Mothering Corner

My 3-year-old is going for her first field trip today, and we are all excited about it! Her class is going to the dinosaur museum in Bangkok city, but I’m not sure what’s the name of the place. I still can’t read Thai! That’s why hubby and I can’t figure out the name of the museum, but we did pass by the building before when we were in the city area.

Thus, I fixed her a simple bento for the trip by using her mini Hello Kitty lunch box.

My gal’s mini Hello Kitty and Cathy (the bunny) bento for field trip. Besides strawberry jam sandwiches, there are seedless grapes in her bento too. 

Here are the tools used for this mini bento:

I packed an ice gel in her bento bag too as part of the decoration involved cheese. Hopefully, the cheese won’t melt when she’s having her bento.

If you are new here, you may want to find out more about the food ingredient used for this bento in my Flickr photos.

Besides this mini bento, I packed the usual tea bentos for my kids too, which they will have after school at our office.

My boy’s bento with peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches, some rose apple, mango, a rambutan, and a strawberry and quail egg decorated as a little boy.

Here’s my gal’s bento with the same bento meal.

As you can see, I did’t spend a lot of time preparing the details, and I only used some punchers to decorate the faces.

The flower puncher from Daiso and my favorite paw and smiley punchers by Carl’s.

I shall link the bento photos to my Flickr account, and if you are interested to know more about the bento, please click on the photos. Thanks!

Besides that, I would like to say thank you to all of you who have voted for me at  Singapore Blog Awards. I truly appreciate that. Thanks for making the effort to sign up and vote, and I know it takes time to do so. My hubby who wanted to vote for me was lost “in the middle of no where” when he visited the link. LOL!

So, if you are interested to vote for me, please sign up as a member of OMY.sg or go to

Then you will see

Click on that link and you will go to the finalists in various categories. My blog is listed under Best Food Blog, along with other finalists:

Click on VOTE to cast your vote, and if you click on the avatar, you will be directed to the blog URL.

You will be asked to log in to participate and vote!

Or alternatively, you may go to the links at the top right corner of the webpage:

• Login to Participate
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The voting process is open until 31st July 2009, and everyone can vote once for each category per day. So, please vote for your favorite finalists ya?

My boy wanted me to use the dolphin cutter to fix some dolphin sandwiches, so today’s theme is under the sea again. If you are interested, you may check out my previous under-the-sea bento, which is quite simple too.

So, what I did this morning was deep fried the tempura, cut the mango and rose apples with a star cutter, and boil some mini wieners which were cut as octopuses. If you have concern about your kids eating process food like wieners and such, just try to find other alternative, or reduce the serving portion. As for me, I prefer to use one mini wiener, cut it into halves diagonally,  cut a few more lines at the end, and decorate the wieners as tiny octopuses.

My boy’s bento, with 2 octopuses, 2 dolphins, a tempura prawn hidden behind, and some fruits. I really like that whale baran, but too bad, I only had one. It comes with the set of mini cutters from 100Yen.

Here’s my gal’s bento and a closer shot of the dolphin.

I didn’t use a lot of tools today as the bentos are easy to be prepared:

Tools for today’s bento.

In short, today’s bento might have a lot of sea animals in one, but it’s simple and speedy.

I’m thrilled to know that my blog is shortlisted as 10 finalist Singapore Blog Awards, under Best Food Blog.

 If you like my blog, please vote for me and the voting starts today until 31 July 2009. Everyone can vote once a day, but you will have to sign up as member to vote. I know, it’s troublesome, but I’ll truly appreciate that!

So, please vote for me ya? Thanks!

We had steamboat at home last Friday, and I bought too much fish balls, mini wieners, crab meat, tofu and etc and we couldn’t finish the load! LOL! Thus, I have a lot of processed food in the freezer yearning to be cooked during this period of time. I think I shall take my time in using them, even if they are occupying half of my freezer! (Ya, my fridge is too small for me!)

So, I packed my kids some fish balls today, and I decorated one of the fish balls as a bunny.

My boy’s bento with a smiley bunny, trying to get a hug. LOL!

I packed some ketchup (in the mini Pooh bear and Hello Kitty containers) for the kids because the bentos will be very cold in the late afternoon, and the fish balls will taste better with ketchup. There are some grapes, jackfruit, kiwi, strawberries and rambutans in their bento too.

My gal’s bunny is daydreaming…

So, it’s speedy bento again for a busy Monday. Have a nice week ahead everyone!

My kids wanted ham and cheese in their bentos today, and at first, I thought of packing ham and cheese sandwiches, but I only had 2 pieces of hams left in the fridge. Besides that, the hams are round in shape, and they won’t look good when I cut the sandwiches. Thus, I packed them jam sandwiches as usual, and used the ham and cheese as decoration.

If you are a regular reader here, you might have seen my previous bentos with elephant and My Melody, so today’s bentos are repetitions.

Tools used for elephant bento.

Nonetheless, I prepared My Melody differently today, as comparing to previous bento. I cut both the cheese and ham with My Melody cutter, and gently print the shape of My Melody’s face on the ham. You can do this with the imprint cutter, which comes with My Melody cutter set.

Tools for My Melody

Then, I cut out the oval part of My Melody’s face with exacto knife, and stacked the ham on the cheese. Its left ear was cut with exacto knife too, or you can do so with an oval cutter.

