Samstag, 13. August 2011

Summer Christmas!

Today I recieved my "Wichtelpaket" from Nekobento. My Secret Santa was Pasa (who was in turn after me with the J-Stuff Swap  *g*).


 The tension is rising...

What was in?

- 2 rice bowls (GREEN and red)
- Almond Pocky
- Chocolate cookies
- Anko mochi
- Honey (for good health:))
- Organic Chocolate
- Charcoal
- Pencils
- Maneki Neko cell phone straps
- Makurokurosuke (self made, yeah!)
- lots of candy (ginger, mango, daifuku)
- heart shaped food picks
- geisha postcard (loooove!)

Overview:

@ Pasa: Vielen lieben Dank! Du hast meinen Geschmack echt gut getroffen. und dann sooo viel, ich dachte es nimmt kein Ende beim Auspacken...viele tolle Kleinigkeiten mit Liebe  zusammen gestellt, das hat man echt gemerkt. Du hast meinen Samsatg gerettet (hab heute Nachtdienst >_<; ). Jetzt kann nix mehr schief gehen und die Gesundheit ist auch gerettet (sehr aufmerksam von dir!). 'happyhappydesu*

Daaaaaaanke!

Herzlichen Dank auch an Ekolabine und Satsuki die die ganze Aktion so toll gemanaged haben!


Special thanks to Ekolabine and Satsuki who were so nice to make this round of Secret Santa game possible!

Cupcake Friday: Working with Leftovers

It´s Friday* again and BF gets some sweets for his short work day (because lunch is skipped at his office). I had some leftover mini apricots I bought for the bento stock that weren´t looking so nice anymore. Two weeks ago, I bought this book and found the right recipe in it for my problem: "Peach-cream-cupcakes".

*Actually it´s Cupcakerday now...forgot to upload it yesterday...


 I also had the peach-passionfruit-curd in the fridge for the frosting with the best before date nearly expired...this kind of curd is great because it comes with chocolate chips in the lid that you can stir in before eating: Perfect for cupcake decoration! I used two cups of them to get 200g curd (and eated what was left...) and the choco chips for the topping. I also blended in some fresh apricots with the Thermomix to get a nicer color.

Dienstag, 9. August 2011

If summer won´t come...

..and there is no need for a bikini shape, you should make cupcakes!

Freitag, 5. August 2011

Sommerwichteln

Present for my J-stuff swap victim (Kätzchen) on Nekobento!


I deceided to trade the box, even if it outdraws the price limit because i never used it. It bought it on J-list because i thought i needed a cute box when i started bentoing. But actually i prefer my classy boxes and i don´t like the edges of the box which made it hard to pack. So maybe someone else is happy about having it instead even if it isn´t new (actually i have never eaten out of it because i aborted the first try packing ist and used another box instead because of the mentioned edges...). I´m glad to have the chance to make a kitty-lover happy;)

Montag, 1. August 2011

Wanderpaket!

Auf Nekobento wandern wieder die Pakete. Pasa und Marichan haben die Pakete am 15. Juni mit jeweils acht Dingen oder kleinen Päckchen im Wert von je 2-4€ gestartet. Über 10 Stationen pro Gruppe geht es jetzt wieder zurück zu den Startern.

Meine Katze fands auch spannend:


So, nun war es bei mir und ist jetzt auf dem Weg zu Pasa die das erste Paket gestartet hat. Ein großes Lob und "Danke" dafür an dieser Stelle. Hab dir noch was "privates" reingelegt zum Umzug und für meine Extrawurst  (Jaja, ich weiß Regelverstoß *selbstauffingerhau*), hoffe du freust dich!

Freitag, 22. Juli 2011

Gewinnspiel auf Erdbeerkirsch!

Auf Kirschkuchen findet derzeit ein Gewinnspiel statt!


Es gibt tolle Preise zu gewinnen und auch ansonsten lohnt sich ein Besuch auf diesem tollen Blog immer wieder!

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Please visit Kirschkuchen for a great lottery (Only if you´re from Germany, Austria or Switzerland or know someone who the pakage can be sent to!) and great japan, bento and food articles!

Mittwoch, 20. Juli 2011

A spaceshuttle landed in my kitchen

Some months ago, my mother was invited to a Vorwerk party. She got home with something that i wanted to have since i first heard of it: The Thermomix. When we were invited for dinner she made delicious fresh strawberry icecream in about 1 minute. My already very high level of jelousness went trough the top...but actually I still bothered about the price of it as well, that always kept me from buying one myself.

