Gummi Octopus!!!! Can't Stop Dancing!!

Look what I found in the bulk candy bins at Cub Foods!!

They come in several pretty alarming colors, and they taste...sort of permanent, if you know what I mean. I was still tasting today's Gummi Octopus hours later. But how cute is it??! Can you imagine a bento presenting a battle between Octodogs and OctoGummis? The Octodogs would have a size advantage, but the Gummis would be so creepy and techy that they might just win. I will work on this awesome concept.

Meanwhile here was today's bento:



Pork gyoza, roast chicken with nanami togarashi sprinkled over it (this was yum), and a spinach tamagoyaki which I learned about on Cooking with Dog. Fruits in the extra dish.

I love these Cooking With Dog videos for many reasons:

1. You get great cooking tips: like with the spinach tamagoyaki, the cook boils the spinach just for awhile, lets it cool, and then wrings it out like a wet sock. Thus bypassing the problem of soggy spinach leaking through your dish.

2. The narrator: he is so charming! He's a little bit of a worrywort, and will give lots of cautions "Careful not to cut yourself! Uncooked gyoza filling will quickly go bad!" etc. He's also mysterious; the gimmick is that it's like the dog is talking, but who is the guy really? The cook's son? The cook's alter-ego?

3. The dog! He's so well-behaved. He just sits there on the stool while foods pass by his nose, cooking smells waft up, he never lunges for the bowl. In a few videos, he will discreetly drool a little, or whine when the cook chows down on the finished dish.

Here's the episode about making Taiyaki, and it has some terrific tips about cooking dry beans, even if one is not seriously considering the heartbreak of attempting to make a fish shaped bean filled cake inside a teensy little fishy waffle iron ("What Could Go Wrong?" hollow laugh):