Huh. This boiling water is really like a meal…
boiling water and food seem don’t seem to be like each other, so I’m not really sure about this
Upon using some machine translation and looking around some more I believe it’s stating that talking about a soup like meal where all you can taste is the hot water.
My mistake in translating was getting the relationship backwards. AみたいなB is stating that B is like A, not that A is like B.
The cooked rice is awfully like plain hot water…
The cooked rice (taste) awfully like plain hot water…
For those who have watched Cure Dolly videos, what’s the Ø Pronoun in this sentence? This is a link to the non-video version.
Embarassing edit: I can’t read Katakana facepalm
みたいに・みたいな
“uh, this is just like drinking hot water you know!”
I guess it could have something like "really’ or “awfully like drinking hot water”, but went with “just like” for that emphasis (なんとも), and “you know” for the な at the end, but not quite sure.
Edit, but too late:
Edit: I totally mixed up the めし with honorific form of drink, and then didn’t look at the kanji close enough to realize the difference: 飯 vs 飲 (which is now much more obvious!).
So yeah its something like “uh, this rice is just like hot water, right”
My mood right now for making ultra beginner mistake. Grammar-related.
Hm. This soup really looks like a boiled water…
Don’t feel bad at all! I misread katakana more often than I misread kanji!! I think there are a lot of people in the same boat that just don’t see katakana often enough to get it right 100% of the time!
フン。なんとも白湯みたいな飯だな．．．．．．
フン = Huh…
なんとも = really; very; extremely; terribly; awfully
白湯 = (plain) hot water; boiled water
みたいな = like / similar to / resembling
飯 = cooked rice
だ = be / is
な = sentence ending indicating speaker is seeking confirmation
Rough = Huh, really like boiled water rice is, right?
Natural = Wow… This rice seems like it’s just boiled water, doesn’t it?
I can’t believe I haven’t come across 飯 before! (I thought I’d have come across all rice terms by now 
)It’s either a male term 飯, a children’s term 飯 or an archaism飯 on itself. Some fun vocab with it too ^^
Really like that these Grammar exercise give a nice grammar overview + up to now nearly each exercise has some vocab I didn’t know yet, absolutely love it! ^^
There is none.
A simpler version of the sentence would just be “飯.” There is no verb, so there can not be a subject.
It’s possible that I’m wrong since I am not that familiar with her whole line of thinking. For example maybe there is more invisible stuff that makes it work and 飯 is the subject.
だ・です is actually a copula, a verb-like thing. It’s safe to consider it as a verb, I think.
Copula (linguistics) - Wikipedia - general definition
Copula (linguistics) - Wikipedia - how it works in Japanese
So, the clause is Øが飯だ, “it is rice / food”.
@distantflower According to the Cure Dolly article, the zero pronoun here is “it”.
It’s possible that I’m wrong too 
So, the clause is Øが飯だ, “it is rice / food”.
That does work. “Xが飯” is still grammatical. In this case it would be using the zero copula.
フン。なんとも
Hun, very
白湯みたいな
Like boiled water
飯だな…
Hun. It is a very plain looking meal…
I assume we are looking at white rice or something plain like that
Huh, it’s really like boiled rice, isn’t it?
お父さんが麒麟みたいにお水を飲む。
Hmph… cooked rice looks an awful lot like hot water (talking to oneself).
September 11th Translation
Notes :
For this translation, we used ‘ughh’ to show the (often negative) opinion of the speaker when using な. 飯 can be rice, or it can refer to any kind of meal. In the panel that this came from, the character is eating from a rice bowl, but you cannot see any rice, so ‘rice’ or ‘meal’ would be equally as correct to assume!
What? Did you eat something weird?
I’m guessing もん(でも) comes from もの(でも). This would be similar to how のだ → んだ.
なんだよ?変なもんでも食ったか？
なんだ = What!; oh; What the heck; What the; Damn
よ = sentence ending (indicates certainty, emphasis, contempt, …)
変な = 変 is a な-adjective (strange; odd; peculiar; weird; …)
もん = shortened form of もの, makes it seem more casual and boyish.
でも = … or something
食った = past form of 食う (to eat – male term)
か = question marking particle
Rough : What? Did you eat a weird thing or something?
Natural : W hat? Did you eat something strange?
WTF!? Did you eat the weird thing too?
What’s up with you? Did you gobble up something bad?
What the…did you eat something strange?
行けるいつでもいいです。