But Vorwerk offers an option with which a new born TM owner can get additional discount: Throw a party and invite the representant and help to sell her another TM to the guests. So my mother did, but the bargain was actually fail for her: As loving mothers are she bought the one needed for the discount for me as a birthday present...maybe she won the lottery and didn´t tell me...

I couldn´t believe it...when i was searching the web for recipes and how-to´s from time to time someone always would tell me: "Well you can do it that way...but if you want it easy and can afford it use a TM for it!". First i was very sceptical. There is no food processor that can do every task and can cook the processed food at the same time...well i was wrong. The more i read about it my interest grew and now i became a lucky TM owner over night.


Montag, 18. Juli 2011

Prague

On May 23th to 27th BF and I went to Prague.

Monday May 23th:

We went to Düsseldorf International Airport early in the morning by car. We had made a parking reservation there beforehand so we could just use our credit card as parking ticket. Unfortunately the parking area was quite a bit away from the departure terminal so we had to walk a little. Next time I know that high heels are definitely not an option for completing my travel outfit.

Dead AND Alive

I am currently trying to revive this blog...

Check list for today:

- Hack my own Flikr account because i forgot my password...
- Upload recent bento pics
- Make blogger finally speak to my photostream again for an updated diashow (this is killing me right now...)
- Using the phototream option as a placeholder as long as the above doesn´t work
- Trying to make it look less shitty

Soon:

- Travel report for prague
- Cologne Zoo and Shopping in Düsseldorf
- More bento and cooking stuff
- Journal stuff for my stalkers...

Montag, 31. Januar 2011

I know what you did last week in your kitchen!

Again, i have to admit that work is much more stressful then I though at the beginning of the year. So here is a little backlog of dishes that came out of my kitchen in the last few weeks:

 Vanilla-Apple-Custardcream-Cake

150g butter
200g sugar
5 eggs
250g cake flour
1 ready made sponge cake in the size of your springform pan
2 spoons apricot jam
500ml milk
400ml cream
1 pinch of salt
80g vanilla pudding powder
4 sour apples
50g shredded almonds for decoration

Knead butter, 100g sugar, 1 egg, and the cake flower to make a firm dough. Wrap into kitchen foil and let it sit in the refridgerator for 60 minutes.

Grease your springform pan and fit the sponge cake into it (take it out again afterwards, we need it a steap later)

Coast the dough really flat an fit ist in the pan, dont forget to coat the rim, too. spread the apricot jam on the dough and put the spongecake onto ist.

Mix milk, cream and salt. Cook half of the mixtured with the remaining sugar. The other half has to be mixed with the vanilla pudding powder. Add it to the milk-sugar mixured when it´s boiling. keep stirring until the mixture starts to get firm. Let it cool and add the remaining eggs carefully

Heat the oven (180°C). Peel and cut the apples into halves and put them on the sponge cake. Pour the cream over the cake and bake it for 60 minutes. Let it cool a little and gently lift it out of the pan. Decoration time with almonds! Bon appetit

Freitag, 21. Januar 2011

New box again...help me I´m addicted!

A few weeks ago I was shopping for japanese groceries at Ja-Mart. i couldn´t resist to browse trough their Ourdoor and Bento section. And there it was: A cute little box with butterflies (I already had the matching foldable fork in red). Unable to convice myself that I already own thousands of bento-boxes, it ended up in my shopping cart ;)


It is pretty small for my on-shift appetite (230 and 160ml said the sticker on the box but I really doubt it...) but I managed to stuff in a lot of delicious things, though:


Upper tier: broccoli, meatballs, grapes, risotto, flower made of carrots and snap peas
Lower tier: more broccoli and carrots, cauliflower, gyoza and dip
(Note: this bento is pretty much the same then the one in my previous post because I did it a day later and still had so much leftovers. Sorry for the late update *g*)

Freitag, 7. Januar 2011

Happy New Year, Happy New Bento!

I´m back. Finally!

A late Happy New Year to everyone (is there anyone out there anymore?). I almost forgot about my blog, but I wanted to go back to bentoing in 2011. I hope I can post some new pictures every week. I will try to bring a bento to every late shift now... (bento in the morning shift never really worked, most time I had to take it home again and eated it for lunch)

The year started slower on work than usual. Maybe some things will  finally change to the better now. It really seems to get less stressy and there is some new staff in the hospital to help us. I appreciate doing "my" work again. The last few months of the last year were horrible because we had to do too much of the doctors´ work for them. But enough about work now, let get started with bento again!

