First Snow and Late Autumn Bentos and The Rest of Omatsuri

Hey hey there whatsuup? FINALLY it snowed here a couple of days ago. Now I'm having a cup of hot soy latte. Yes winter is coming soon! Those of you on the other side of the planet should enjoy your summer by now. I'm already looking forward to skiing. By the way I feel bad being too late to respond to everyone's comment and leave my comment on their blogs. I want so badly to go round and carefully check out bentos and something of my buddies.

This bento contains...
chicken cutlet,
spinach/kamaboko salad,
scrambled egg/negi,
carrot miso kimpira
and medium polished rice decorated with green peas and something(?).



Tori soboro bento...
stir-fried ground chicken tender seasoned with shoyu, mirin and sugar,
scrambled egg,
mashed sweet potato,
nimono (satsumaage, lotus root)
and medium-polished rice underneath the chicken and egg.


What do you think the tiny pink ball-like things that I've recently put on rice are? They are garlic pickles! It hardly smells. Isn't it a bit cute??


This one contains...
lotus root/umeboshi salad,
fried shrimps with a green lemon wedge,
ikura,
stir-fried pork slices
and medium-polished rice topped with green peas.


Now I'll write one recipe. Many people often say to me *why not share your recipes?*. Although I've thought I should do that, too bad I always cook without measuring (except for baking and delicate cooking). I think that's the way home-cooking is. To be honest, measurement seems like a chore to me because I am a careless person haha. However, if possible I'd like to write my recipes in detail with some pictures on the blog but I need to make several kinds of dishes early in the morning in a short time. So I mean to share my recipes as often as I can in the future but it would be pretty simple and rough like it's been so far.

*babykins' lotus root ume-mayo salad recipe*
I think this is one of perfect salad dishes for bento. Give it a try!!

About 1 cup of thin-sliced lotus root
2 or 3 umeboshi (Japanese salty sour plum pickles)
1 teaspoon mayonnaise

1) Boil the lotus root slices for 1 or 2 minutes
2) Mince the umeboshi
3) Mix together all the ingredients
4) Done! \^.^/


As mentioned before, this time I'm going to up the rest of our Omatsuri pictures. This is goldfish scooping! It's been absolutely a necessary section for omatsuri since early times. It's a bit hard to scoop a fish with a fragile scoop. There are a few kinds of scoops. If you know some tips you could scoop easily so many goldfishes. Boy, my girl broke her paper scoop in NO time! I didn't even have time to get out my camera. She was not able to catch any goldfishes but they gave her a fish as a bonus so she only was able to take one home, yay luckily! I love this picture... a good old, nostalgic and unchanging-in-forever sight.






A toy stall. I used to get bought a fake ring and necklace as a kid, was sooo happy to be a lady.



This is a *Ringo Ame* (candy-coated apple skewers) stall. There were only apple ones and apricot ones before but nowadays they even have pineapple ones and mango ones. I was curious about a mango ame but didn't buy it because I was already filled up at that point. Ringo ame is much yummier than it looks.



Well can you guess what these snake-looking things are?


Guess what, I still have the rest of the omatsuri pictures. Of course I'm going to up it the next time. I hope that y'all won't be fed up with that lol!
Also I don't have any plans for Halloween but hope everyone else has a happy one!!

Late Summer Memories and Short-time Bentos

Hey buddies konnichiwa! How's everything?? It's getting colder here so at last I turned on the roomheating today. How about your place?? The insanely hot summer has gone far faaaar away. I miss having chocolate ice cream, but the weather has been crispy recently. So many foods are yum in this season in particular. That means.... YES I find myself overeating very often!!! Autumn fruits, fresh fishes, freshly harvested rice, hot one-pot dishes, chocolates, cookies and cakes, everything is DELISH!! Oh no help meee! Get rid of my appetite somebodyyyyy!!

What am I saying!? Lol well today's bento! This one has tamagoyaki slices, sauteed chicken and green onion, potato/macaroni salad, ketchup flavored satumaage and white rice strewed with broccoli sprouts and minced koume. I think this angle is failure. It maybe hard to see the dishes.



