Mothering Corner

I’m out of food to prepare a normal “2 dishes 1 soup” lunch today because I’m still “stuck” at home with my kids who refused to go to the office! If I’m at work, I will go out and get some grocery, and I don’t stock up a lot of food in my fridge. So, I could only fix my kids fried rice with all those frozen food (mixed veggie, minced pork, leftover luncheon meat) in the fridge. But to make the simple fried rice nicer, I added in their favorite characters (so I thought) with fried egg sheets.

I separated the egg yolk from the egg white. You can do this in the normal way, but I used this “tool” from Daiso. I’m not good at doing this without the tool.

Pan fry a thin layer of egg white, and when it’s done, pick it up and leave it on a plate (preferable not plastic as it’s still hot). Use Winnie the Pooh cutter to cut out a shape in the middle. You can use any cutter of your choice.

Fry a thin layer of egg yolk and before it’s done, layer the egg white above it. They should be able to stick together.

I did the same with Hello Kitty cutter, but started with egg yolk first. Don’t worry about the edge of the egg, you can cut it off later when it’s done.

After everything had cooled down, I packed them in lunch boxes.

My boy’s Winnie the Pooh with fried rice hidden beneath. I decorated it with nori and lunch sheets punched with seaweed punchers. There are some grapes and tomatoes too.

My gal had Hello Kitty in her lunch box. I substituted the tomatoes with watermelons.

Anyway, my gal doesn’t eat egg, but she took a few bites. That’s an improvement. But my boy told me, “Mommy, can you stop fixing me Pooh bear? I think I want Eeyore in my bento already.”

Die loh, how to fix Eeyore? CP, got cutters ah?

BTW, there are so much that you can do with the lunch sheets. Check it out.

 Sometimes, I’m out of idea what to pack for my kids. I’m not sure if other bento mothers will feel the same, but if I would to pack bread for my kids 3 times a week, I hope to make it more appealing, instead of just the same bread or sandwich every time. My kids get bored with the same food after some time, and they won’t eat it, even if it used to be their favorite. Thus, I have to search the internet and see if I can find any kids meal recipes which suit my kids’ taste buds.

I found a few nice recipes from MomsWhoThink.com, and I might try them out one day. Take a look at this “Kids Recipe Peanut Butter Turtles“. I think the “turtles” will turn out nice in bentos!

Ingredients:

Apple
5 Grapes
2 tb Peanut Butter

Directions:

1. Slice an apple in half. Make several slits in each half. Fill with peanut butter or sesame butter.

2. Attach seedless grapes with toothpicks (remove before giving to very young children) for the head and legs and stick a carrot shaving on for a tail (tuck it in 1 of the
slits).

However, I think I might modify it, instead of filling the apples with peanut butter. Let’s see how…

On top of that, I feel like I’m preparing almost the same thing for breakfast and dinner these days, and I’m not that creative in cooking anymore! LOL! Even if my hubby doesn’t say thing about it, but I feel that he deserves to “get some special treatment” because I put in more effort in preparing food for my kids. I should go through these great chicken recipes and breakfast recipes, and try them out this coming Monday. It’s his birthday!!! I’m not good at baking, so the least I can do is to cook for him, unless he wants to eat out!

I’m staying at home with the kids today because it’s Teacher’s Day in Thailand, and they don’t have to go to school. Actually, it’s my kids who refused to go to the office with us, so I have no choice but to stay at home for a day. Nonetheless, I’m glad that I can finally fix bentos without rushing like normal days. LOL!

My kids love macaroni and cheese, but from most of the recipes I found online, it seems like so many ingredient and time consuming. Besides that, I don’t fancy macaroni and cheese because of the high calorie and I don’t want to get myself a bottle of Lipovox later. But for my kids, it’s ok la…

Thus, when I found out that there are actually ready to cook macaroni and cheese from Healty Freak Mommy, I went to grab a packet too. It’s so easy to prepare! I just added some mixed veggie with the macaroni when it’s almost done. For protein, I roasted some buffalo wings.

While waiting for the macaroni and buffalo wings to cool down, I prepared some faces with the face cutters. This time, I used zucchini instead of cheese, just to give an idea to a friend, whose kids are allergy to a lot of food. At the same time, I felt like having some zucchini to go with my roasted buffalo wings .

I cut the zucchini vertically. Make sure that you wash the zucchini well as you might use the “leather” (fruit skin).

