Mothering Corner

 My fridge is almost bare by now, so I don’t have much to pack for the kids. LOL! We are leaving in 2 days, and there is not point stocking up food anymore.

I found a book of toast recipes from Kinokuniya, and it’s great to do that we can do so much with toasts! Wen, I didn’t think of that prawn toast recipe by myself, but I modified it from the book. So, this morning, I decided to do something nice with toasts.

It’s a fruity toast tart. Just cut 2 piece of bread with any cutter of your choice, and for the second piece, use smaller cutter to form a hole in it. Put the bread in the oven for 5-10 minutes to get it toasted. Then, spread some jam on the bigger piece, place the one with the hole on top of it and slip in some chunky fruits in the hole. The tart will be nicely looking if you use a thicker toast, but my white bread is rather too thin.

I added some bread with jam for the kids, and packed some green mangoes too.

It’s pretty simple huh?

 It’s the last day of my children’s holiday camp and they won’t be back to school until 2 weeks later. They will be late for the new term, but I guess they can still pick up when we are back from Malaysia. My kids skip school a lot since we moved here, but they are still young, so we are less worry about how much they have missed. Furthermore, most schools here apply a relaxing and fun play approaches when it comes to teaching children, so most children will be able to learn at their own pace, instead of lots of writing homework, like my boy’s previous kindergarten.

Both of my kids enjoy school, and my boy even asked me to pick him up late so that they can play with their friends in the indoor playroom, outdoor playground or sandpit. The kids are always so sweaty and dirty, and happy when we pick them up. There were a few times when I saw them happily cycling with their friends as the school provides lots of tricycles for the children. They even played football or catching with Baseball Gloves with the teachers, who take care the children while waiting for the parents to pick them up. The teachers don’t mind if the parents pick up late out of emergency, and if you call them in advance. They can easily make arrangement to take care of the children for a little longer.

I think my kids will continue studying at this school for another year. Then, they will transfer to international school. Hopefully, it’s not going to be hard for my children to start over again at a new school.

I have a busy day today. Besides that routine stuffs, I have a few posts which I want to complete by today. We are flying off on Sunday, so I better get everything done before flying back home. I will be out of internet for about 2 weeks, and unless I can get myself connected at Starbucks, I can forget about blogging or MSN all together! Can you imagine how fast my fingers are typing now? LOL!

My workload at the office is getting lesser this month, probably due to the coming Thai festival in November and also Christmas soon. It’s like everyone is busy planning for holiday instead of paying more attention on work! Thank god we didn’t pay for NY IT outsourcing, like some companies, if not I will be totally out of job. LOL!

But maybe our workload will increase once we get back to work. There will be some followup to do and after that, we will go for year end trips again. I thought that we won’t be going anywhere, but hubby has agreed on three short trips, spreading out from November to January. So, I guess I have nothing to complain about.

But right now, I better type a lightning speed and finish all my work!

 My boy asked for garlic bread, so I prepared some for their afternoon tea. Both my kids will have garlic toasts, panda fishcakes, some edamame and a piece of ham. On the lower tier of the lunch boxes, I packed them some kiwi and strawberries. Again, my kids asked me to get strawberries. It’s easier to pack food for them lately because they will tell me what to pack. So, I don’t have to stare at the food in my fridge and think of what to prepare early in the morning…

My kids’ double tiered bentos

Since we had soup noodle for breakfast today, I stirred fried some leftover noodles with enokitake. But I guess you can’t spot them from the white noodles which are covered with a piece of dark sauce honey pork and a sunny side up huh?

I packed myself some edamame, pineapples and strawberries too.

Before I managed to close the covers of the bentos, my gal came downstairs for me. When she saw the kiwis and pineapples, she couldn’t resist having a few pieces. LOL! So, the actual fruit portion is slightly lesser as some went into my gal’s tummy already…

BTW, I went to Daiso again to grab some stuffs for my friends, and I finally bought the mini fork and spoon sets from Ciao.

I just can’t stop shopping at Daiso.

 We are flying back this Sunday, so I try not to stock up my fridge these few days. Most of the food will be given or dumped away as we switch off the main power supply of the house. Thus, I’m trying to fix bento meals from all the food in my fridge! LOL!

