I've been reading too many bento blogs lately and eventually we had to go to the Asian market. Captain Fresh! I like just saying the name :)

It's always fun going there, but I wish we had a guide to give us a tour and answer some questions because I don't know half of what we saw. There were black eggs that I saw on a cooking show once. They're cured in lye to make them black. They also had quail eggs and duck eggs for sale. I've been seeing a lot of quail eggs in bento boxes. I eat chicken eggs so this makes no sense but for some reason I can't wrap my mind around the idea of eating other bird eggs. Stupid, huh? I also saw this huge, spiked fruit that I saw on a show once. I can't remember what it was called so I can't even google it. Phooey. Next time I should write things down.

We came home with lots of junk food that we couldn't identify. I saw these bottles of ramune soda that I had come across on bento blogs so I had to get some. The big deal is that instead of a screw cap or a press cap, these have a glass marble blocking the top. You remove the plastic cap and use it to press the marble down. It falls into the neck of the bottle and then you drink. It's very interesting but I found the mouth of the bottle hard to drink from so we poured them into cups. I got peach and lychee. The peach the kids drank but the lychee ended up being all mine (picky kids) which is fine because it was SO GOOD! It tasted just like lychee nuts!

I was disappointed they didn't have a selection of bento boxes though. I found just one and with two kids that wouldn't cut it. We have our laptop lunch boxes though, so that will do.

We got pocky sticks of course :D We also got these. These things are the best. OMG they are awesome and I can't even ask for them by name, LOL! They're little biscuit mushrooms with chocolate caps. They seem to be the same basic idea as the pocky (and another candy we got) but these are just better. If anyone knows what these are called (in English or just phonetic Japanese) please let me know.

I tried my hand at making bento boxes and have to say I could never cut it as a Japanese mother/wife. Still, we've been having fun making onigiri. I don't have a mold so mine were handmade. I used paper punches to put cute little nori pictures on them and they came out pretty good. Except Bridget won't eat the nori and picks it off (though she'll eat the nori on the sushi from Whole Foods - it doesn't have as strong a taste as the brand I bought). Owen likes it though. I made theirs plain but made mine filled with peas and later Bridget tried a pea filled one and liked it. They're fun! And the kids kept comparing them to the ones Brock makes on Pokemon :D

Owen loves cooking and preparing food and enjoyed putting together our improvised bentos for a hike yesterday. He helped pick the items, helped design the onigiri and helped to arrange the cucumbers in an artful design. It was fun making them with him :)