Tag: bento

Geeky Bento Lunches – Onigirazu おにぎらず

On By Bao Bao QiuIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a bento post.
Someone commented on my blog that I should make rice balls for my bento. I’m too lazy for that. ¬_¬” soooooo, I looked up Japanese rice ball fillings and ended up looking at this article about Japanese onigirazu おにぎらず… Wow a rice ball that was popular back in the  mid-1980’s from a Japanese manga “Cooking Papa” and has now made a comeback in Japan.
Sugoi! すごい！(Sorry, been watching a lot of Japanese dramas lately – trying to up my slang!). I had a look at some YouTube videos and came across one which I liked (will post this at the end).
This was my first try – Miss Vegan’s fried tofu which was smothered in soy sauce and some gem lettuce… Really don’t know what vegans like to eat, but fried tofu was top choice! She liked it but I think the rice was undercooked. Whoops! I did tell her before she ate it.

 

Mine was filled with lots of different ingredients… one had fried chicken pieces, kimchi, gem lettuce… and the other had tofu, kimchi and chicken. I put a lot of colour into mine… and I was stuffed!

 

The next evening I made more… this time I cooked the rice properly, added chicken pieces, ham slices, kimchi, mayo and cheese slices! Yeah, cheese slices! I never knew how good processed cheese tasted with rice. Amazing stuff!!! ^_^

 

I hope to make a few more in the future… maybe add fried egg and spam. ^_^v

Here’s the video I was talking about…

 

Lost in Tokyo, Japan 2014: Day 8 – Yokohama China Town

On By Bao Bao QiuIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Saturday 8th November
My body seems to know when it’s Saturday because I got up late (not that late though… Miss Pinky couldn’t sleep much… Probably because of my tiredness and snoring). Anyway, I started off with eating some mini sandwiches that I bought at Shimbashi Station the night before. The bakery is called Kobeya.
The sandwiches are cute, and filling for ones stomach for breakfast. Each mini sandwich has a different filling with crustless white bread. This cost 570 yen (~£3.58) by using my Pasmo card. 
Mini sandwiches
Hotel reception called… It seems if we don’t go out before 12 they will ask if we want room service… Miss Pinky not impressed… She wanted to sleep more!
Time to head out to Yokohama! (This was Miss Pinky’s idea on the first day we got here to Japan). What’s in Yokohama? China Town. Yes we went out to find THE China Town in Japan. This time I let Miss Pinky take us there. And she took us the long way ’round or a way that I would have not chosen…. So we went from Kayabacho Station to Otemachi and changed for the Maranouchi line heading towards Tokyo Station (but that line is just so far away… Finally we got off at Shinjuku Station. We had to get a round trip ticket for 840 yen (~£5.28) from Shinjuku to Yokohama.  
We finally got to Yokohama, but unfortunately we were at the wrong stop. We had to take another train to the actual stop… Already tired from the long train journey and we had to get on another train! This is not straightforward Miss Pinky!

Not at the right station

Finally we got there and it was already 4 pm. Both of us were kind of hungry in which we ended up in a Chinese restaurant (Miss Pinky wanted to eat frog legs but they don’t serve it anywhere in China Town in Japan).  

We ended up in a place that was serving food for 1980 yen (~£12.45) per person for as much as you can eat and drink.

Total came to 4957 yen (~£31.18). Not bad. But the food was not entirely great. Plus they kept staring at Miss Pinky which I don’t think she appreciated.
My geeky rating: 3.5/5.

Address: 華福飲店 Japan, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture Yubinbango231-0023 Yamashita-cho 192-16

In China Town you have to be careful with the prices of things you are going to buy. Make sure you know how much you are going to pay for items that are not labelled with the price… Miss Pinky practically got cheated from buying bracelets for 6000 yen!!!!!

We ended up walking around and we found a Chinese temple. We went in (without paying for incense) and was shooed away… oh dear. It costs 500 yen (~£3.14) to buy incense by the way. At least we made it in there for free.

More walking came along and a few more pictures from aroud the area…

Never seen a man with a hat on a street sign before!

Have you seen these criminals?!!

And then we ended up in a bar called Norge… I had a cocktail at a reasonable price of 1000 yen (~£6.28).

