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Finding Nemo (272)

I started doing this bento yesterday morning, but ran out of time and had to abandon it, taking my hastily thrown together lunch (frozen karaage and rice) in a Ziploc container instead. This morning I was able to finish it, much to the delight of the kiddies, who clutched at my camera oohing at it all the way to school.

I copied this from a Finding Nemo storybook that was at Grandma J’s. I asked to borrow it and used the cover as a reference. I cut Nemo by eyeball, which was harder than I thought. He’s made of orange bell pepper with nori for the eyes, eyebrows, stripes, and mouth. The white parts are sliced kamaboko. I had bought tobiko at Marukai, so I decided to put some in memory of Nemo’s long lost brothers and sisters. Underneath him I have blue dyed rice. Above him is some Ajinomoto brand chicken karaage, which I tried for the first time yesterday. Tasted pretty good! I’d also FINALLY found quail eggs. Oddly enough, they were right by the tobiko at Marukai. I also saw the STRANGEST thing! Wasabi tobiko! Green tobiko, I kid you not! I wonder if it’s spicy? It looked so cool, I was sooo tempted to buy some just to use it in a sushi roll.

I have quail egg molds but wouldn’t you know it, my quail eggs were too big…. Boy I was mad. Oh well, hopefully next time I can pick some smaller ones. Tucked in with the eggs are some red bell pepper sticks to help give it more color balance.

Speaking of color balance, someone commented yesterday saying that maybe white balance was my problem. I turned the auto white balance feature on my camera off and that seemed to do a world of good!! Thank you!! Yvo asked to see a picture of the Food Cutter Wheels of Doom and I did take one, but I forgot to upload it. Here is a picture of it still in Japan, my friend took a pic of it in the store so I could “shop” via her Flickr.

Now really, why don’t they sell cute stuff like this in the US yet? ; ;

I’m debating whether this should go into the book manuscript. What do you guys think? It’s a bit complicated, though I guess I could just have a charaben section?

The other day, Mr. Pikko turned our house upside down looking for his second Rock Band drumstick. About a month ago, Buddy said he “troo it away” in the “raw-bish can”. We found it later, but since it was nowhere to be found again, we figured maybe he really did do it this time. So finally, all frustrated, Mr. Pikko tells him, “Help me look for my drumstick! You lost it!” Buddy goes digging around in his toy chest and comes back, informing Mr. Pikko he found it. We almost died when we saw that he was holding a plastic toy food chicken drumstick. LOLOL!

Oh, kids.