Of course, I added nori on both My Melody and the elephant, and here’s the end result:

My boy’s bento with ham and cheese elephant, some sandwiches, blueberries, grapes, a piece of corn and a cherry tomato.

My gal’s bento with My Melody and the same bento meal.

TGIF, and it’s the weekend again. Too bad I am not going to Las Vegas hotels nor anywhere this weekend! So have a nice weekend everyone!

My friend was asking if I have any bento to share today, oh well, I do have one. LOL! I was very busy today, so I didn’t have time for blogging until now.

I toasted some garlic bread (with hotdog buns) for breakfast today, and packed some for my kids. As for mushroom men, I cut the cherry tomatoes into halves, dug out the seeds and flesh, and pinned the tomatoes on the quail eggs. Then, I decorated the mushrooms with ham, nori and artificial crab meat.
So, here are my little mushrooms bentos:

My boy’s bento with garlic bread roll, golden kiwi and oranges. I decorated his quail eggs as little mushrooms, and if you are a regular reader to most bento blogs, you might have seen these little mushrooms before huh?

This is my gal’s bento.

Sorry that I didn’t have time to snap more photos while preparing the bentos today, but if you know any blogs with mushroom men toturial, drop me the link and I will post it up. Thanks!

I did another speedy bento today, and decorated my kids’ sandwiches as teddy bears. Since I’m using the sandwich baskets, I put the oranges in gift packs (which are safe for food), and separated the sandwiches from grapes and blueberries with a baran.

My gal’s bento. She was happy to see that gift pack. LOL! I told her that it’s a pressie.

My boy added some dinosaur nori on his teddy sandwiches. The dinos were punched from his new Carl’s puncher, which were bought by daddy from Malaysia.

Too bad daddy couldn’t find any expression punchers by Carl’s! Hopefully, Carl’s will replenish their punchers back home by the time I go back to Malaysia. Not only I miss the punchers, I miss the great food back home too. Gosh, I will surely need Fenphedra after my serious indulgence in Penang! LOL!

Today’s bento is simple and speedy because I bought some cake rolls, and all I needed to do was decorating the cake rolls as snails. I cut a mini wiener into halves, diagonally, and boiled them until they slightly curl up. Then, I pinned the wieners onto the cake rolls with spaghetti strips. The eyes were cut from fish tofu, and pinned to the wieners with tiny strips of spaghetti too.

So, here are the snails:

My gal’s bento with a snail cake roll, some mango, gold kiwi, grapes and blueberries.

And here’s my boy’s bento.

You must be wondering how I closed the bentos huh? LOL! I pushed the fruits to the side and gently laid down the snail, as shown below:

I pinned the wiener at the side of the cake as if the snail is turning its body.

 Pretty simple huh?

I received a notice last week that my kids have to be at school at least 15 minutes earlier. They are rehearsing for Teacher’s Day, so until then, we need to rush out from the house earlier than usual.

I prepared part of today’s bentos yesterday, such as boiling some carrot and broccoli stem (which were cut into letters), preparing the Bolognese sauce (can just heat up the next day) and boiling the penne until it’s almost done. So, I only had to spend some time cutting the fruits, reheating the food and decorating the bentos this morning.

Here’s how I prepared the baby elephant and Rilakkuma:

I cut the elephant ears from a piece of ham with this wheel cutter. Make a cut at the ends of the mini wiener and gently slip in the ears.

With the same cutter, try to cut out a trunk for the elephant. Cut off the excess ham with a knife so that you will get the shape of the elephant’s trunk.

Pin the trunk to the wiener with a spaghetti strip.

As for Rilakkuma, I cut a tiny piece of egg sheet with an oval cutter for its nose.

Cut off the ends of another piece of mini wiener, and use both ends for Rilakuma’s ears. Pin the ears to its head with spaghetti strips (sorry, I’ve forgotten to snap photo of this step ).

So, here are today’s bentos:

My kids’s bentos with apples, kiwis, penne Bolognese, mini wieners decorated as Rilakkuma and baby elephant, and blanched carrots and broccoli.

Here’s a closer shot of the mini winders:

A baby elephant and Rilakuma on Bolognese Penne.

The last but not least, I pushed the wieners down before closing the bentos:

Even if I managed to get everything done in lightning speed, but my kids were still late for school. We were caught in a bad traffic jam on Monday morning, so my kids were 30 minutes late! LOL! I think we have to be ready earlier tomorrow morning. Sigh…there goes my 30 minutes of beauty sleep. I wonder if I can lose some weight by sleeping lesser? LOL! Then maybe I won’t have to check out the liporexall review.

My boy does not fancy fried rice, but I shall coax him to take his dinner. It’s easier to convince him to eat if his meal is served in bento, maybe he likes to have some decoration on his food. As for my gal, she hates omelet but I want to keep on introducing omelet to her, instead of giving up. Thus, I decorated the broccoli with sad and annoying expressions, as I think that’s how my kids react when they have their dinner. LOL!

My boy’s dinner bento with fried rice onigiri, a mini wiener cut into smaller pieces, a piece of omelet and broccoli.

If he’s willing to take the fried rice happily like the teddy bear baran, then he can watch TV or play with daddy’s golf training aids (especially the putting mat) and stay up later tonight. LOL! It’s Friday mah…

And here’s my gal’s bento. It will be tougher to coax my gal into trying the omelet, but I have a “secret weapon”….KETCHUP! LOL!

Hopefully, my kids are willing to co-operate, and we will have a fuss free dinner. Wish me luck…