Since I bought a pack of lunch sheets from CP, I tried to pack them along in today’s bentos. I placed the lunch sheets above the macaroni and cheese, before adding in the cute faces.

This is my gal’s bento, with a cute smiley girl. The “hair bands” were cut from kamaboko. I added some grapes for her too.

Two smaller faces for my boy (I wanted to max out that piece of cut zucchini and minimize the waste). He had a tomato berry (or cherry tomato?) for him too. Not sure what’s the difference, but this pack of tomatoes have a website on its label. LOL! All I know is they are very sweet.

Here’s a close up of the faces…

I wanted to do more food decoration, but my kids were eager to have their macaroni already. They basically grabbed the lunch boxes away from me and started eating as soon as I took the photos. LOL!In the end, my boy asked for a second serving, but he left some mixed veggie, and half of the tomato behind. My gal took longer time to finish her meal, and she left some mixed veggie too. Mmm…not so fond of mixed veggie already? Oh ya, they left the zucchini behind as well. They must be wondering why I used zucchini instead of the normal cheese…

Anyway, they took some soup (boiled gobo, beetroot, red dates, gou qi zi and honey dates) too since it’s a proper lunch.

P/S: I always use the term rose apple (Syzygium jambos), and it’s also called water apple in Malaysia. Over here in Thailand, it’s called chom phu. Sorry if the terms have confused you huh? LOL!

I fixed luncheon meat sandwich for hubby and I this morning, and I prepared extra for bentos. Actually, there were extras for hubby and I too. Ah…where’s my diet pill?

My kids would rather take cereals in the morning, so I don’t have to worry about them getting overloaded with fat and sodium from the luncheon meat because they only take a piece each. BTW, if you prefer a “healthier” luncheon meat, you can get one from Spam which comes in less sodium and less fat. It’s more pricey, but then, I guess it’s better than the normal ones.

To make their sandwiches looked better, I decorated them with elephants. I bought this elephant cutter from Daiso yesterday, and decided to give it a try. It comes in a set of 3, with a rabbit and a bear. Since my kids picked elephant, ok loh, let’s start with the elephant cutter first.

I cut the shape from cheese.

Turn the cutter over, and lightly press down the kamaboko at the ear area so that you will get the shape of the elephant’s ear. You can do so with carrot or ham as well.

Punch the eyes from nori with a seaweed puncher and cut a few tiny nori strips for the trunk. 

I tried to slip the elephants in the sandwiches, and use the sandwich basket first. But too bad, they didn’t turn out nice and the elephants were not obvious.

Thus, I packed their bento meals in Tomica and My Melody lunch boxes instead.

My boy’s Tomica with a sandwich, a cheese elephant, some rose apples and oranges.

My gal’s Melody lunch box has some watermelons. My boy doesn’t take watermelons, so I didn’t pack any for him.

There you have it! Pretty simple to make an elephant bento huh?

I seldom ask my gal what she wants for her bento because I know that she wants either Hello Kitty, My Melody or Marie the Cat. I haven’t tried Marie the Cat as I don’t have the cutters, and it’s very time consuming doing it free hand from cheese and nori. But last night, she told me that she wanted My Melody as I haven’t done it for days (or weeks?). As usual, I try my best to please the kids, when it comes to packing their bentos.

But the thing is, I was out of bread! Thus, I tried to fix her My Melody from fish balls.

Use a bunny cutter and cut out the shape from kamaboko. I was running out of ham. You can use ham or carrot for its ears as well.

Turn the cutter around and cut off the bottom part of the bunny.

 
Use a thin spaghetti strip to secure the kamaboko to the fish ball.

There you go…And I joined 2 fish balls together with a long pick, which is given by CP.

 
I continued with the cutie details, and if you are wondering how I pin a tiny piece of corn to the faces, it’s spaghetti strips again! See the difference? My Melody already had her nose, but Hello Kitty had only the spaghetti strip, where a small piece of corn was added on later.

After that’s it’s more about packing fruits and everything in her Hello Kitty lunch box.

My gal will have fish balls, a small piece of corn, some Thai oranges, mangoes and sweet potatoes today. I packed her some ketchup for the fish balls too.

This is the first time I packed sweet potatoes for my kids. My boy had no problem taking sweet potatoes.In fact, he took the remaining sweet potato as breakfast today. But for my gal, I’m not too sure. Let’s see if she will finish her bento or not…

My boy wanted me to prepare him a panda, and so I did. I added in Winnie the Pooh to one of the seafood balls because it looked yellowish. Not sure if it’s a sotong ball?

