Cooking Cute: a bento site

July 9, 2007

A long overdue update

[mr. bento with pasta, sauce, soup, and veggies]

Left: mini-veggie eggrolls, onigiri-shaped hard-boiled egg, strawberries
Right: yakisoba with carrots and zucchini

Hello, everyone -- it's been a long, long time. Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to write and check in on me. I'm ok, still alive and kicking. Just a heck of a whole lot has been going on since I posted my last bento back at the end of February. There is way too much to post here, but basically, bento lunches have been on a bit of a hiatus because:

I had to travel quite a bit for both work and for fun. In fact, the hubs and I recently got back from a trip to Japan (bento galore!) and Hawaii. Lots of inspiration for future bento. :-)
I had a sudden and unexpected change of jobs. There are more restrictions at the new place, so I can't post new entries while at work. To make things worse, I get home pretty late, so I don't have much time to do entries and post before bedtime.
My site went haywire for a long time and didn't allow me to access it for updates. In fact, things still aren't working smoothly (I'll be quite pleased if I can get this entry uploaded). My brother, who helped me build the current site, is designing me a new and improved site that will be hosted on a different server. You may experience some hiccups on the site over the next few months as we're working out all the kinks. The new site will have a working guestbook (that is more spam-proof), mailing list, and other nifty features that will make my life easier (which will lead to more bento).
I should mention too that I was unable to access mail that was sent to ngoc at cookingcute dot com while the site was out of commission. Some mail was delivered sporadically here and there, but the majority of the mail was stuck on the server. Then, once we got access to the server, we somehow managed to lose everything. We're still not sure what happened, but all of the mail from this past spring to the present is gone. I can't believe it and am pretty mortified. So I apologize if you've written to me and I've not responded. If you write again, I will! The mail is now being directed to a new server, which I definitely can access.
Lastly, most significantly, and most happily, the hubs and I learned that we're expecting a little boy at the end of October. If you do the math, you'll see that it all began in February. I was lucky enough to not have morning sickness, but I was often nauseous, plus I was more tired during that first trimester than I ever have been in my life. I am normally a night owl, but I would be exhausted and in bed by 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. I would sit at work and daydream about sleeping. I was too tired on most days to make dinner, much less pack bento lunches or post to the site. To make things worse, I became pretty disinterested in food (well, with the exception of fruit, crab, rice porridge, and soup).

So that's the story. Now we've got under 4 months to go before our little dumpling is born. So while I feel a lot better, and Japan has reinvigorated my love of cooking, eating, and bento-making (I picked up the cutest bento stuff for the dumpling!), bento updates to the site will continue to be sporadic for a while. The hubs and I have a lot of things to accomplish in the house in the next few months (we haven't bought a thing for baby yet!), my brother and I are still working on improving the site and moving it to the new server, and I expect that I am going to get more and more tired as the weeks go by.

Thanks for your patience and I hope you continue to enjoy the site during this time of transition. Feel free to email with any questions or suggestions as to what you'd like to see on the new site. Cheers and happy bento-ing!

Tags: bento, yakisoba, veggies, eggrolls, egg, fruit, cute food, vegetarian
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