Pipi Kaula Bento (304)

This month I’ll be doing a short series of product reviews for bento items from From Japan with Love. I had intended today’s product to be tied together with another, but when bentoing this morning, this item seemed to fit by itself on the fly.

This bento took me just under 40 minutes, which is ridiculously long, but at the same time, I blame that on having no clue what I was going to put into it when I woke up. Plus, I had to take bentorial photos. 🙂

The item I’m reviewing today are these cute bento food toppers. As I mentioned, I wasn’t going to use them today, but my meat looked a little gross, so I decided to just plop him on top and things looked much brighter.

The toppers come in three different animals and colors. The yellow is a little bunny rabbit and is the smallest of the bunch. The green one is the medium sized one and the orange is the largest. The green and orange both look like bears to me, but their ears are obviously different. Good thing I don’t work at a zoo. “Yes, that’s a gorilla. I mean… no wait… Uh..”

I used the largest one for today’s bento and had no problem putting the bento box cover on over him. The image on their store shows a different colored bunny, so I don’t think you can rely on getting a yellow bunny, just the three colors and animals in varying combinations. From Japan with Love has a lot of great items that I’ve never seen available online before, so be sure to check out their store! They’ve got a lot of beautiful and cute bento boxes to choose from as well. Keep an eye out for more product reviews to come.

For my onigiri, I added a little salmon flavored furikake packet, which is one type of the 20 packets I’m giving away in the Furikake Frenzy. I mixed it up with the rice before putting it into the onigiri mold. I put the onigiri in snugly against the side. This works best with a slightly rounded box. Next, I sliced some sugar snap peas in half diagonally and placed them nicely in the box. I added baby carrot sticks after that. I cut the rounded ends off of the baby carrots before quartering them.

I added three cherry tomatoes after that. They weren’t holding themselves up all that well, so I stuck a short baby carrot underneath and skewered two of the tomatoes onto a fancy toothpick. I tucked a piece of orange cauliflower on top of that. I took a small roll of chikuwa (fishcake) and sliced it at varying lengths diagonally and placed the three pieces in the box. I had fried some pipi kaula in a pan (no oil) and after chopping it into small bite-size pieces, I added it to the bento box in a paper food cup. Then I put a little cilantro leaf onto the cauliflower.

The last step was to add one of my pre-cut nori flowers from the packet I mentioned last week and the bear food topper. Since Pipi Kaula (smoked beef) is a Hawaii food, you can substitute with any meat of your choice. Leftover chopped steak would probably fit in nicely or some BBQ meat. I think that if I’d known my design ahead of time, it would have taken me about 15 minutes to put this together. Thinking and designing takes up a great deal of time for me obviously.

My kids have been cracking me up lately. Yesterday I talked about Buddy’s sandwich taunting, today I have a story from Baby Girl. I give the kids a bath at the same time and when it’s time to come out, they simply don’t want to do it. To counter this, I make it sound like getting out first is the most exciting thing to happen on Earth. I must deliver it with just the right tone of voice, otherwise they just look at me like I’m a nerd and say they’d rather stay in the tub.

Last night I was able to successfully convey the glory of being first out of the tub and though he’s usually too slow, Buddy was able to cry out “ME ME ME!” first this time. When I called it in his favor and took him out, suddenly there was a big, black cloud over Baby Girl’s head and she did this evil glower at me. She pouted while I wrapped him in a towel and sent him out, then when I reached for her she had something to say.

“When I’m older and bigger than you, I’m going to give YOU a bath and I’m going to take YOU out LAST!”

She had to stand in the tub for a few extra seconds while I laughed my ass off. On the bright side, when I’m an elderly old woman, my daughter intends to be bathing me! Woohoo!!

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