"...no dead end in sight..."

photo dump!

So I went to Petsmar today and got Rudie some more food so she will quit whining about having only crumbles to eat in her dish because she is so picky she will only eat pieces of food if she can bite them in half and spit half back into her dish. I found a fancypants electronic watering dish on sale with my discount card-type thing, grabbed another huge toddler-sized bag of foo foo organic cat food, and as I was walking around trying to avoid the Coppell Humane Society's adorable animals for adoption (especially the big lug of a chocky Lab mix who saw me coming and was all happy, like, HEY WILL YOU BE MY MOM PLZ I LOVE YOU SO MUCH ALREADY and I had such a horrid rush of wanting to adopt this guy that I had to make a 90 degree turn down another aisle) I found this.

Meet Duckie.

Duckie is filled with catnip.

Rudie really, really likes catnip, come to find out. 

Thus, Rudie really really likes her new Duckie.

Poor Duckie has already been thoroughly groomed, gnawed on, rolled around on the carpet, and drooled all over. He is seriously damp and spiky-fluffed like a dog toy in the less than twelve hours she's had him.

I consider that a success?

Also this week we've had creepy Silent Hill-esque marine layer-looking fog one morning.

This week's bento is going to be seafoody. I've got tuna salad and fish sticks. Plus soy!sesame seed rice, plus miscellaneous fruit. I couldn't find any cheap fruit other than some oranges (tangelos? wtf is a tangelo) so I bought a couple of bags of frozen strawberries and peaches and figure they'll thaw nicely in the fridge at work. OH and left my bento box in my car for about four days with half a chicken sandwich in there. It's going to be so, so gross cleaning it out tonight. I might post photos of the bento tomorrow, if I have time.

That's all I've got so far. Time to work on schoolwork~

today's bento and weekend foods

 
Today's bento is (clockwise, from top left): dried apricots; two pb & naner sammiches; baby carrots; blueberries; and a strawberry mochi.

(My lunch was rather orange today, btw.)

 The next layer (from left): leftover jambalaya from Saturday; pecan-crusted fish from Thursday night. (I am rather skeptical about the fish.)

OH AND ALSO BEFORE I FORGET:
MOCHI. The most fun weekend project probably EVAR.

 
First, you start off with the elusive rice flour. This brand worked well and I think given the amount of mochi I made for just two people I should have halved the recipe (found here).

 
I only used two cake pans, not three (I only own two...who makes three-tier cakes? o.o ...although would I complain? probably not, because I loves me some cake), and when the mochi came out and I'd let it cool down for an hour, I really wished I'd cut the recipe by 25% and just used one cake pan. The more you can fill up the pan, the less likely you are that the mochi blocks will dry out.

 
This is the mochi block after the top layer of foil is removed. I probably should have mixed it a little better - the brown spot at the top is burnt sugar, I think.

  
Fresh blueberries and strawberries! (There would have been more but I went on a blueberry rampage Sunday morning and ate probably 3/4 of the entire container)

So then you get...:

 
MOCHI. 

Dusted with potato starch, not powdered sugar, as potato starch keeps 'em from buddying up and becoming one big gigantic sticky mochi. I had to cut the strawberries into fourths and it turned into a golf ball-sized ones, but other than that individual blueberries made for great bite-size mochi.

That's all I've got! OH WAIT NO ONE MORE.

I also made banananana bread this weekend :D

today's bento!

Today's bento is (clockwise, from top left): tiny fish sammich with elephant; grape tomatoes; strawberry fruit and grain bar; pepper jack cheese stick bites; tiny fish sammich with bunny.

The next layer (from top): tri-color rotini with pasta sauce and shredded white cheese; half a banana and some strawberries. Delicious!!

All packed away! The layer in the middle is the ice pack and a paper towel to absorb some of the condensation so my little bebeh sammiches aren't squishy.