Having had a really low motivation weekend, I didn’t make any plans at all for today’s bento. Though now that I think about it, I did two weekened blog posts, so I can’t really have been all that lazy. I sure felt lazy. I could have used like 5 more hours of sleep this morning.

The result is this lazy thing, which has some really horrible color scheme, haha! I should have used a smaller, red box. It’s really not one of my favorites at all. Luckily there’s the rest of this week to do better lovey dovey bentos.

I used two egg whites for the omelet and added two drops of red food coloring, then fried it and folded it over. I made the omelet to hide the Hamburger Helper underneath, since it’s probably really disgusting to most people but is one of the few things I can count on that my kids will actually eat. I used turkey to make it lighter.

The LOVE is made out of white cheese and I used a cookie cutter I bought at Foodland recently for 99 cents. I’ll have to make some sugar cookies with it as it really is cute. I added broccoli, a quarter of a cameo apple with a heart cut out of it, some sweet potato hearts, and some orange wedges.

When we live in a different place, I’m getting one that has actual windows with blinds that work. That way I can use the light outside to help with my photos. My lighting issues all seem to stem from me having to take pictures in a gloomy area unless it’s midday.

To continue with my dreary photo quality, I have three more bento boxes to add to my Docubentory.

I took my jubako boxes out so that I could get it over with and get them back in the cabinet. This one is my smallest one and has three tiers. View the set for Box 003.

This is my red box and I rarely use it because it’s pretty huge and only really good for picnics, which we don’t do often. View the Box 004 set.

This is the exact same size, only black, which makes me like using it more. As you can see though, I don’t dry it fast enough and there are water spots on it. View the set for Box 005.

I couldn’t figure out a nice way to add props to these. Oh well, at least I only have three. (which is two too many…)

Since today is Superbowl Sunday, it’s too late for people to make these for a party today, but there’s still football potlucks and tailgating later this year that this can be used for, so I figured I might as well do a tutorial for people. I got an email from someone here on Oahu wanting me to make them a tray of 15 Colt musubis and 5 Saints musubis, but since this is basically impossible without 40 hands, I compromised with 40 musubis including one each of the team ones.

As usual, what could go wrong did go wrong. The brand new bag of rice I bought at Don Quijote had weevils or something in it. I washed 5 cups and tons of black stuff floated to the top. I was livid and had to go out to Foodland at 7 am to buy a new bag. Then later, I ran out of furikake and somehow in the dozen bottles I had stashed at home, I didn’t have any Katsuo Mirin. I ended up delivering them 40 minutes late. *sigh*

My pictures of the tray were really rushed, so they’re blurry and the color looks terrible. Since the pictures look so bad, I’ll just focus on the tutorial. I’ll show you how to make one of these without needing a mold. I don’t know if any exist, anyway.

Before I get to the photos, here’s the full recipe:

Football Musubis

Makes 12 musubi

Ingredients:

• 5 cups rice, cooked
• 1 bottle Katsuo Mirin furikake (Mishima brand)
• salt
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp cornstarch

Instructions:

1. Cook the rice. You should end up with around 10 cups of cooked rice.
2. Pour furikake into a shallow bowl. Pick out the strips of nori. (optional) Use a fork to break the furikake pieces into a finer texture.
3. Form musubi and roll in furikake.
4. Dilute cornstarch with some water and add to egg white. Beat well and strain.
5. Heat pan on low heat and wipe with olive oil. Add egg white to pan and cook until set, then remove pan from heat. Cover and let sit for a few minutes, then remove to a plate to cool.
6. Cut the egg into strips and add laces to footballs.

I use a Panasonic rice cooker warmer, but when I have the funds, I’ll probably try to get myself a Zojirushi such as the Zojirushi NS-TGC10 5-1/2-Cup Rice Cooker and Warmer. My Panasonic burns the bottom of my rice when I use Quick Cook, which drives me nuts because if I want to avoid that, I have to wait 50 minutes for my rice.

Anyway, the first thing to do is to get a dipping bowl for your furikake and pour the whole thing in. Katsuo mirin is full of strips of nori, so if you want your footballs to be free of little black strips, pick them out. I just washed and dried my hands and used my fingers, but tweezers might be good too. I tried wetting the tip of a toothpick and touching the nori, but that took forever. Feed the nori pieces to your two-legged garbage disposals if you have some.

Take a fork and break up the big pieces of katsuobushi.  The flakes are pretty big, so it won’t coat well if you don’t do this.

You should end up with a nice fine dust with sesame seeds. You’ll have a lot more than this, I just took a photo of a little bit. Remove your rice pot from the cooker and wet a paper towel to cover the rice. This should help keep it moist while you work.

