Favorite foods at hand, bento storing, homemade butter

Dear Yoplait,
I love you very much! Will you stay in my fridge forever?




















favorite flavor: Whips! Chocolate Mousse Style


Haw Flakes are the bomb.
















GOOD (and cheap) curry. I bought it on sale and my brother and I secretly eat it when our parents are out :x And if the box behind the curry roux? That's the "ichigo dessert" that I also bought on sale. Promise me that you'll stay the hell away from it; flavor=ok, preparation= convenient, aesthetics=questionable. That stuff was NOTHING close to the bright pink in the picture. I would've been a lot happier if it made more since it's regularly priced at around $2 plus it's just a pouch of jelly that you mix with milk.
















How I store my bento collection:















The blue lunch bag is now used to hold my fake lacquered sakura bento, my oshibori, green baran(plastic divider) that's kinda visible on the netting, candy thermometer, suribachi, and Japan Home Center bento.
Outside of bag: (top right, down) 6 clear boxes used for dividing up snacks and one of them containing sakura denbu, 3 jars of furikake (bonito, beefsteak plant, and salmon), plastic cup holding 3 sets of mini chopsticks with one いただきます chopstick missing and a mini grater.
2nd row; blue Japan Home Center kinchaku, blue Feel at Ease bento, green collapsible Putifresh bento, green tight Putifresh bento, Totoro bento still unused(ilu P&K) , mini Comment vas tu? bento.
3rd row; 5 different rice molds, V-Color forkchopstickspoon case, 2 i.kotoba blue and pink bento.
random: packaged mochi for shabu-shabu/okonomiyaki/etc, dashi soup stock set (wakame, bonito flakes, dashi kelp), nori (upper shelf), tempura batter mix.
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Homemade Butter: Fill a small glass jar half way with heavy cream and add a pinch of salt. Shake for about 20 minutes or so until butter lumps form. The rest of the liquid left behind is buttermilk, which can be used in other recipes. Place butter lumps on a seive/ collander to let drip excess whey. You can spoon the butter into a mold or a small bowl covered in plastic wrap, then cover and refrigerate to allow the butter to solidify.
recipe from Oishii Eats
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picture: butter made yesterday and cheap ready-to-bake buttermilk biscuits from C-Town. Cheap food; 99 cent carton of cream + 3 tubes for $1.39 (30 biscuits)= biscuits that feed a crowd with pretty good health stats (if butter is substituted) and decent taste.
I still have some shiro-an (white bean paste) left over from making dorayaki and stuffed a small ball of the paste into a biscuit. D: I really need sugar.

Banzai Brighton and moar goodies

Sad news; the Banzai 99 cent plus in Brighton Beach seems to be closing and most of their *cheap* stuff is getting sold out. Some of the items there are more discounted than usual so you should go visit! But among the coughdustcollectingcough items there, I found an awesome suribachi! (Traditional Japanese mortar) It was only $.99 and the sides are a bit lower compared to the traditional suribachi. Sadly, it didn't come with a surikogi (pestle). I went to MUJI last month and saw separately sold suribachi and surikogi for about $9 each and that's just a rip-off. I went to Sunrise Mart last friday and found a suribachi for $6 and was planning to buy it. But I'm happy with the one I have now, and will buy the cleaning brush from Pearl River Mart in SoHo; $1. Yes... I'm such a money-minded loser.
















On Christmas, my mum told me to bake something and we were kinda short on butter. I dug in my bookmarks and found a recipe from Lovescool for Green Tea Sweets. With my new gingerbread man cookie cutter, I cut out two gingerbread man-shaped cookies and with the rest of the cookie dough, made leaf-shaped cookies. Oddly, I didn't think my family would like it much, but I got a lot of praise and the kiddies were running around the house with cookies in their mouths. YAY. I would've loved to make gingerbread cookies, but the spices are damn pricey and I'm too lazy to buy molasses, ground ginger, and all that other stuff. Maybe next year, along with a gingerbread house. Thank god for the $4 matcha bags at Sunrise Mart.















On Friday, I finally bought a candy thermometer from that shop in Little Italy to make marshmallows. That's right. MARSHMALLOWS. Those sweet, white lumps of airy goodness made its way into my home and I plan to never buy the Jet-Puffed and even the Krasdale stuff again. It was a lot of work to cut them to pieces with a knife (when I should've used the scissor) then cover and remove excess confectioner's sugar from each and every marshmallow. They were a bit larger, but they're very satisfying, so I cut them a bit smaller to portion out. mm.. :9















Next up: Mushi Manju with homemade shiro-an!