I blended some prawns and garlic together, before mixing them up with chopped ham and some corns. Then, just wrap them in a piece of toast and fold it in triangular shape. Fry the toast for awhile in low heat to prevent the toast from getting burnt. I stored some away in the fridge and heated them up in the oven this morning. So, the prawn toasts went into my kids’ lunch boxes.

As you can see, there are 2 pieces of prawn toasts, a tangerine, some grapes and 2 pieces of Pooh shaped carrots in each lunch box. I packed some sunflower seeds in their mini food containers too to avoid them from snacking on junks, which are bought by the office staffs! I still have fear over melamine when I see those Oreos and other milky snacks stored up in the office, so I better bring my kids their own snacks.

 The blur me has finally remembered that Halloween isn’t over yet. So I fixed Halloween bentos for my kids this morning. I don’t feel like playing with colored rice as my kids won’t eat it by late afternoon. It’s too icy cold and hard, thus they will have smoked chicken sandwiches instead.

To make the sandwiches prettier, I wrapped them in plastic food wrappers and placed some Halloween stickers on. My kids love it! They said the stickers are cute. I got these stickers from Siam Paragon, and they are free!

In my gal’s bento, there are 2 tangerines decorated as pumpkins with nori, 2 pieces of smoked chicken sandwiches and some grapes as fillers.

A different food arrangement for my boy

I think the nori will mess up this time as I didn’t fill up the gap tight enough. I don’t want to smash the tangerines, so I left some gap behind. Happy Halloween in advance!

Today’s bento is pretty simple to be prepared.

I cut off the edges of the bread and stuffed it in the muffin tray this time. Thus, when the bread is roasted and harden, the mixed veggie filings won’t fall off the bread. I topped the pizzas with mayonnaise and meat floss to make them more appealing. In each lunch box, there are 2 quail eggs with ketchup placed in the monkey sauce container, 2 pieces of panda fish cakes and some green mangoes. These mangoes are totally green, but they are not sour at all. My kids love them, and so am I.

BTW, I thought Halloween was celebrated on 1st October but the real date is on 31st October! I’m so lame at remembering dates. So, maybe I will fix a Halloween bento for my kids tomorrow.

It’s Sunday and we are going out later as usual. Today’s bento is more for finger food because my kids may eat in the car. For my toddler’s convenient, I packed the food in 2 different lunch boxes, one for finger food and the other one for fruits.

My toddler loves red dragonfruit, but the thing is, it can be rather messy. If you have ever fed your kids with red dragonfruits before, you would know what I meant! The red juice can be rather hard to be washed away. Besides that, it’s best to cut the fruit in the most convenient shape for kids as the fruit can be too soft for grabs. I always pack a fork for my kids, just in case they can’t pick up the food with picks or by hand.

My boy’s bentos have a piece of corn, some edamame, 2 mini sausages, some animal pasta, dragon fruits and grapes.

Girlie has a different arrangement and one sausage less because she eats too much meat lately.

But as my kids were watching cartoon just now, they finished the lunch boxes of fruits. So, I don’t have to worry about them messing up with dragon fruits.

Oh ya, before I log off and go gai gai, I would like to wish everyone Happy Deepavali in Malaysia, and happy holiday to all the bento mamas.

Hubby informed me a day before that it’s going to be a long day at the office for the kids. Thus, I packed more as I usually do on Saturdays. Sometimes I wonder if I should just enroll my kids into extra classes instead of spending the whole day in the office? They get bored after awhile, and even if the food keeps them occupied, they still tend to disturb the others.

Anyway, I prepared some rice for them today. I kept away some stir fried capsicums, asparagus, and carrots for dinner last night and reheated the dish in the morning. For the first time, my kids ate capsicums last night! Previously, I used the wrong words and told them capsicums are sweet peppers. Upon hearing the word peppers, they thought it’s spicy and refused to try. Thus, I told them it’s capsicum instead. Kids ah…why so “hard” sometimes? LOL!

