My friend told me about Maruyu, which is a small Japanese grocery store that imports a lot of traditional Japanese things and is often frequented by Japanese people. I had to work on Sunday, which gave me a good excuse to dash across to Maruyu, about 10mins walk from my work to load up on some supplies. They also had a $2.50 store where I managed to pick up a few things as well. I told my friend about it, so we went back again today to buy MORE stuff. I almost bought a box of frozen
Natto, but I didn't think my workmates will appreciate it.
If you think that's bad, I spent Saturday trawling through every single bargain store in Auburn to pick up other supplies as well. It was only today did I realise how much I've accumulated over 3 weeks??
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And the scary thing? That's not all. I know I'm missing 2 of my egg moulds (The bunny and the fish), another pan and a few other gadgets. I also managed to pick up 2 collapsable sandwich boxes (top middle, the pink boxes), I'll have to try those out soon.
At Maruyu, I also managed to find these!
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCZOsOF-jwbmpiOu5og1z-bLVx9HAjUb11nYsQzQ7WY-qweXd9RvKa6wpz9d54R5iF5wuZNScxtfVgM91_9RSSiHk2sVoqy_1ibxrIHxcHlIBzgoM83WtoUDCtnCzfgZun_59-6yZfvBo1/s320/DSC06881.jpg)
WTF is it? Sausage cutters. The green one is a penguin, yellow is a tulip and the pink is a crab. The red one is to make octopus sausages. You really need the proper japanese sausages that are firmer and skinner, but I grabbed some cocktail sausages to try out.
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Peel skin and put in mould, press the cutter onto the sausage to get.....
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Penguin!! hehehe The crab one didn't turn out at all using these soft cocktail sausages, which was a real disappointment. The crab one was the one I was most excited about. I'm sure I'll figure out a way to use it properly.
Which brings me to my animal bento! I used the penguin cutter and the octopus cutter for the sausages. I then quickly pan fried the sausages with a bit of the bulgolgi marinade.
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The noodles was leftover rice noodles I quickly tossed together with sliced green beans, carrots and leftover korean banchan mushrooms. I cooked up a few mandu and quickly blanched the sugar snap peas and packed it with the last of the cherry tomatoes. My little animal sauce containers arrived from eBay, and I filled that up with honey mustard.