Take a chawan and remember how much rice you put into it so that all your footballs are the same size. Try to do this after the rice has cooled a bit or you’ll end up with burned hands like me.

Lay a piece of Saran Wrap on your work surface. When you’re ready to form a musubi, wet your hands and dip them in salt. Rub the salt all over your hands and pour the rice out into your hands. Shape it into a football.

If it looks like a bicycle helmet or a UFO, that’s okay, that’s what the plastic wrap is for.

Fold the wrap over to cover the musubi.

Press the musubi into a better football shape, using the plastic wrap to make nice corners and a nice curved shape.

Remove the wrap and you should have a nice football shape. Wet your hands again before picking it up or rice kernels will come off on your fingers.

Coat the musubi in the furikake, topping it with a bunch and pressing it in to get a nice, thick coat. Dust it off and place in a tray or on a platter.

There are a lot of options for the laces. For the order I did, I tried boiled egg whites and egg white sheets. The egg whites were really easy to cut very thin and although I loved using it, I think the egg sheet was the best one. You can also use kamaboko, such as I did above as an example. Cut a slice as thin as you can and make long strips for the long lace. Cut another long one into three short strips.

I didn’t really care for how this came out, as it was a little too thick. It’s hard to cut kamaboko super thin.

Here’s the football with the kamaboko laces. You can add more if you want, but with this size, 3 works well and I love odd numbered things.

This is the egg sheet and I think it’s much better because you can cut long pieces at once and is nice and thin. To make one, dilute 1/2 tsp cornstarch in water and then beat with the egg white. Strain the egg mixture through a sieve and then heat a pan on low. Wipe the pan with oil and pour the egg white in. When it’s set, remove from heat and cover and let it sit. After a few minutes, remove it from the pan and move it to a plate to cool.

This is the musubi with the egg sheet laces. I found that doing a bunch of musubis and then dipping them all saved me some furikake and let me wash my hands WAY less.

Hope that helps shed some light on how I did my football bento last week! :D

One of the best parts of being part of Foodbuzz’s Tastemaker Program is that you get to try all kinds of stuff for free. The latest item is a sauce, so this review is sponsored by Foodbuzz and my favorite brand of shoyu, Kikkoman. New to the Kikkoman family of products is their Ponzu Lime Sauce. Funnily enough, I found a bottle of their Ponzu Soy Sauce in my pantry last night, which looks like it’s made with lemon instead of lime.

The bottle unfortunately leaked during shipping, which was kinda gross on bubble wrap and a bummer since I like to keep bubble warp. This doesn’t really bode well for buying a bottle of it online, as they did wrap and pack it rather nicely. The letter and literature that came with it said that it goes great with sashimi and the brochure included a recipe for Shrimp Fajitas.

Being someone who doesn’t need an excuse to buy sashimi, you can guess what I chose to test it on.

I went to Foodland and bought a really sexy block of ahi. I’d been to Don Quijote first, but was disappointed to find that they had some seriously crappy fish selection. Instead, I bought a couple of nice white plates to take photos on.

OH……………! I already ate the whole block and yet my mouth still waters at the sight of such pretty sashimi. It had no tsuji, which made it that much more awesome. Anyway, time to pour the sauce on!

Looks good, right? I dipped a fingertip in and took a taste. It was… interesting. Reminded me of my lime bathroom cleaner… :( I took photos under my hot lamp for so long that the bottom of the sashimi was starting to cook. Crazy, huh?

Before I go on, I should state that I’m a shoyu snob and very picky about what goes on my sashimi. I refuse to eat wasabi and pouring cheap shoyu over it is a crime. I might even go so far as to say that you shouldn’t put a light soy sauce like Aloha Shoyu on it. It will taste good, just not how it should. Kikkoman and Yamasa are the only brands I consider worthy of sashimi. I tried Sempio and though it has a really great taste, I think it’s more suited for sushi than sashimi.

That being said, I was not a fan of this Ponzu Lime sauce on my sashimi. I ate it all, but I ate it because it’s sashimi and not to be wasted. I think this might have worked nicely with the regular ponzu sauce, since I love salmon with lemon and shoyu, but the lime just didn’t do it for me.

I made more of the eggplant that I gave the recipe for the other day. I really wasn’t a fan of the sauce at this point, so I actually didn’t even try it with the eggplant. I suspect that this sauce will probably taste a lot better if I try the shrimp fajitas recipe I mentioned earlier. The brochure has a photo of a Mexican family making fajitas, so I guess it’s probably supposed to go more with Latin cuisine or, as I mentioned earlier, maybe I’m just too snobby with my shoyu. I’m not going to be using it on fish again.