Miss Pinky had a bloody mary…

Final walk around the China Town area before heading back! We only spent 2 and half hours there… We spotted this TV outside and they were singing the song from Puroland… 

Miss Pinky laughed at me earlier for not realising there were signs on the stairs to say where China Town was…

Then it was time to go back (after shopping for a few more things)… We took the metro straight to Shibuya, I think we needed to get off there and reuse our return ticket but instead we changed at Ebisu and took the Hibiya line back to Kayabachō. Unfortunately we had to pay extra to get pass the gates… 200 yen extra (~£1.26). 😦

It was an empty train we got on so I took a few pictures on the train and its advertisements… Advertising in Japan is essential!

Dinner consisted of a cheap bento and drinks from Lawson . 🙂 I tried out Orange Coca Cola (apparently that flavour already existed in London) and a low alcoholic apple cider… Miss Pinky had those beers / lager.

My dinner… The bento is good for 369 yen (£~2.32) so cheap!!! Had a soft creamy cake, an egg (already cooked and ready to eat) and Ghana chocolate from Lotte.

Instructions on how to break your egg…

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake!!

Both of us were exhausted so it was time to head off to sleep… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

End of Day 8.

Geeky Bento Lunches Again…

On By Bao Bao QiuIn Uncategorized2 Comments
Woah it’s been a long time since I’ve made some bento lunches. As I’ve said in previous posts I’ve just been either lazy or too busy.

So here’s some that I’ve made over the weeks and months…

These pics are all taken with my phone, so they are not the best of quality.

This first one is a healthy one of carrots, cucumber, and gherkins on top of a tuna pasta.
This is of some leftovers. Mushrooms, carrots and rice and I think there’s some celery in this one! Yuck! I hate celery!!!
Ah, unhealthy white bread and peanut butter… But at least I added some fruits to this lunch. ^_^
This bento box I bought from Longdan isn’t the greatest. The lid has loosened, so I had to use some ribbon to make sure it closed! ¬_¬
Here’s what was inside… Loads of cucumber, oranges and some tuna pasta again!!
Ok, I had to make a very geeky bento for this blogpost, so in the end I made some pasta, and then fried an egg. Fried eggs don’t usually go into a bento, but I wanted it for lunch. Plus there was nothing in the fridge… ¬_¬””
Last but not least is this bento with German salami with chilli cheese slices… and sliced apples doused with some lemon juice and a clementine! Nice for the Geek to eat!! ^_^ The chilli cheese was great too!!

Any suggestions on what I should make next for a geeky bento???!!!

Bento with a Hong Kong style sandwich

On By Bao Bao QiuIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Tired of eating peanut butter sandwiches for the past few days at lunchtime, I decided to make something a different sandwich for today’s lunch. ^_^ 
As usual I tend to miss Hong Kong’s food once in a blue moon because it is just so good compared to the Chinese restaurants in London. 

Voila, here’s my scrambled egg and “spam” sandwich.

Bento with scrambled egg and ham sandwiches plus oranges on the side- HK style!

Because I didn’t have any spam, I used thin slices of ham to replicate the image. (^_^)v I lightly toasted them on a pan after scrambling the eggs.

Close up of my sandwiches

The sandwiches took me 10 minutes to make which included the prep time plus the peeling of the orange. I didn’t toast the bread since it will get soggy…

Here’s another picture bonus from Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, which is again taken from two years back…

HK style sandwich – spam and fried egg!

Soooo hungry now. Going to eat my lunch right now!

Geeky Bento Box Lunches

On By Bao Bao QiuIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
I have grown to love all things Asian (Chinese, Korean, Japanese – anything goes I guess). (^_^)v 


I have been a fan of bento style lunches for a little while now. Assuming you all know what bento lunches are, if not, they are just Japanese style lunch boxes of leftover food from your dinner etc. But sometimes I start mine from scratch.

My craze for bento started off from watching a few mangas and Japanese school dramas and then seeing them on Hong Kong dramas… Hahahahaha… Geek!!! Anyway, a friend of mine from China had a pretty neat lunch box with 3 compartments – and I wanted one for myself! So I searched high and low for something similar – but only found small bento boxes, or ones without compartments but eventually I found one in London’s Japan Centre (but now broken and thrown away) and one in Hong Kong, which I knew I would use for a while ^^. Now, I have loads of lunch boxes (not intentional of course!). Some I have had to give away (they were too small) or thrown away (because they got broken after many uses!).

Well, I think it’s about time I show you some recent bento lunches I have made this year (not many here since I’ve been a bit lazy and doing all of that crazy studying!).