I bought a new cute kitty box and matching resuable chopsticks before christmas to help me keeping my new year´s bento resolution. It has a total capacity of 500ml.



Here is my box for tomorrow:


Upper tier: Meatballs, gyoza, some grapes, gyoza dip in the small box, mini chocolate
Lower tier: Veggie-risotto with some carrot blossoms

Donnerstag, 29. Juli 2010

Santa´s Little Helper-Game:Summer Edition™

These days we have another little gear swap game on Nekobento.

Due to my summer vacation is scheduled next week I was able to send and recieve mine some days sooner then most of the paticipants.

(It´s strange, I think my blog transformed from a bentoblog to a pakageblog ;))

So here it is:


Contents:

A japanese reciepe book
Geisha chopsticks
Green Tea noodles
Sakura Pocky
Furikake
Some japanese candies
Panda chocolate cookies
Peach chewing gum
Some tiny little floral bowls

Thanks sooooo much. I´m so happy now. I even stopped playing StarCraft for opening and taking pictures of it. BF and I nomed the sweets away while playing another round ;)

Donnerstag, 8. Juli 2010

Happy mail is happy!

I recieved my strawberry-fukubukuro from Neko-chan:


What was in?


The natural lunchbox with matching bag, belts and chopsticks, some tiny japanese chocolates, egg formers and sausage-cutter in penguin shape (fun fact: I had ordered the same one for my victim in our Santa´s Little Helper-Game:Summer Edition™)

I´m happy I could resist buying this box for so far, because I always wanted to buy one of these...


*bigbighappydance*

Mittwoch, 7. Juli 2010

Lucky me: 3rd price in Bento-competition!

I feel so happy because the Nekobento- Competition is finally over. I never thought that there was a chance for me because there were so many great other entries. The voting was totally anonymous and we weren´t alloud to post pictures of our bentos somewhere else. In the first round there where over 60 participating bentoers. But after we entered the second round with only 12 competitioners left I was very sure which bento came from which fellow bentoer ;)

Congratulation to Token (1st) and Murasaki (2nd), too! And big thanks to all voters and critiques!

But finally, here is the bento I entered with:

Left: puff pastries filled with veggies in soy sauce, apple bunnies, grape and banana-skewers, meatballs, tomatoes, veggie and shrimp-tempura, cucumber slices, chinese noodles underneath


Right: Chicken karaage with tonkatsu sauce in the penguin, daigaku imo with sesame, more tomatoes, green asparagus, rice and katsudon


There will be pictures of the winner´s gifts, that were sponsored by Neko-chan, when the delivery-boy finally rings my doorbell (I´m a little bit afraid because the pakage was shipped with Hermes, I do not like those unreliable guys, really).

Donnerstag, 10. Juni 2010

It´s there!

Last week a member of Nekobento started a selling-of from the things she brought from Japan but realized at home that she bought too much. On her list was a black and white yukata (summer kimono) from Hayashi kimono. I couldn´t resist...It was soo hard for me to wait for the postman to arrive. One hour ago finally the door bell rang and I knew that I had to try it on immediately:

Photo isn´t so great but BF is still at work :(

I´m so happy that I fitted so well because I am surely the opposite of a japanese women´s figure.I think it looks good, but I have to improve my kitsuke-skills. So long I will not show you how this looks from behind, because the hanhaba obi is a mess and the collar doesn´t stand up like it should.

It took some time to realize that there was an additional strap to fix the yukata while tying the obi which was sewed in the right sleeve! There was also a yellow-colored hanhaba obi, but I liked the red one I purchased last year  on a japanese festival better (mostly because it´s wider, so that the bust-line doesn´t look too silly)
In the pakage were some little kompeito-sweets and a totally cute kanzashi-hairband (you can see it in the picture, too:) Thanks a lot you-know-who-you-are!

Mittwoch, 9. Juni 2010

Anpan and BF´s first bento

Today I started to enjoy my vacations my way. I stayed most time of the day in the kitchen and tried some new reciepes (whem I have to work Ì am too lazy to try new things that may be failures). This is mostly because BF finally accepted my offer of making bento for us both and I had to have something eatable to put into a hungry man´s lunchbox.