I made some pork gyoza for lunch today and thought I should give the sauce another try.

I have to admit, it tasted way better with gyoza. I tried it with the regular ponzu as well, but thought that didn’t taste that good. I tried it with the Ajinomoto Gyoza Dipping Sauce I have, but ended up going back to regular Kikkoman shoyu in the end.

I’ll definitely have to try doing this with beef, as I think soy and lime would probably taste way better on a steak. I’ll update when I find out more!

Today is our monthly office potluck, so I decided to pack a small bento for breakfast, since there was no need for me to pack a lunch. Since I still have a ton of rice leftover from Wednesday, I decided to make a small batch of fried rice. With three quail eggs left in the fridge, I figured I should use up a couple so that they don’t go to waste. I’ll figure out what to do with the last one for something to do on Monday.

I used my Aluminum Totoro Bento Box from J-List. There’s only one left in stock, so if you want it, get it now! It’s a tiny little thing, but I love it regardless because it’s got a cute cover, a great shape, and is a great size for little kids.

To make this little sun and piggie, I pulled out the quail egg cutter wheels that Maki gave to me in September when we did the photo shoot for Yum-Yum Bento Box. I forgot to take a picture of them, but there are two wheels and shapes for a lot of different animals. I chose to do the sun and the pig.

First I boiled the eggs, cooled them, and then peeled them. I dyed one in yellow food coloring and another in red food coloring in water.

I took a slice of kamaboko and threw it in the pink water with the pig. I used the wheel to cut the ears out, then cut a slit in the egg to insert it.  Since kamaboko is pretty sticky, it stuck to the egg without needing to put mayo. I punched out nori eyes and ears, then dug a little hole in the fried rice and put the piggie in. Buddy ate the piggie the second I told him I was done with the photos. He bit into it and goes, “It’s an egg!!” I think he was shocked because it was so tiny.

This photo came out terrible and you can see that the cheese was melting by this point. The cheese ring was actually really hard to get out of the wheel, as part of it is covered. I don’t know why it’s designed like that, but I’m sure there’s a reason that I’m just not understanding. I made another hole and squished him in, then applied the nori face.

Since I used food coloring, I had the box of droppers on the counter. I didn’t know, but Buddy decided to snipe one. The next thing I know, Baby Girl is yelling, “Moooooom! Buddy has the blue thing!” I had no idea what she meant, so I went to go look and he was trying to go hide in my closet, but a container was blocking his way and he couldn’t get there before I saw he had really REALLY blue fingers.

I yelled at him to go wash his hands in the bathroom and as he got closer I saw his mouth…..

Yeah… O.M.G. His teeth were bad too.

When I took him to school, his lips were still blue, so I made sure to tell the teachers what happened, lest they think I tried to suffocate him in the car before walking in with him. I suppose this kind of thing is where that saying, “Boys will be boys.” comes from.

As you can see, I’ve officially changed the skin of the site to pink. The beauty of the theme that I’m using is that it takes maybe 5 minutes to change it all once I’ve picked the color codes. I went crazy trying to figure out how to do everything at first, but now that I have, it seems to be smooth sailing. Now that I’ve said that, watch the blog die a fiery death within a couple of hours.

With the love theme going on, I have the first of my Valentine’s Day themed bento. The box I’m using is one of the stacking onigiri boxes that Susan Yuen gave to me when we did our tv appearance for the Haiti Fundraiser. She gave me a piggie one and a tiger one and this is the piggie one. The covers are pink, but the bottoms are red, making them the perfect case for a small love bento.

I started off making the onigiri by heating up leftover rice in the microwave and then adding pink vinegar powder to color the rice pink and give it a nice ume flavor. I used an onigiri mold to make them into hearts and then used a new set of punches that Maki of Cute Obento gave to me.

Here’s a closer look at the onigiri. I wasn’t very original and made them all the same, but I think it turned out nicely anyway. I lined the boxes with green leaf lettuce to eat as a side salad. In the medium size box, there’s some fried eggplant, Grandma Mu style, a cherry tomato, and a duck sauce bottle filled with shoyu. In the smallest box there’s some cut up orange slices.

I used to stay with my grandma a lot, as our house was 25 miles from town and she lived conveniently closer, so I’d go and sleep over if I was going out on the weekend or something. As a result, I’d eat her cooking a lot. Although she doesn’t really cook at all anymore, her food still sticks in my brain and she totally instilled in me the importance of simple foods with her motto: “Simple food is the best.” Her fried eggplant is one of my favorites.

