17 Grown-up Bento

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, E and I went to Super H to shop ['til we dropped], and eat lunch.  I just could not resist the little food court restaurant called T1 Bento & Grill.  I ordered the peppers and steak bento, and waited to be surprised by the sides.  I ordered E steamed shrimp dumplings.  My bento came out on a dosirak tray, which I thought was very cool and it was really good!  It came with steamed sticky rice, fried dumpling and spring roll, lightly wilted baby bok choy in a sweet sesame-ponzu sauce, and fresh clementines.  I absolutely LOVE the idea of the baby bok choy, and I'm definitely going to feature that in upcoming bentos.

Sticky dumplings with sauce.

E enjoying her dumplings (which she thought were awesome despite being slightly indignant that she had to eat them with a fork rather than chopsticks.)

Here is the wondrous wall of housewares where I spend the majority of my browsing time.  It's a little strange because you have to search for the kitchen items in between toilet plungers and toothbrush holders.

I was thisclose to buying this cutting board!

And last, but certainly not least.

I wonder if Alicia Silverstone realizes she's the face of Jennifer Minimizing Briefers?

2 Goodies

I have been looking forward to going back to Super H Mart for days! As I mentioned in my previous post, I convinced our friends to come with, assuring them that they'd find all sorts of great items. As soon as we walked in, I headed straight for the housewares section, which is immediately to the right. They don't have a lot of bento items, but they certainly had more than they did opening day, which really excited me.

I picked up several items, including a new bento box with matching forks and spoons, onigiri molds, 4 different shape/size vegetable cutters (hooray!), a super awesome Pororo bento tray (in Korea they are known as dosirak), some chopsticks, a tea ball, bunny training chopsticks. Cute! I can't wait to start using these items.

I'm especially excited about the bento tray/dosirak. I think it will be neat to prepare lunches in this during the summer months when E is out of school. It came with an adorable carrying bag, which she thinks is awesome.

The tray itself is neat, it's a molded stamped aluminum (EDIT:  it's not aluminum, it's stainless steel - very durable!), and it comes with a sealed, snap-on top.

The training bunny chopsticks are just so cute! They had them for both right and left-handed kids. I made E some gyoza for dinner that night (she's not a steak eater yet), and she was able to use them with ease.

























I was particularly inspired (again) by the fresh seafood area. I've often wondered where to get those pop-in-your-mouth fish roe that comes on so much sushi. I found it in every type, size and color here!

Isn't it so pretty?

The fresh seafood under it looked so good. I usually prefer wild-caught salmon, but they explained that the salmon season wasn't until October, so they didn't have any fresh wild-caught, only farmed.

They had these huge packages of mixed seafood for a fish stew like bouillabaisse or a mixed stir-fry. I was sorry I didn't have a place to store these refrigerated items!

Rounding the corner they had bins of live blue crabs and crawfish.

All in all it was a really fun and productive trip and I'm already wondering when I can go back!

Speaking of neat things...As you know, I'm always on the lookout for cute food decorating items, and I recently came across a shopping website that helps me find a wide range of items I'd be interested in.  Enter Become.com and get customized search results from across the web.

For instance, I entered the search term "food picks" and it returned a list of cute items I'd never come across before, like flags, animals, and even neat twisted sticks that'd be great for fruit kabobs!  If you can't get a good selection of food decorating items locally, buying online is a great resource.  While the search function could be a little more robust, it's not a bad place to start the hunt for that special item you've been looking for.  In fact, I was able to find the perfect craft organizer box for all my small bento decorations!  For now I have to be patient and wait for it to get here, but I'm excited at the prospect of organization!

3 H is for Heaven

Food heaven, that is! I'm talking about Super H Mart. I have never heard of them before, but found out quite by accident today. See, my husband and I took our daughter to see Shen Yun Performing Arts this afternoon (classical Chinese dance with anti-communist flare here and there - great show, by the way, see it if it comes to your town) and in the program there was a full page color ad for H Mart, and its grand opening celebration.  We decided to check it out since it wasn't too far.

It is a store that, simply put, is ethnic foods.  It's truly international.  Mostly Asian - Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Hawaiian, but also African, Hispanic, even a little Italian!

This place is ENORMOUS.  I was awed.  And inspired!  And totally overwhelmed.  So, I did what any self-respecting food blogger does.  I whipped out my iPhone and started snapping pictures.

The seafood "counter".  Yes, those are live tilapia!  They aren't soley indigenous to vacuum-sealed bags after all!

We picked up 5 lbs of shrimp for $1.99 a pound!

Monkfish...you know, like on Iron Chef?

Moving on to DRIED fish (as opposed to the still-living variety.)  This is a huge dried squid.

Loads, and loads of them.

I wonder if the Georgia Aquarium knows about this place....

Fresh prepared foods like kimchi.

Frozen pork buns.

Gyoza!  E's favorite.  They had a lady out with samples of another brand (not shown here) and we bought about 6 bags.  They have MINI gyoza, bite size.  Look for those in her bento boxes soon!

After you go through the registers, there's a huge food court with just about every Asian cuisine represented, a French bakery, and then around the corner are separate little shops, like this cosmetics counter.

I'm not afraid to admit it...I'm already in love with this place, even if I didn't find any bento supplies this time around.  I think I'll have a word with the store manager.  :-)