Friday... a productive day

Today was productive....
I got up and made this bento or lunch box(see the cat on the top left w/ green eyes!) for Ryu.

You should see some of the creative and artistic bentos people make I'll have to add the links later.

It's rice w/ oshinko and then chicken fried rice in the top container. The lower container has curry salmon karroke, tofu, squid and veggies, and a type of gobo salad.

For dinner it was somen....which is supposedly an easy dinner to make....but when you have an unhappy 2 year old at your side and also trying to hurry it is not.

Plus Ryu said it was kind of weird (but nice) to serve it with all the toppings.

I thought plain somen wouldn't be satisfying enough though and found a recipe from About.com Japanese Recipe per day blog that I used for ideas.
I boiled the shitake in mirin, shoyu and dashi. I flash boiled the okra. I made an egg crepe and cut thin slices of carrotts into flowers..... Sliced shiso leaves, made the tsuyu which I thought was too salty but Ryu liked it.

I forgot the chikuwa and cheese so made a quick dash w/ Taka in stroller to the corner store....they have a good selection of cheese there.

Why is cheese so expensive in Tokyo?! and.....wala dinner....my 9 month belly is intruding into the 2nd picture :)

Also after hearing about the birth of Eric's baby girl I got a tiny little boost of nesting energy and went through the baby clothes and organized them by size....all the newborn things ready and bagged and labeled the rest into 3mo 6mo 9mo and 18mo and older bags and put them into the closet. Next I need to organize the blankets and other accessories.