Can you see the fillings between the slices of bread? This time I made chikuwa/tuna-mayo sandwiches, ham/cheese ones, butter/sakura-honey (cherry blossom flavor) ones and apple bunnies. Have you ever heard of *a chikuwa/tuna bread*?? I really like the harmony of bread and chikuwa and tuna-mayo. If you are curious about it why don't you try making it?



This is a super boring yet oishii bento haha! All you have to do is make *sauteed pork slices and scrambled egg*. Oops don't forget to cook rice!






In the meantime, last month we went to Omatsuri (a Japanese Shrine festival). Although it's been a while since we went there, this time I'd love to share some pictures of that. Some of you may have already seen it on my flickr. Shrine festivals take place once a year at most Shinto Shrines here in Japan. This little Shrine is one that I've gone to ever since I was born.



Everybody around there was buying a fortune and checking it out. A bit nervous moment.



Both Hubby's and Yuppi's say *Excellent Luck!!*--- Everything's gonna be all right, wheeeee! Unfortunately mine was.... Average Luck---means *So So or Not Bad*. Yes so so (sigh).



These are Kompeito---Japanese classic style candies. I love the tint color. By the way, have you ever watched * Spirited Away*? The black soot balls (Makkurokurosuke--can you pronounce it properly?) are eating them in the movie. Yuppi wanted to get some but I rejected her because I thought she'd eat them so little.



Yuppi was staring at this choco/banana stand. She got a chocolate-coated banana skewer and gobbled it up while I was unaware. I only wanted to have a bite.....sob.


I'll show you the rest of pictures on the next post, stay tuned!

Karate Kid and Usual Bentos

Heeeey perhaps long time no see?!?! These days it seems like the rush season to me, a lot of thing to do plus time is passing by sooo quickly that I can't even take a breath. Hahah just joking I'm still alive! But that means I am aging so quickly for sure as time goes by, I guess. Mmmm, oh well I assume that I need to go see movies that bring back the thrilling and exciting feelings of my childhood. Although movies are not inexpensive it's worth seeing them at theater. Yes as I mentioned I went to the movie *The Karate Kid*. That was amazing as I had expected!! Dre (Jaden Smith) has done a fantastic job in the movie! He was super cute and a great kung fu player, ah I wish I had a kid like him. Also Jackie Chen was as great as ever despite acting an old man. If you have ever seen a kung fu movie you should already know how exciting it is. I used to be pretty excited and adore kung fu stars when I was a teen. If I had been a boy I would definitely have gone to Kung Fu School! My kung fu stars are of course Jackie Chen, Jet Li, Yuen Biao and the pioneer of kung fu action/films Bruce Lee. They aren't all Japanese actors though. A very long time ago, surprisingly many people believed Bruce Lee was Japanese. He really was an agile, cool, tough Chinese actor.
The movie background is Beijing. It begins with the scene Dre is moving there with his mom. Before long he gets bullied by rambunctious and mean school mates so he regrets coming to China and hates being there. But He makes up his mind to get tougher. He is getting stronger and stronger as he gets training from Mr. Han (Jackie Chan)......
There's only one thing that doesn't make sense. How come this movie was titled *The Karate Kid*? Yea I know that it is a remake of the original Karate Kid, however, it doesn't have any Karate scenes. I'm sure this title should have been changed into* The Kung Fu Kid*.
This one is simply fun, entertaining, also childish but I think abstrusity and complexity are unnecessary to entertaining movies. Needless to say pop corn and drink are musts though! I recommend this for those who've felt kind of gloomy lately. It sure would pick you up.







Well now I gotta get down to the subject. I just remembered this was a bento blog hehe.
Sandwich bento, this has teriyaki chicken sand, bacon omelet sand, julienne-carrot/nuts salad and some kinds of vegetables.




Mentaiko onigiri bento, this has teriyaki fall salmon fillets, braised chicken tender/cucumber/umeboshi salad, sweet potato/walnut salad and four mentaiko onigiri.




Sauce shrimp dombri bento, this has mentsuyu-braised carrot, boiled-egg/edamame salad, nimono (satsumaage, snap bean) and white rice topped with fried shrimps.