Grandma Mu’s Fried Eggplant

Ingredients:

• 1 round eggplant
• 1 egg, beaten
• flour
• olive oil
• soy sauce

Instructions:

1. Slice the eggplant into 1/2″ thick slices, then cut them in half to make half circles.
2. Soak the slices in a bowl of water, placing a plate or bowl on top to push the slices into the water. Check back once in a while. When the water begins to turn brown, drain and refill with fresh water. Repeat 1-2 times. This helps to take out some of the bitterness.
3. Dry the slices with a towel. (paper towels are used up rather quickly)
4. Dust the slices in flour, then coat in egg, then in flour again.
5. Heat about 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Fry eggplant slices on both sides until golden brown and crispy. Remove to drain oil.
6. Serve and eat with soy sauce.

I could only fit 3/4 of a slice into this box, so I fried up one more slice and brought that along on the side so that I’d have more food.

Yesterday, Wanda Adams from the Honolulu Advertiser came over to interview me for an article about bento. The story will probably run the week after next, so if you’re local, keep an eye out on the food section! I’ll update everyone once I know a specific date. During the photo shoot, they asked me to take out and display my freakish bento box collection. They took incriminating photographs, which will surely cause my whole family to start calling and emailing and asking, “Is that for real? Do you really have that many?” I’m thinking of answering this with an awkward silence because the answer is: “No, I actually have more than that.”

Anyhoo… with my collection just out and about, I decided to start up a project wherein I document all of my bento boxes and photograph them. I’ll be using Flickr to sort my images into sets so that you can all see the lunches I’ve made with a particular box. Each day, I’ll hopefully have new sets to post and eventually, maybe in 2 months… (lol!) I’ll be done. I’ve got a Google Doc of my list and will update that as I work. This ordeal will be called Pikko’s Docubentory.

I got through 27 boxes last night, but will start with two for today. Box #001 is a pink piggies box.

View the set for Box #001.

View the set for Box #002. This set won’t actually have anything, as I still haven’t used it. You can find this Pikachu Bento Box on J-List.

Let the madness begin!!

I’ve had a busy morning, some of which entailed emailing people who were asking, “Where were you in Lost?? I didn’t see you!!” Truth is, I didn’t either. We watched the whole second hour, me pausing every so often to yell stuff like, “OH MY GOD, THAT WAS JANICE!” and “OMG I SAW KENT!” and “OMG THERE’S LYNN!” and then it was over and I didn’t see anything with me in it. What a total bummer.

Luckily, I went back and watched all the stuff I got to help with in slow motion until I found myself twice. Mr. Pikko declared me insane when he caught me taking pictures of the tv. To help avoid spoiling anyone, I’ll put the photos and insight after today’s review.

This is Baby Girl’s bento that I mentioned last week. Note that I listened to her request and gave her a plain sandwich with no cute things on it. I filled the side with sliced sweet potato and in the other tier, added sliced banana bread and quartered strawberries sprinkled with sugar. In the background, you’ll see the product I’m reviewing, which is GoGo SqueeZ, applesauce in a squeezable container.

I first heard of GoGo Squeez on Twitter, when they asked if I thought their product would fit into a bento box. While it did not fit in the bento box, it did make a wonderful snack to pack on the side.

I asked if they wanted me to do a review and soon after, I received five boxes of GoGo SqueeZ applesauces, one of each type they offer. Each sauce is available on Amazon in packs of 48 for $29.98, which brings the cost of each pouch to about $0.63.

• GoGo Squeez appleapple, 3.2-Oz Pouches
• GoGo SqueeZ applebanana, 3.2-Ounce Pouches (currently out of stock)
• GoGo SqueeZ applecinnamon, 3.2-Oz Pouches
• GoGo SqueeZ applepeach, 3.2-Ounce Pouches
• GoGo SqueeZ applestrawberry, 3.2-Ounce Pouches

Each box contains 4 pouches of applesauce with a little screw top cap. The back states that due to the little yellow cap, the product is not suitable for unsupervised children under 36 months. However, since I have a 4 year-old boy who puts everything from boogers to crayons to G.I. Joe’s helmet in his mouth, you should probably just take the cap away for kids up until around 5 or 6 just to be safe.

Here’s a better look at the containers. As you can see from the front, these pouches contain 100% fruit (with the exception of cinnamon) and no sugar, which is pretty awesome for a healthy snack. Kids can’t always take a whole fruit on the side because then it becomes an issue of how clean it’ll be and if they are able to wash it (or care to).

Each pouch is one serving and must be consumed within 24 hours. They’re kosher certified and meant to be eaten without any utensils, which rocks in my book since I hate washing dishes, especially spoons that have been forgotten in a car for a week.

Here’s a shot of the back. These expire about 5 months from now, so they have a decent shelf life, but still shouldn’t be forgotten in your pantry.