My boy’s Pooh bento box, with the same bento meal in different arrangement. Edited: Oops, I forgot to add eye balls for panda. LOL! Now it looks a bit weird…

I don’t have Winnie the Pooh puncher, so most of the details are done free hand. That’s why Winnie the Pooh doesn’t look alike. LOL!

Thus, today’s bentos are quite time consuming because I spent some time cutting the nori for Winnie the Pooh. How I wish I can just photocopy Winnie’s face with a receipt printer and print on nori, or get its puncher or those ready-to-eat Pooh bear nori from Japan! That will be very convenient to me!

I know that meat floss is unhealthy, but my boy has been asking for meat floss for some time. He wanted meat floss in his bento, and funnily, I hardly pack meat floss. Coincidentally, I saw Spunkz and 3lilangels packed meat floss in their bentos too. Maybe I already use wiener and ham frequently, so I try my best to limit processed food. But anyway, as long as my kids eat proper well balanced meals at school and at home, I try to let go a bit when it comes to bento meals. Thus, I bought a pack of meat floss for my boy yesterday, and decided to make him happy. It’s still better than them eating all those junks offered by the office staffs!!!

At the same time, I had a busy morning today, and we had to get out from the house before 8am. This is another speedy bento, and it only took me less than 10 minutes to get both bentos done.

My boy’s bento with meat floss sandwich, some oranges and grapes.

I decorated the sandwich as a lion face.

My gal has a teddy bear, and another teddy bear (cut from the bread) peeping behind the sandwich.

 I will try my best to show some of you who asked me about how I got the cutie details done. Some of you are wondering how to stick the cheese or nori on the surface. Most of the time, I will just leave them there and nori can easily stick on cheese. But if the cheese keeps falling off, use some butter. I did that for the red heart on the teddy bear. Can you see? It’s actually a heart shape cut from artificial crab meat.

A closeup of the peeping teddy bear.

You can use some butter to stick the piece together. I would suggest that you use a toothpick, if you only need a tiny amount of butter. See? The cheese won’t fall off.

I guess I’ve answered most of the questions from the comments, except Ai Keat, who is interested to know how to cut the ham flower. I know some bento blogs already shown the steps (you may drop your post URL here for Ai Keat, THANKS!!!). I will try to show the steps, when I have ham in my fridge! Wait ya, Ai Keat.

Another thing is, if you kid can’t eat ham, wiener or cheese, especially those highly allergy food, you can substitute them with other alternatives. Exp: Cheese  => Zucchini, white bread, pear and etc, as long as the color comes close to white; Artificial crab meat (red) with carrot or capsicum, and etc. When it comes to cutie details, most of the time we just want to have some colors. I’m not sure if anyone is allergy with nori, if so, just use chocolate fudge with these pens. Again, I got mine from CP’s store, and if you are interested, please email her for more info.

I bought this set of cutters from CP too. I think everyone knows CP’s store by now. LOL! I don’t know why it took me so long to take out the cutters, but anyway, I think they are useful for making cute faces for bentos. There is a booklet that comes with the cutters, so don’t worry if you are out of idea how to use the cutters, just pick any from the booklet! That’s what I did this morning.

Thus, it’s a speedy bento to me as I didn’t spend a lot of time preparing the faces from cheese, ham, artificial crab meat and nori. BTW, I bought the banana cup cakes, instead of baking them myself. LOL! Lazy la…

A little smiling girl in my gal’s My Melody lunch box. Her bento meal consists of a banana cup cake, kiwis, Thai oranges and some rose apples too.

My boy’s Tomica lunch box has a little boy, who holds a balloon (which is a quail egg).

If you are running out of time to fix something cute, I think these cutters are very useful. I should use them more often instead of storing them away in the toolbox. LOL!

I bought another insulated bag from Daiso the other day. I wanted to find something that fits 2 lunch boxes together, and luckily, I found this…

It’s quite big for the lunch boxes, but if I slip in 2 ice packs, it will be just nice. Thus, if you are packing fruits, I would suggest that you get an ice pack and an insulated bag for your kid.

