1 week for me to fully utilize a cucumber assuming that I'm not eating cucumber every day. Before I could finish it, they'd go bad :(

And I don't have a roommate to share the food with. So I'm the only one who finishes whatever I made.

I don't really wish that I have a roommate/housemate, though. She'll go crazy with my randomness to cook at any time of the day at any kind of situation. I'll occupy the entire kitchen just for myself. And I bet she won't be able to stand the smell coming out from the kitchen every day haha!

By the way, it rained again today. Pretty heavily. Spring is here. Or has been here for quite some time, actually.

I'm not looking forward to summer. I hate heat :(

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Bananana Bento

Left compartment:
- microwave steamed mixed veggies (corn, green bean, carrot, peas)
- tomato mushroom fried rice
- fresh cherry tomato
- sauteed bay scallops

Right compartment:
- omu rice (1 egg, tomato mushroom fried rice inside)
- microwave steamed broccoli
- sauteed mushroom
- fresh cherry tomato
- microwaved meatballs x2

Now, you might wonder why I often microwave-steam the veggies. The reason is simple: it's easy, fast, and gives you bright colors. For broccoli, you just have to cut them into pieces and put them into a microwavable bowl. Add probably about 1-2 tablespoon water. Cover the bowl with a cling wrap, and don't forget to poke several holes on the cling wrap so the steam can escape. Otherwise you might hear a tiny "boom" from your microwave... maybe. Haha. Anyways, steam it for about 40-60 seconds on high power (I like them soft, so I always cook it for 50-60 seconds depending on how much broccoli I cook)

The same goes with corn, green peas, carrots and green beans. 40 seconds is a good time to start, and if you like softer texture, go ahead and heat them in the microwave again for another 10-20 seconds. Remember, it's easier to cook again than to have the vegetables overcooked.

Enjoy~

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High Carb, High Sugar...?

Monday night, and I was stressed. So I did my normal daily ritual to ward it off: make a bento.

I haven't been going for groceries for weeks, so I don't really have that many ingredients left in the fridge. And I'm a little bored of using ham and bacon.

Left: frankfurters, garlic fried rice, crab stick, english cucumber, green onion

Right: sliced baumkuchen, nastar, fortune cookie, orange gummy, milk candy

I tried a new "technique" of making a frankfurter look like flowers. It's pretty successful, I'd say. And it's unexpectedly easy to make :)

But a friend of mine complained told me that this bento is filled with carb and sugar only. Sigh. That's true. I wish my bento boxes are a little bit bigger so I can put in more stuffs.

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Another randomness pulled

Boredom. Yes. Well, not exactly. I just need something that is not related to school work or research or science. And here we go again!

I've been drafting this a long time ago, when I was waiting for my next class to start. I didn't think that I would actually draw it properly!

Aand.. I'm thinking of changing my blog title. Luzzy Central sounds lame. I mean, no one knows who Luzzy is. So after much thinking, I'm going to change it to "AB-type Randomness" simply because there is going to be more random stuffs coming up. I even think that the bentos I designed are part of my silly creativity that needs to be vented somehow, somewhere. LOL.

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FF XIII Bento

Finally! It's an idea that has been running in my mind for quite some time, and finally I've been able to make it! I've been experiencing a "bento block" (it's my own term; similar to a "writer's block", but it just means that I have no idea what to create).

You see, I like to create things from scratch. Like... total scratch. I don't normally follow recipes, so what I create sometimes are haphazardous.

This time, I created something really really good :D

FF XIII bento

Lightning, Hope and Snow. And you know what? Snow looked weird here because I totally forgot that he has hairs! Hahaha oh well at least Lightning looks good and Hope (even though he now has a yellow hair) is not so bad.

My original idea was Lightning, Hope and Fang (my main team in FF XIII), but I figured that Fang would be a little hard to make, with her wavy hair.

I was having troubles creating silver hair. I don't want to totally depend on food coloring. I tried it with egg white, but it didn't work out. So I replaced it with cheddar cheese.

Well, the faces aren't the only ones I'm proud of. I created a new dish, and it's good!

Pan fried bacon-wrapped shrimps, fishballs, fish cake, cherry tomatoes, orzo pasta salad

I got the orzo pasta salad recipe from my friend, but I created the pan fried bacon-wrapped shrimps. Wait, that's just... normal, isn't it? That's because it's not dipped in the avocado lime dip :)

Avocado Lime dip

Basically it's just Avocado with fresh lime juice, salt and black pepper. That's about 1 avocado per 1 fresh lime. Seasonings is yours to determine. I don't like to make it too salty since the bacon is already salty. Make sure it's cold when you eat the bacon-wrapped shrimps. It adds some freshness into the oily, greasy, sinful yet yummy bacon-shrimp.