Now that I’ve established that it is good for you, the issue of taste of course has to come into question. I tasted them all myself and Baby Girl tried each one, too. She doesn’t really care for tart things and I love tart things, so I loved the appleapple, applepeach, and applestrawberry. Baby Girl made scrunched up faces at all three, but happily ate the apple banana and applecinnamon pouches. Buddy doesn’t like applesauce, so he tried one and then wouldn’t taste another. Grandma J said they tasted like baby food.

I thought they tasted really good, as far as applesauces go. I don’t usually like applesauce period, but the appleapple was tart and had a wonderful flavor. Out of all of them though, I enjoyed applepeach and applestrawberry the most.

Here’s Baby Girl eating the applebanana. She chose that flavor to take on her field trip, though she brought it home unopened. Turns out she wanted to save it for after school and so I let her eat it in the car. She ate the whole thing and we simply recapped it and threw it away. It was very convenient!

As of this writing, Baby Girl has come to like the appleapple. She’s inhaled one and has asked for another, but has yet to eat her dinner, but I’m sure she’d have eaten all of it if I let her. All in all, I was very happy with the product, and when I have to pack lunches for the kids on a regular basis, I’ll probably buy a couple of packs of applebanana and applecinnamon. I’ve actually eaten all of the tart flavors already because much to my annoyance, there aren’t too many fruits on sale lately and I need my fruit fix.

At $0.63 cents a fruit serving, this mess-free (excluding naughty boys who think it’s AWESOME to squeeze this stuff out all over your coffee table) applesauce makes a great side snack for bento or just home lunch in general. If you can find a 12 pack in your market, give it a try! It probably won’t be as cheap as Amazon though.

On to the LOST stuff…

***SPOILER WARNING***

As I mentioned, I ended up finding myself in the premiere twice. Blink and you’ll miss me. In fact, if you pause you could probably miss me too, haha! Hey, I’ll take it! The flash sideways at the airport doesn’t seem like it’s resolved yet, as we have only seen Kate and Claire leaving.

If you’re wondering how the heck I know that’s me, I just know my face. Plus, I remember walking right behind that lady on the far right. Big thanks to Matt for giving me these screenshots.

This one is great if you want to see the back of my head and my butt. On my right shoulder is the tote bag my best friend gave out as favors at her wedding. That’s my hand, not an ear, by the way.

Woo!! It’s not much, but after thinking I was totally cut out, I’ll take it! I was in the season 6 premiere of Lost!!!! Yaaaay!!

In my excitement over thinking up the LOST spam musubis, I kind of forgot to think about what I’d be making today for the actual premiere. It dawned on me while I roasted on the beach on Saturday and I started thinking on what I could do. It finally came to me yesterday, just after we dropped Buddy off at school.

It’s not my greatest bento ever, since I had no food to put in it and just fried three shrimps in garlic salt, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the premiere. However, it’s still one of the most memorable scenes in all seasons of LOST and therefore had to be done. Spoilers below the cut!!!

I was never really a fan of Charlie. Perhaps I just found his band flashbacks astonishingly boring. Or maybe I just hated the fact that Meriadoc Brandybuck was a scruffy looking heroin addict. The horror!! Hobbits don’t shoot up!! They just don’t!! *sob*

In any case, when Charlie finally bit the dust, I was emotional over it just because of the way they did it. LOST really has a knack for pulling at your heartstrings and this was one of the top ones in my book for sure, right up there with Sawyer jumping from the chopper and Sun crying at Jin’s grave and Desmond turning the key while crying, “Ah luv you, Penny!” or Desmond finally finding Penny’s letter in his book or Desmond and Penny talking on the phone or Desmond and Penny reunited or Desmond…

Oh. Sorry. Got carried away there. Desmond and Penny’s story is just the best there is. The Constant remains my favorite LOST episode.

After I’d wiped away my tears and stopped wondering if you can really write on your wet hand with a wet sharpie while drowning, I realized what a turning point that scene was for the show that season. All this time, you’d been led to think that she was out there, just off shore, waiting for them to be reunited. Then you realize that these people just aren’t who they say and the danger level intensifies. And then you had to wait for freaking MONTHS.

Oooh, chicken skin! Such a great finale!

The hand isn’t as wonderful as I’d hoped, but there’s only so much one can do with brown rice. I cut the letters out freehand this morning. I didn’t even have to do any of them twice! Elite nori cutting aside though, what I’m especially proud of is the carrot. Did you notice it in the first picture?

OH HO HO! Pretty spiffy, no? I cut that freehand with a paring knife! It’s based on the Drive Shaft ring, which I once saw in a box that held a Charlie doll.

