Bento 2010

Woohoo, first bento of the New Year! To celebrate I made my bento extra special by...doing absolutely nothing special whatsoever. Eh, first day back to the office since a week at the coast, whaddya expect? It's amazing I came back at all.... :)

clockwise from right:

• beef stew -- Our patented Coast Crockpot meal, which Sal made the last night we were there. If you can make them out, those eensy weensy orange bits are carrots cut into 1/8" cubes. Not created by some special contraption found in 2 AM informercials and dubious mail-order catalogs, but diced by the chef and his Knife O'Doom into the cutest pile of wee carrot cubes you ever saw.
• flour tortilla, with maple-smoked cheddar slices on one side and sesame sticks on the other side
• Pinova apple slices and in the side container, half dark chocolate-covered raisins and half yogurt-covered raisins

*True story: when he was in culinary school, his Knife Skills class required what are called proficiencies in a whole list of specific shapes and sizes. Grades were given based on accuracy, precision, speed, efficiency, and consistency. For weeks, everything in our fridge was cut into all kinds of shapes and size whether it needed to be or not. :)

Fun Fact: The 1/8" dice cut is called brunoise. There is a smaller dice that was a proficiency requirement, called a fine brunoise, which is a 1/16" cube. Get out your ruler and look at how small that is. On a regular ruler, it's the smallest tick mark on there. Yes, that one.

The coast was fabulous. We had great stormy weather for three days, though it cleared up enough late Thursday evening (very light sprinkles, light wind) that we could head out to the beach to greet the New Year. There was fog and the moon peeked through enough to light up the waves a bit, the waves themselves were still pretty sizeable, and it was chilly but not miserable. Magical, in other words. And I needed that. Don't we all?

Got some writing done (including 6 pages on [spoiler]), did some reading, watched lots of shows/movies, ate some great food. Saturday was beautiful so we got a chance to spend some time on the beach and takes lots of pictures to add to the hundreds (thousands?) we already have. And of course Sunday it was even more beautiful just as we were leaving. We lingered a bit to soak it up before driving off.

It was hard to leave, as always, but we were glad to get home to our beloved house, cozy bed, and snuggly kitties. They make us completely crazy most of the time, but we miss the little bastards when we're gone. And thanks to our very good friend, we don't have to worry that they're going to set the place on fire, which is only a slight exaggeration of their diabolical tendencies. If Hobbes ever developed opposable thumbs, we'd start sleeping in shifts.