I bought this set of tools from CP, if you need more information about huremupoporo (correct me if I’m wrong), please email CP as it’s not listed in her store. *CP, got to mention you again, I know sure got readers ask, LOL*

Since I pack lunch for my kids on Saturdays, I decided to try out the tools this morning. I prepared some minced pork, salmon fish fillet (shredded with a fork into flakes), and blanched broccoli. Of course, I cooked some rice as well. Since I used the thermal food container, I packed the rice when it’s still hot, instead of leaving it to cool down to room temperature. If you are using normal bento box, please check out if your lunch box can pack hot food as not all plastic containers are meant for high temperature.

So, here’s how I packed today’s bentos.

I cut the broccoli into smaller pieces and spread them out at the base of the thermal lunch boxes.

Add in the rice, and use a spoon to press on the rice if you desire a flat surface.

I wanted to form a teddy face with the stencil mold, but too bad, the food container was too small for it (as you can see, I might have problem picking it up again later).

Thus, I layered the minced pork and shredded salmon fish on top of the rice.

 
I used the stencil as a cutter to form a teddy face.

Add in some cheese and nori, and talaa, the teddy face is done.

As for my gal, the bunny stencil mold can be placed in the food container (I can still slip my fingers in at the side to pick it up later). Thus, I filled the center part with shredded salmon fish.

Carefully remove the stencil and fill in the minced pork. Then, add some cheese and nori as cutie details.

You can try to outline the teddy bear and bunny with some sesame or furikake, but I found that it’s kind of hard to do so this morning. Besides that, I was running out of time. I will try this again with the tools, probably in a bigger lunch box so that I can easily pick up the stencils later.

So, here’s my kids’ lunch at the office…

Rice with broccoli (hidden), minced pork and salmon fish.

Of course, I packed something simple as tea too.

Mickey and Minnie lunch boxes with grapes, tangerines, octopus sausages, and edamames.

If you are wondering if you should get the tools, oh well, if you pack rice often, then you might find it useful. But if you are looking for cutters, I think there are other alternatives.

I fixed hotdog as breakfast, so may as well packed some for my kids. My kids can’t possible finish one whole hotdog bun, so I cut it into smaller pieces.

Cut the bun into 3 parts.

My boy likes quail eggs lately, so I prepared one for him. For unknown reason, my gal stops taking eggs again, so no point packing for her until she’s willing to try.

A quail egg, which I decorated as a chicken head.

If you are interested to know how to make an egg chicken, check out Anna’s blog. Her bento blog is truly inspiring with lots of great ideas. Do check it out.

I used a spaghetti strip to secure the egg to the wiener.

I wanted to make the chicken standing up, but sadly, this Winnie the Pooh bento box is not tall enough. Blame it on me for being lazy to dig out the basket lunch box again.

So, I just let it lie down, and slipped in some rose apples. Here’s the end results…

My boy’s bento with “chicken” hotdog and rose apples. I secured the wiener and bun together with a pick, and let’s pretend that it’s the wing.

My gal doesn’t like eggs, so I replaced it with sapodilla in her Hello Kitty lunch box.

Again, do check out Anna’s blog. I like her farm bento, and I should try that one day…when I have more time in the morning!

I had some marinated minced chicken in the fridge, so I decided to fix my kids a little kitty patty today. I added some egg yolk, corn flour and bread crumbs with the minced chicken marinated with soy sauce and pepper, then use a teddy bear mold to form the shape. I guess my mixture was too watery, so the shape didn’t come out nice when I released the meat onto the frying pan. I will try this again, probably with lesser egg yolk. When the patty is almost done, add in some ketchup and let it simmer for awhile. My kids prefer to have some ketchup, so I coated the patties with it.

Here are the patties.

You can actually use them for burgers, but I was out of bread today. I added a duck pick to each patty, and continued with cutie details.

Ears, eyes and noses were cut from cheese and ham with this cutter.

I tried to make it looked like a cat. The ketchup helps to “hold” everything in place.

Add in some nori, and the kitty patties are done.

Here end results…

My gal’s Minnie lunch box with a kitty patty, a piece of corn and some blueberries. I think the patty is quite stuffing, so I didn’t pack a lot for them today.

This is my boy’s Mickey lunch box. This lunch box is pretty small, but sufficient for today’s meal.

Most of the time, I will refrigerate my kids’ bentos since they only come back to the office at about 5pm. But today, I will leave the lunch boxes in insulated bag, with an icepack so that the patties won’t be too cold and hard by late afternoon. That’s why I didn’t add in a lot of fruits, but just some blueberries. They should be able to stay fresh until my kids’ tea time.