I actually cut off the right side point near the ‘S’ by accident and had to cut deeper to help fix it. After that, I boiled the carrot for a bit to help bring out the orange color and keep it from drying out.

I tried to find my LOST extra “uniform” but I think it’s lost (haha) somewhere in the dirty laundry pile. I’m wearing all black and my cuffs are black and white. Don’t worry, if I see myself in a millisecond of a frame, I’ll post here about it tomorrow. Have fun watching the show, everyone!

I’d heard through the LOST extra grapevine that the set of extras I worked with wouldn’t be seen in the first hour, which is what they showed at Sunset on the Beach. However, I did see a bunch of extras in the first hour in scenes that I missed out on due to not carrying my phone. The obvious conclusion is that I SUCK AT LIFE sometimes.

Here’s me on the beach with one of the musubis. I gave one to one of my extra friends Janice. Or is it “friend who was an extra”? “Extra friend” sounds so weird, like I have too many. Anyway, I found out later that she never ate it. She says it was too cool to eat and she’s going to keep it until one day she has a craving for musubi (and food poisoning).

My family, on the other hand, had no problems eating theirs. To them, it was just blue spam musubi that their wacko mommy made. I let Baby Girl and Buddy share one before we left and the two of them had some strange shenanigans going on. I heard her yelling, “NOW IT ONLY SAYS LOS!!!” Then the two of them erupted in toddler snort laughing.

Okay then.

Here’s my brother holding one. I owe this guy big time for camping a spot for us from 2 pm. He made me take this picture after the really embarrassing one I took of him.

I love him, but I also can’t resist posting hilarious pictures of him.

This would have been epic if I’d gotten one of the kids to make a “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” face on the side.

This is a shot from the beach right behind the area they showed the premiere. It had been raining all day and the previous night, so the sky actually cleared up really nicely. I was so freaked out that we were going to be watching in the rain again.

Please note that all of these photos were taken by me and should not be used without my permission or without giving credit to Crystal Watanabe. Photos were taken with a Sigma 70-300mm Macro Motorized Telephoto Zoom Lens.

This is from the sidewalk, with one of the signs hanging between two coconut trees. The tents to the left were food vendors and then further down was a tent where reps from ABC were giving out surveys they wanted us to fill out for a free t-shirt after the episode. The t-shirt ended up being an all white shirt with the LOST letters from the ending of Season 5 after Juliet does her thing. Underneath, it says “The Final Season”. Pretty cool!

This is the front area for VIP seating. The stars actually came from behind and to the left and then walked around to the far side of the screen.

The kids were playing on the beach while we waited and I wrote in the sand with my feet. I’m not so good at it and need practice. Or smaller toes.

We went back to sit down and I got hungry and started to eat a musubi. OM NOM NOM!

I was trying to take Baby Girl to the bathroom when the first limo pulled up. Turns out it held Michael Emerson and his wife, Carrie Preston, who True Blood fans know as Arlene.

Me and Baby Girl went to the bathroom, but it was so stink she refused to go in. We headed back to the walk-in area. Here he’s joking about retiring and becoming his wife’s personal assistant. I thought they looked really cute in the almost matching attire.

I just had to take a photo of this. We’d been passing this by a couple of times and I figured that they couldn’t possibly be arriving soon since they hadn’t even laid out the red carpet on top of this stuff. Turns out, they didn’t have one. This is the “red carpet” when you have a premiere on the beach. LOL!

We kept hearing screams, but no one materialized for a long time. Finally, Daniel Dae Kim got closer and we all found out he’d been signing autographs and taking pictures for like 15 minutes going down the line. If I’d just thought to bring paper and stood a little further up… Grr!

I have to admit, he’s got really nice hair!

Naveen Andrews came next. There were two blonde girls on the side of me with wild yellow bushes on their heads and I was going crazy because I kept getting yellow fuzz on the side of my pictures. *angry* I cropped it out.

Nestor Carbonell and Jeff Fahey were right behind him. Some guy in the back yelled, “WHY DON’T YOU AGE?!” That was awesome!

I know someone who has a big crush on Richard, so here’s a good picture of him.

Jorge Garcia came by next. Someone gave him a lei and it got stuck on his ponytail, which was pretty cute. Some lady kept giving her baby to the stars and he kept making sad faces like, “Why does Mommy keep giving me to these strange men?! I don’t want to go to the island!”

The really strange part was he kind of looked like Aaron, but you know that kid is like 2 or 3 by now, so this wasn’t him.

I was shocked to see that Harold Perrineau had come, but was thrilled as well. My very first website was dedicated to Romeo+Juliet, so seeing Mercutio there in front of me was surreal. In another universe where I have balls the size of Texas, I’d have yelled, “A PLAGUE O BOTH YOUR HOUSES!!!!!”

