Leftover Buca (245)

Yesterday was my dear Mommy’s last day officially “living” in Hawaii. *sniff sniff* We took her to a goodbye dinner yesterday at Buca di Beppo where we had the most monstrous plates of pasta I’ve ever seen in my life. No, seriously, they even give you spoons the size of small shovels to serve with. Me and my weird ass brother and my weird ass mom took a bunch of weird ass pictures with these gigantor spoons. I was then instructed to post them here to scare my blog readers, which I am more than happy to do.

First up is me, showing off my saucer size eyes:

Next up we have my bro:

He’s trying to make Baby Girl laugh and was doing an excellent job as she couldn’t stop giggling hysterically. Last of all we have my mother, who gave me the crazy genes:

I love her and all, but that picture will seriously haunt my dreams for weeks to come. Add in that she made a forced cameo on The Mog House yesterday and you have one red-faced Pikko.

With that story aside, I had leftovers from our many plates of pasta and chose to have lasagna for today’s bento.

Buca has really good bread and even better garlic bread, but we ate all of that so this is just the regular table bread. I used my onigiri mold as a cup for the blueberries, haha! It fit perfectly height wise too, I was so happy. I threw in some of my garden tomatoes too, just for kicks. They look a bit out of place though, like they crashed the lasagna bento party.

This weekend was pretty fun. With mom in town staying at the hotel my brother works at, me and the kids went down to swim in the pool and play in the sand on the beach. I entrusted Mom to suntan lotion my back, which turned out to be a mistake since she’s apparently forgotten in her old age (she just turned 54 last week) that you’re supposed to apply lotion underneath the straps. So now I have crispy, bright, red areas in all the areas that my bra just so happens to rest. Oh, it burns…

After baths, naps, and ramen (at Kiwami!) we all headed to Manoa Valley to attend the Koganji Temple Obon. I went to this one a few years ago with my French co-worker Delphine and she absolutely loved it. Koganji is a really good dance to go to for beginners because they have really beautiful lanterns, lots of food booths, and they play their songs twice so that you can learn the dance in the first one and have another go at it during the second one.

I tried to help Baby Girl dance to Tanko Bushi and she seemed to actually be into it this time, only Buddy kept whining to get out of the circle, yet refused to stay with Uncle. He ended up just pout-following us around while we tried to dance.

I think next week is Mililani, so we’ll definitely have to go to that one, hopefully with my cousins and their kiddies. Mililani is one of the churches that plays Fukushima Ondo, which is simply called “becho” back home in Hilo. It took me like two summers to figure out these silly city bon dances. They don’t play this song at all the bon dances, but if I go to a lot, at least I can hear the beautiful flute from the memories of my youth again!