Itadakimasu!

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Journey to the West

Yet another Spring Break had passed. It felt like I just entered college last semester!

I had quite a good chance to taste good foods in big cities. I mean, Urbana-Champaign are two small twin towns, and you can't really expect much for foods. I ate in a Japanese sushi restaurant in Champaign before, and the next day, my two other friends and I were having diarrhea :(

And so... I took some pictures of what I ate there. Yes, I didn't take a shot of all the food. Very unusual, isn't it? Well, that's because there were 5 hugely intimidating camera lenses and 1 better point-and-shoot camera to snap high resolution pictures. I mean, honestly. I felt pretty intimidated to the point that I lost interest in taking pictures of the food. Sigh. I know, I know. I shouldn't have done that.

That being said, I completely forgot to take note of the names of the restaurants that we went. Ahahaha. HOW STUPID :( I'm just gonna rely on my poor memory to remember the names, okay?

1st stop: San Francisco

Beef Tataki

Ohhh yumm :) I wish they add some yuzu to it, though. I think they'll taste great with some addition of yuzu.

Crispy Tofu

I'm not a big fan of this crispy tofu even though my friend greatly recommended this. Maybe it's just a difference in preference...

Chillean Sea Bass Hot Plate

Lots of f-f-f-fatttt but how bad can a chillean seabass be? :)

Complimentary Green Tea Ice Cream

Somehow tasted like avocado to us :S It's not so good, and not so bad. Mediocre, I'd say.

2nd stop: South Lake Tahoe (Red Hut Cafe)

The Red Hut Cafe at Lake Tahoe

Excellent (if not awesome) service! I love the food - even though it might be a little too much. Breakfast menu is served with a choice of toasted bread and hash browns. I had 2 easy over eggs with sausage. Way too much for my size, but it's probably normal for Americans.

The ladies' bathroom at Lake Tahoe. A very unique decoration!

3rd stop: Lake Tahoe (Scusa- literally meaning "excuse me")

Seared scallops with sun dried tomatoes, heart artichokes, asparagus, linguini, and olives

It's unique, but I feel that some items are a little mismatched. The sauce is a little too sweet for me, and it's too oily that the flavor didn't stick to the linguini. Tasted a little bland if you eat the linguini without the olives or sundried tomatoes.

4th stop: San Francisco Japan Town - Osakaya

Hiyashi Soba

It's not sour at all... maybe I mistook it for Hiyashi Chuka? The sauce is way too sweet, I don't like it :(

5th stop: San Francisco - Kow Loon Tang (dessert place)

Hot Tea

It's just a normal tea, but I like the cup. And surprisingly, even though the tea was really hot, the mug holder wasn't hot at all (and that's why I burned my tongue LOL)

Steamed Egg Custard

Very, very, very eggy! This is the dessert my mum kept talking about. It's her childhood dessert - grandma used to make it for mum, but she could never reproduce it :(

6th stop: San Francisco - Dim Sum

Dim Sum (ha kau, xiao long bao, chai tau kuay, chai pau, chee cheong fun, shiu mai)

Funny enough, there was no dim sum place opened that day that had tables and chairs for us to sit on, so we decided to make the dim sum for to-go and ate in the car!

7th stop: Some unknown Korean place in San Francisco

An array of kimchi

 I forgot the name of the restaurant, but we ordered Chilean Seabass Jjim and Fried Chicken. The Chilean Seabass Jjim was TOTALLY AWESOME!! The fried chicken was just so-so; I don't get why Yelp reviewers recommend this fried chicken so much :S

Oh, and before I forget, for awesome gelato, go to Marcopolo. They serve great durian gelato! It's sooooo creamy!!



8th stop: San Francisco Airport, Terminal 3:

Peet's Coffee and Tea

Not found in Mid-West area?

 

Iced Machiato Latte

Strong caffeine and coffee flavor but was not bitter nor sour! Awesome! :)

9th stop: Las Vegas, MGM Grand - Wolfgang Puck

Halibut with squids and shrimps, spicy

Awesome food, but the baby carrots somehow just... didn't really match the entire set :(

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Love in the Glass

Valentine's Day is over, but I'm still in the mood for hearts simply because I have a heart-shaped mold that I have never used before.

Orange, plain, and chai latte gelatin layers with chocolate heart.

You know, strange ideas always pop out when I need to focus on studying. Which is to say that creative ideas are born under stress. At least that works for me.

It's just a simple recipe - anyone can make this by following whatever the recipe says. Just replace the liquid used -- for chai latte layer, use a chai latte to replace the water to make the gelatin. If you don't have chai latte, you can replace it with coffee latte (coffee and milk). You can even use grape juice for a dark purple.

Just play with colors :)

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