This is the director, Jack Bender, doing some weird thing with his tongue. I had two pictures of him and he was doing this in both of them. I got to watch him work while I was an extra, so that’s why I know who he is. Otherwise, I’d have totally been like, “Who’s he?”

Next came Carlton Cuse. Sorry this one is blurry. I didn’t see Damon Lindeloff.

Henry Ian Cusick came by after. Hoo hoo hoo! Hands down one of my favorite hotties from the show.

He’s signing autographs here. They took a ton of pics with people, so jealous! Holding a bigass Nikon is not the best idea if you want to do this and I couldn’t find my point and shoot. I was standing in the wrong place anyway, though. Bah!

Sadly, I didn’t get anything good of Evangeline Lily, Terry O’Quinn, Matthew Fox, or Josh Holloway. They began ushering them away to the press tent after the stars started taking too long to make it down the way. Damned autograph hogs!!

Big thanks go out to my daughter, for patiently playing in the sand at my feet for the first half an hour, then for not-so-patiently playing in the sand at my feet for the next half hour. She’s a trooper for sure. And I have no concept of what “five more minutes” is.

Here’s the whole cast on stage.

Here’s the screen just after the opening. They showed previews for FlashForward and V, then played this video:

It was a hilarious and informative recap, which will be awesome for those of you that haven’t seen LOST or don’t remember most of last season. After that, there was “Previously on LOST…” and then it started. I should also note that the emotional scene from last season’s ending was played FOUR times. Holy overkill. I don’t think I’ll be crying over that again anytime soon. Instead I’ll be whacking my tv with a rock saying, “Come on, you son of a bitch, just get on with the premiere already!”

Buddy and Baby Girl were surprisingly good. Here he is eating a musubi. I’d brought an arsenal with me. A bag of pretzel sticks, marshmallows, Ritz crackers, granola bars, Hawaiian Sun juice cans, water, etc., all in the name of kid silence. It worked really well. The first “Moooom, I wanna go hooome already…” came only 5 minutes before the show ended. Whew!!

The first hour ended right where anything I helped with was about to start, so I don’t know if I’m in it yet. You all will find out before me, which is kind of a sore spot. I’ll take a picture of the shirt I wore so you can try to find me.

If you want to see the full set of my LOST Sunset on the Beach Premiere photos, please go to my Flickr photostream.

I’ve been talking about this mysterious LOST themed food I wanted to do for a couple weeks now and despite my intentions to test the idea out ahead of time, I just never got my lazy ass to do it until last night. However, I am very happy to report that I’ve successfully done what I set out to do with almost no problems at all.

Can you guess what it is? Oh, wait. This post is called How to Make a LOST Spam Musubi. Ha ha! Well then, let’s get to how you go about making such a marvelous thing.

I chose spam musubi for obvious reasons. Having been born and raised in Hawaii, where LOST is filmed, I just can’t help myself. We grow up eating SPAM here. It’s just part of who we are. And since I’m a known LOST food fanatic, I figured this was the perfect food to celebrate the premiere of Season 6 at Sunset on the Beach.

I started off by printing out a sheet of LOST logos. I tested another sheet with sizes and settled on 2.25″, then printed one with tons of logos. Then I had to begin cutting. I should note that it was very fitting that I found “The Incident” on my TiVo last night. It made the perfect viewing material for this.

I had to use my Fiskars Micro-Tip Scissors for this, as precision matters. If you attempt this with a regular scissors, I am not responsible for any subsequent hair loss.

I cut out a logo and placed it in the middle of a full nori sheet folded in half. It’s better to cut thicker, so doubling up really helps to keep you from suddenly ripping off an important piece while doing something like say, moving.

UPDATE: I felt I should mention that you should leave your nori sheets out for a while so that they get a bit “stale”. This will help a lot when you need to fold the sheets to start your cuts into each letter, otherwise they’ll probably snap when you fold.

This was my first one, which I screwed up by forgetting that I wanted the outside, not the letters. I messed up the ‘S’, which upset me, but I kept going.

Here’s the stack of nori when I was done. After I finished each sheet, I cut along the crease to make the two sheets. I ended up cutting 6 sheets for a total of 12 LOST templates.

This morning I began cooking the SPAM. First, you slice it up. Usually you can get 10 slices, but I went a little thicker knowing that I didn’t have 10 quality sheets to work with and ended up with 9. You should also begin cooking your rice. If you have an aversion to food coloring, then just use white rice. I wanted to go for the teal logo though, so I added 4 drops each of green and blue food coloring to the water before I cooked the rice. I cooked 3 cups.