Some of these pictures were taken using my phone, so here’s a fishy salad to start off with in two different lunchboxes…

Fried Salmon and Salad (cucumber, radish, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, cheese and a mustard and vinegar dressing)… My friend who is now in China taught me the salad dressing, and the little bottle was brought from jbox.com… ^^


Chinese style food…

Stir fried beef and green bell peppers with noodles in black bean sauce… This is making me hungry!!

Yummy pasta salad in the lunchbox I bought from Hong Kong!! You can find a box similar to this in MUJI at the moment.

Tuna pasta salad with cherry tomatoes, olive bought from Cyprus and home made pickled cucumber ^^

Here I used crustless bread for these sandwiches (I don’t like crust). And usually I leave the skin on my tangerines, but the skin easily came off on these ones…

Ham and mayonnaise sandwiches with olives, crinkle cut gherkins, cherry tomatoes and peeled tangerine segments

Now I’m going to show off my culinary skills, (plus the use of my Olympus EPL-1 which gives these nice shots)…

Tuna sushi rolls, radishes cut into flowers, cherry tomatoes, gherkins and some home-made spicy pickled cucumber ^^

And here I made another 2 for some friends. The one of the left is in a re-usable takeaway container. The black bento box I got from MUJI, which they don’t sell anymore.

Loads of sushi!

After making these, I ate the leftovers, yum yum!!^^

I will make some more bento style lunches in the future, so watch out for more posts of these!! ^^

Here’s a couple of websites you may want to read which are dedicated to bento lunches:
http://justbento.com/
http://www.aibento.net/

A Quick Wasabi Lunch (^_^)v

On By Bao Bao QiuIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Right, so it was lunch time on a weekday afternoon, both my colleague and I were craving for sushi the day before and we were both talking about the Japanese sushi chain  わさび Wasabi Sushi & Bento. Unfortunately, Wasabi stores can only be found in Central London, but there are 2 stores in the East and 1 store in the West of London. There are none further South or North, hence this trip from work was a trek and was well worth it! ^_^

Travelling from South London to Victoria Station via train took around 10 minutes, and the next train back to work was 10 minutes later. So we only had less than 10 minutes to decide what to eat and then get back on the train again! What a trek for sushi!

Wasabi’s takeaway bag  
Wasabi Logo

The Wasabi branch in Victoria Station is a fairly small store compared to some of the other ones, like the Embankment branch. As you can see I’m a Wasabi fan, and I will find any opportunity to go into any of their stores to buy food – my first experience was in a branch in Oxford Street (the one near Tottenham Court Road). Inside this store on the left hand side there is the refrigerated sushi and drinks, and on the right hand side there’s the till area and hot foods. It’s very busy at lunchtime! I was deciding whether to have sushi or to have chicken katsu curry (breaded fried chicken with rice and curry sauce). In the end I chose sushi. I chose the box set (easy option) with salmon onigiri, chicken katsu with sweet chilli sauce on top, small versions of futomaki with one side covered in avocado and the other with orange masoko. Also included in the box set were some edamame and runner beans, a slice of pickled ginger, a pack of soy sauce and a pack of wasabi. Chopsticks and tissue were included during purchase. This cost £7.95. Each box set has a different price. At Wasabi, I wanted to get a bottled flavoured green tea, which they sell in some of the Wasabi branches, but unfortunately Victoria Station branch didn’t have any 😦 no fair… So I got a Diet Coke instead.

My boxed set full of sushi and chicken katsu ^_^ 


My colleague had the harder option, he chose a selection of individual sushi which were wrapped in plastic, so if you do select your own prepare to unwrap a lot of sushi! (2 pieces of sushi cost £1.50). My colleague also chose a box of edamame beans and a triangular onigiri (can’t remember the filling but I think it was Tuna and Mustard). My colleague’s set ended up costing £5.80. 

My colleague’s set: Salmon onigiri, Tuna onigiri, Tuna & Mustard onigiri and Edamame beans 

So back on the train we go. Stomachs rumbling like thunder. We sat back in our office and our faces glowed with the sushi in front of us.

My geeky mind said “We are definitely going to do this trek again!”.

Here’s a close up of my box set…


My Simple Geeky Summary:

Website
http://www.wasabi.uk.com/
Prices for individual selection
2 pieces for £1.50
Box sets (depending on branch)
£4.95 – £10.95 (approx.)
Hot foods (check menu)
Vary
Drinks
Vary (I wish they had the flavoured green tea in Victoria Station)