When the rice was boiling, I placed some broccoli, carrot and a corn cob in the steamer of the rice cooker. It’s more convenient doing so. At the same time, the oven was busy roasting some pork ribs. When everything was cooked and cooled down, I started packing.

I found that it’s not easy to use the rice mould. I’m kind of rusty with it as I seldom use them. My boy requested a bear bear rice while my girl wanted ABC rice. Gosh, they are getting more demanding. LOL! But I’m enjoying it. So here’s the end result…

My gal’s ABC bento

I don’t have the alphabet cutter yet, so I had to cut them out from nori and cheese. The mixed veggie was placed in a paper cup while the roasted pork in 2 bear shaped silicon cups. A quail egg was decorated as a bee (very ugly, I know) and I slipped in some carrots, a broccoli, another quail egg and a grape to fill in the gap.

 My boy’s bento had almost the same food but a mini sausage to fill in the gap.

Some time after we reached our office, the kids asked for their bentos. My girl went for the grape first, and closed her lunch box after that. Same goes for my boy, he ate some rice and kept the bento away until an hour later. I actually prefer them to eat all at one time, instead of opening and closing the lunch box in fear of contamination. Nonetheless, they are always excited to see what’s in the boxes!

On second round, both of them finished 80% of the food. Some went to their baby cousin who loves anything. LOL! I really like to see how a baby eats. My gal used to eat like this, just feed her anything and she will finish it. But recently, she doesn’t like veggie. Broccoli is the only green veggie she takes, and she will only eat the top part. *slap head* I’m still trying hard to get her back to eating greens instead of being a carnivore! However, she loves fruits. My kids also take a bottle of Yakult and a yogurt drink everyday, so they don’t have constipation.

For afternoon snack, my kids will have these…

In each lunch box, there are some grapes, a piece of corn, a mini burger and a piece of sapodilla (nicely cut by the fruit stall lady!)

 Sapodilla is very sweet, and my kids love it. I’m glad that the lady already cut them in such a nice shape. But if you would like to cut it into something similar, I guess you can try it out with the egg cutter. I haven’t tried it though, let me know if it works!

This is yesterday’s bento. It’s a public holiday in Thailand, so my kids didn’t go to school. They had taken noodles as breakfast, and even if they didn’t finish it, I don’t have to worry much if they eat well for the next meal. I know that we would be going out, so at least they had one proper meal at home.

I think Bento#38 is a junkie bento…

I have some leftover sausages and hams, so I needed to finish them all before expiring. Too much sausages and hams can be rather bad for a kid’s diet. So, it’s a junkie bento.

I added some bear shaped French toasts, animal pastas, edamames and grapes in their lunch boxes, and they ate the food when we were eating out. They obviously were not hungry by the time we ate out, so they preferred their bento meals than the rice we had at restaurant.

I guess they have had a lot of junks these few days. All those jellys, sausages, hams and etc, should be all “disposed” from my fridge by tonight. Thus, I will prepare them some proper bento meals for the next few days.

BTW, my friends said I’m feeding my kids too much jelly and carton juice. I would like to get some feedback from other mothers. Do you give your kids junkies like this once in a while too? Most of the time, hubby will agree on buying them once a month because my kids ask for it. Oh well, my kids can’t seem to fight the temptation of sweetie junkies! As for the carton juice, they will bring about 4 small cartons to school which they take one per day. I always pack them carton milk but my boy said “my friends bring this juice to school leh, why can’t I?” So, I give in some times due to “peer pressure”.

Is there a balance when it comes to feeding kids these kind of food? My kids don’t have any health problem, but I will how harmful the sugar content in junks and juices. So how? Care to share? Should I be totally strict and let go once in a while? Or never let go? I personally think that feeding biscuits and cookies as part of junkie diet too. How about you?

At the same time, I brought my friends to Daiso to get some stuffs. They said they can’t find lots of cute cutters. O.o But to me, it’s more than enough. Sometimes, I try not to get too carried away with the way the meal looks but time in packing and what to pack for my kids. So, I think Daiso is good enough to get my bento tools, besides some online webstores. Anyone interested in franchise opportunity to open a Daiso outlet in west Malaysia or not? LOL!