Feastful Weekend

I wouldn't have realized it if my friend didn't tell me. Aside from this blog, I also posted my food photos on Facebook, and she told me that I posted 5 different food photos this weekend. Quite a lot for a college student, I guess?

This is called lontong sayur. It's an Indonesian dish my mum used to make for breakfast. I'm not particularly into lontong (= rice cake). I don't like the texture =(

The reason why I started making lontong out of the blue was because somehow I missed my mum. Actually, I miss someone cooking for me. And anyways I have some spare semolina rice from my research. I don't really like semolina, so I figure that I should somehow process it in a different way before I can eat it. Spanish rice is an option, but I decided to make lontong.

As expected, I didn't eat that many pieces of lontong even though I made two big chunks of it (it's a waste of gas if I only make a tiny portion). In the end I distributed them to my friends here, and I ate the curry I made with rice, my favorite carb!

It's pretty easy to make lontong. You just need a heat-resistant plastic bag, fill in the bag with 1/3-1/2 uncooked rice, poke some holes (so that water can enter the bag), tie the bag (you can just make a knot or use rubber bands), and boil with plenty of water for about 3 hours. Yes, 3 hours.

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Thumbprint Cookie

The baking idiot is back to make some mess in her kitchen!

I call it the "tower of poo".

So this idiot basically melted the chocolate chips first and poured it into a sandwich bag and squeezed it out of the bag onto the cookie dough. I thought it would magically spreads down and make a good pool of chocolate filling, but no.

For the cookie recipe, I used this. I modified it slightly. Instead of using almond extract, I used chocolate liquor. And of course the filling is changed to chocolate instead of raspberry.

Guys, don't follow what I did, okay? Unless you really want to make a replica out of the "tower of poo"!

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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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