I started with a nice  bowl of  "Schnitzel"-chillicream-hotpot with noodles. I´m so glad that BF decided to have a bento for lunch at work yesterday. This way I am able to kill the massive leftovers from my cooking-spree. After that was done I proceeded to cook at pot of "Gulasch".
That was exausting because the kitchen was so foggy ans warm while I was roasting the beef and cutting tons of onions and bell pepper. After 4h at very low heat it was finally done.

To keep myelf busy while waiting for the gulasch I finally tried to make some anpan. I always didn´t dare to bake some of these because I was scared that I wouldn´t like them. But when BF and I visited Düsseldorf we had the chance to grab some of the fluffy goodness at Bakery Taka. I liked the cream that was inside with the anko. I had a recipe from here but added 50ml of whipped cream (not sugared) to the filling. They came out petty good and BF liked them. Next time I will also add some pudding-powder to the filling to get it more firm and to prevent it from flowing out:


And here is BF´s first bento:


Upper tier: "Schnitzel"-chillicream-hotpot with noodles and a flower made from carrot and green onion
Lower tier: Lindt nougat-praline, grapes, tomatoes and the last anpan (there was also a tiny bag of jelly-fruits)

Freitag, 28. Mai 2010

Happy Birthday

I´m back again! Last wednesday BF and me visited Düsseldorf, the german city with the largest japanese population outside of Japan. We wanted to go tomorrow first because it is Japan Day then which is celebrated anualy. But BF is in the middle of his exam so we decided to go there when it is less crowded and stressy.  I spend so much money that I can´t remenber the exact amount ;) So here is the booty (kitteh approved):

 
I like the new tableware most, even if i almost cried when I saw the price-tag... Actually I wanted to buy more things like cooking ingredients. But we ended up with lots of japanese candy, chocolates and snacks that we usually can´t find outside the web for a reasonable price. We brought also concentrated Calpico-Drink, that´s so handy and tastes awesome! And I am glad that I finally found a tamagoyaki-pan ( No ugly-shaped eggrolls anymore, yay!) at DaeYang (15€).

Later we went to Bakery Taka for some fresh choco-cornets, anpan and takoyakipan (sic!). That was so delicious. We wanted to go to dinner in a japanese restaurant, too, but it was literally raining cats and dogs and we didn´t wanted to wait two hours outside until the restaurant opened.

Tomorrow we will eat out at Tokyo-Acacia in Münster again because today is my birthday (and we are both too lazy to go today :)). Maybe I find some time to tell you what´s new on the menue there!

P.S. I´m so nervous about the Nekobento- Bento-Challenge (pics will follow when the challenge is over ;))

Freitag, 19. Februar 2010

Still alive...

I just wanted to let you know, that i´m still here. I stopped bentoing because of the circumstances I have to work in now. It´s very stressy at work so we can´t have a proper lunch break every day. So I think bentoing is too time-consuming when most times you have to take all your food back home or, in the worst case, throw everything away in the end . I hope to start again, when our chief of staff finally realizes that we need more nurses here...

Another aspect is that I feel so sleepy after work that I don´t want to spent all of the little time left for me and the family in the supermarket and in the kitchen...perhaps i will feel more encoured about that when the weather starts to get nicer again and the day will seem a little longer then.

I hope you will visit my site again, when there is some time for me to come back ;)

Freitag, 15. Januar 2010

Tagged!

I recieved this one from Lil´chan from Lilys kleiner Bentoservice, but now I have to work for it! Thank you so much!



"Copy the award image into a post ; List 10 things that make you happy ; Tag 10 bloggers who brighten your day ; Put in a link to their blog ; Notify the award receivers ; Recipients should link back to the sender's blog."

So here are the facts:

1. Sleeping (as long as my back doesn´t start to hurt^^)
2. Reading a good book
3. Relaxing in my bath tub
4. Cooking and bentoing
5. Baking
6. Shopping (i´m addicted to amazon.com)
7. Doing funny things with my boyfriend
8. Video Games
9. Chocolate
10. My cat

I actually start to get problems in tagging new people because almost everyone I know has already recieved this one or is tagged by another person :(

OK...let´s try: Backwahn, Feisty Bento, tatabonita. Judy, LunchbucketBento, Pigs do fly, Playing with my food...uhm..thats all i can tag ;)

Update: I recieved another award from LiaChen of Bentolicious. Thank you so much!