Fried pork shiso rolls – Bento meat sushi rolls*

^ Those are not mine. Those are gorgeous, perfectly rolled and sliced pork shiso rolls from Adventures in Bento.  I love how the middles ended up looking like miniature whole carrots in some of them.

We determined mine looked more like little mis-colored strawberries.

I obviously left the toothpicks in for this picture because I felt they needed horns. Or something like that. ><

Aibento has some delicious step-by-step pictures of placing the fresh, colorful veggies and delicately rolling them to perfection. I just have pictures of the most important part….the frying:

See that dark brown, almost black crispness? Oh yeah, that’s where it’s at.

I actually made two batches of these and had plenty leftover for the girls’ bento lunches the next day, too. They couldn’t wait.

This was definitely a day of green and orange, huh? Oh well…they loved it anyway.

* This title is all sorts of wrong, by the way. First of all, I don’t have shiso in my rolls at all. It’s the leafy green edge you can see in aibento’s. And secondly, sushi refers to the rice in rolls we tend to call just sushi….these obviously aren’t actually sushi at all, but but sometimes you’ve gotta call ‘em what the kids think they look like.

** In the boxes, from top of the picture: Leftover salad with light spritzes of Italian dressing so it didn’t spread all over the box, sliced mango, stuffed pork rolls, boiled egg, homemade fruit roll up leather, leftover rice with peas, corn, and soy sauce. Thank goodness these guys love leftovers.