Put the slices in a pot, then pour in a cup of sugar. I know, WHOA, lots of sugar, but don’t worry, it’s just to cover the slices. You can always use 1/2 a cup and cook this in a pan instead.

Next goes in 1 cup of soy sauce, I recommend light soy sauce, like Aloha Shoyu.

Next goes in 1 cup of mirin. I actually don’t like it too sweet and I don’t like to use too much mirin, so I used 1/2 cup of mirin mixed with 1/2 cup of water. If you don’t have mirin, then just use all water. Basically, you’re using a 1-1-1 ratio of these three ingredients. Reduce as needed.

Cover and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes. Uncover and lower the heat, then let it simmer for about 10 more minutes. It should be a nice dark color.

Next, it was time to assemble the musubi. I laid a piece of saran wrap down on my cutting board, which is extremely important for getting the nori to stay in place with the rice. It’s also VITAL that you put the sheet down UPSIDE DOWN. We don’t want TSOL musubis, do we?

Using a Spam Musubi Mold (mine is a non-stick one, so you should dip it in water to help it not stick), place the outer frame on top of the letters.

Add a thin layer of teal rice on the bottom.

Next, sprinkle furikake. It’s optional, but if you do it, I recommend Aji Nori or Nori Komi. Don’t try anything else. This is what works with spam musubis.

Place a slice of SPAM on top, then add more furikake.

Add more rice. Position your fiery lamp of doom in the wrong spot to get crappy lighting.

Put the masher thing on top and press down to sandwich everything together. Still holding it down, pull the frame up and remove it.

This is where you should be at. I dip the press in water to make it come off easy. You should too.

Fold the sides up, sealing the nori down with water. Now, let’s turn this puppy over and see what we have.

AWWWW YEAH!!!! When I turned it over, it actually had a full ‘O’, as I had the little strips for the middle of it on a paper towel on the side. I simply added it to the middle of the ‘O’ and that was that. I had been worried that the nori would curl all over, but the saran wrap worked beautifully for that. Afterward, just wrap the musubi up and you’re done!

I had the biggest grin on my face after I made the first one and am just tickled at how they all came out. We’ll be heading out soon to hopefully join my brother at a spot he’s camping. I’ll be sure to let you all know if I see myself on screen!

If you’re interested in more LOST food, see my Season 5 LOST bentos and follow me on Twitter for more bentos to come for the exciting final season of LOST.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen a strange tweet from me today.

“There was kamaboko in the toilet this morning…”

Since I have a four year-old boy who is absolutely crazy about kamaboko living in my house, it doesn’t take much deduction to know who did it. I’d bought a block to use in bento and with the week over, I turned the container of slices over to him. I told him not to eat it all, but what the hell do mothers know about a boy’s capacity for sliced fishcake? Apparently he got sick of the last slice and tossed that puppy in just for fun.

Saints fans had something to cheer about yesterday, but today… not so much.

Hey, I have to be fair, right? I think the face mask for the Colts is gray, but there’s only so much magic I can do and I had no gray soy paper. I had intended to give this to Mr. Pikko, but he thought the green hana ebi smelled funky and declined. It did make really great astroturf though, better than my scrambled egg astroturf!

Blue is always a difficult color to do, so I had to think over the course of two days to figure this one out. What I ended up doing was taking a thin slice of kamaboko and with a printout over it, I cut it out with scissors. After that was done, I needed to color it. Figuring I needed dark blue, I just dripped pure blue food coloring on top. This did not go well, as the kamaboko looked black. I had to soak it in water for like half an hour for it to look blue.

The helmet is made out of an egg white sheet. Amazingly enough, I only had to make one. I cut it out with kitchen shears as well. The face mask was easier this time around as I used my stale nori sheets. I found this to be MUCH easier than crispy nori that flakes all over the place. Cutting crispy nori with scissors is known to cause aneurysms, so watch out.

I colored the edge of the egg with blue food coloring mixed with a drop of black. Adding a whole drop of black was a bad idea, as I had to add like six drops of blue to get it this color. I painted it on with the point of a toothpick. The COLTS letters are cut out of kamaboko. In the other container, I have slices of chicken katsu.

So now that I’ve done both, we need to find out which one you guys think is better!

LOST tomorrow!!! I’ll be down there at Sunset on the Beach, hopefully with a good spot. If my little food project doesn’t go well, then I guess I’ll have to make do with buying food down there. I’ll find out whether it works tonight. Hope you all have a great Superbowl Sunday!

Update: News to me, Superbowl Sunday is on February 7. LOL! Shows how out of touch with pro football I am. Have a great Superbowl Sunday next next week!