Bento Guessing - Cute Kitty

Bento box lunches were a huge part of my childhood in Hawaii. Rather than PB&J, Mom (or Grandma) packed for me cold lunches with musubi rice balls, fried chicken, fried spam, or fried hot dogs (see a trend?).

There are also lots of small restaurants/fast food counters that sell bento lunches, and sometimes I'd get a plate lunch with fried noodles or potato croquettes.

Well, bentos are still alive and well in Hawaii and Japan, and my mom sent me some pictures of bentos like I've never seen before. I certainly didn't get lunches that looked like these!

I thought it might be fun to see the pics and guess what food they are.



Rice for the kitty body, but what did they use for his arms and legs and ears??? Maybe white fishcake. And then either pink fishcake or luncheon meat. The dark gray part is nori seaweed, the yellow strip is pickled radish, called daikon (sweet-sour, my parents love the stuff). The red dot is half an ume, or a tiny very sour pickled plum (my father loves those). Mom and Grandma used to put ume in the middle of rice balls but I never cared for them--too sour for my taste.

Kitty’s lying on some fried shrimp (yum!) and maybe some cooked vegetables--carrot, butternut squash slice? Green onions. Maybe the reddish stuff on the bottom is sashimi raw tuna fish. And a little lettuce around his head.

There might be macaroni salad under the fried shrimp in the top right corner but I can’t be sure. (I know, weird, right? Raw fish and macaroni salad? But then again in Hawaii, we often have sashimi as appetizer and then macaroni salad as a side dish, so I guess it's not that weird to me.)

Someone actually cut Kitty’s limbs and ears and painstakingly cut the seaweed pieces. Who puts this much effort into a lunch someone’s going to eat????