Mothering Corner

I’m out of idea what to pack for my kids today, so I took out the leftover rice from the fridge, steamed it, mixed some corn kernels in the rice and formed some rice balls for my kids. I spread some butter and soy sauce on the rice ball before baking them for 10 minutes. Make sure that your rice balls are tightly formed as the rice grains might fall out after baking.

Paw rice mold

I wanted to use the paw rice mold, but too bad the corn kernels could not stick well with the rice. So in the end, I formed the rice balls manually with cling wrap. To me, it’s easier and faster to make rice balls manually, and most of my rice molds are bought for my kids.

I let the rice balls cool down before placing them in the bentos. Then, I proceeded to decoration the rice balls and packed a quail egg, strawberry, some blueberries and champagne grapes in each lunch box.

My boy’s bento with 2 smiley rice balls.

My gal has a smaller appetite, so she can only take a rice ball, if she’s hungry.

My rice is a mixed of white jasmine rice and red hom mali rice, so it’s brownish. The rice balls are slight darker after baking too.

BTW, I’ll slow down in fixing bento as my hubby is going for business trip again, and my kids might not be coming to the office frequently. Furthermore, I want to spend some time rushing my crochet poncho so that my hub can bring all my 99% completed knitting projects back to Malaysia and pass them over to the knitting shop. I’m going to be a night owl rushing my poncho! So, I don’t think I can wake up early in the morning. LOL! Luckily, I’m not crocheting anything as big as  adult halloween costumes, so I should be able to complete it in a few nights.

I fixed something simple this morning as I needed to fix 4 bentos in total, so time was pretty limited. Besides the fruit bento for hubby and me, I packed 2 tea bentos (the usual) and another simple bento for my gal who’s going on a field trip today. She’s going to visit the airforce base, so she’s pretty excited to see the helicopters (that’s what my boy said, he went on this trip last year).

To shorten the preparation time, I cut the bread last night. Try not to expose the cut bread for too long, if not it will turn hard. I always store the cut bread in food container till the next morning.

I used these rice molds as cutters.

I spread some jam and prepared meat floss sandwiches this morning. Cinnamonroll is for today’s bentos, while Sugarbunny is for my gal’s field trip bento.

I gently sealed the meat floss sandwiches so that it won’t drop all over the place when she’s having her meal.

It won’t be perfectly sealed, but at least the meat floss won’t fall out easily. You can seal the sandwiches with a smaller cutter (turn upward) of the same shape of your bread.

On top of that, I decorated the smoked wieners as Mocha.

I prepared some smoked wieners.

Cut one of the wieners in quarters as ears.

Pin the ears to the ends of the wieners with bits of spaghetti strips.

Pin the flowers on the ears too.

Then, it’s all about adding nori and packing everything in the bentos. So here they are:

A simple Sugarbunny bento for my gal on her field trip which she wanted to share with her friends.

This is for my gal for her after school tea.

And here’s my boy’s Cinnamonroll and Mocha bento.

If you are wondering how I cut the lips for Cinnamonroll, please refer to the previous Cinnamonroll bento ya?

I’m out of idea on how to decorate my kids’ bentos, so I repeated Kaerenmama’s heart sandwiches again.

My gal’s bento with meat floss sandwiches, strawberries, pear, custard apple, blueberries and baby carrots.

My gal asked for meat floss sandwiches, so I guess she has slowly regained her appetite. For the past few days, she didn’t want anything but strawberries! I think she ate 2 boxes of strawberries for the past few days. LOL!

My boy wanted blueberry jam sandwiches instead.

I really love the panda picks. They would spark up any bento “effortlessly” and make a simple bento looks cuter than it is. The cute picks save me a lot of time in preparing bentos, so I can catch a few more minutes of beauty sleep. LOL! No choice la, my eye bags are pretty big and good eye cream is quite expensive.

My boy has been asking me to fix his favorite rangers for some time, but so far, I’ve only done a simplified Power Ranger bento. I dread the idea of fixing a ranger bento as it’s very time consuming, and I don’t have much time to fix a detailed bento like this frequently.

However, my boy is having a field trip today, and he has always wanted to show off his bento. *roll eyes* He has 3 field trips in a school year, and most of the time, I would only fix him a simple bento as I know that his friends will bring some junks and share with him. Hubby will buy him a pack too, but this time, he didn’t want any snack but a Dekaranger bento.

The ranger was done a night earlier and here’s the end result:

My boy’s Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger Bento. I’m not sure what’s the name of the ranger, that you will have to ask my boy. LOL!

The ranger was cut from ham (as the base), artificial crab meat for red and white, and nori for black.

The happy boy, who’s eager to show off his bento and excited about his trip to the museum of agriculture department today.

As for today’s tea, I just packed them some fruits. Seriously, I can’t do this type of bento everyday. One hour of preparation is way too much for me.

It’s been awhile since I last packed sweet potatoes for my kids. My boy loves it, but my gal is on a food strike, so I’m not sure if she will take her bento. She ate some of her meal yesterday, but she didn’t finish everything I’d packed. Thus, I hope that she’s willing to eat more today.

Something simple for my gal, with corn, sweet potato, strawberries, guava and persimmon.

I decorated the sweet potato as Rilakkuma.

The sweet potato was cut with Rilakkuma cutter, and the nose was cut from hard boiled egg white. I placed 2 small bits of ham as ears. My boy didn’t want the arms and legs, so I didn’t add any limb for Rilakkuma. I added a little tail for him instead, as if it’s lying on its tummy.

I thought of stopping bento for awhile as my gal is on a food strike, but she is still willing to take fruits as after school tea. However, my boy has a long day at school today, and he will be very hungry after his taekwondo class. Thus, I fixed some spaghetti carbonara for both of them, and hopefully my gal won’t reject her food.

My gal used to love wieners, but she’s been rejecting it for days. But I shall try my luck and see if she’ll take the wiener, if I made cut one into little piggies.

I cut the mini wiener into smaller pieces.

Cut 2 ovals for the noses. Gently cut out the tiny circles on the noses. You may use a straw, if you don’t have the right size of cutter.

Cut a small piece of wiener into tiny triangles.

Then, pin the triangles to the wieners as piggy’s ears.

Besides mini wiener and spaghetti, there are rambutans, persimmon and mango in their bentos too.

The little piggies on spaghetti carbonara.

Pretty simple huh?

A couple of months ago, I received an email from Elsevier Magazine inquiring if they could publish my bento. I was basically in cloud nine when I got the email! How flattering that my bentos got noticed at Flickr and one of them was going to be published! (Ok, I shiok sendiri a bit la )

Elsevier Magazine is a Dutch magazine, and they wanted to do an article about bentos on a special issue about Japan. Besides me, Anna the Read, Luckysundae and Sheree’s bentos were featured too. I can’t recognize the other bentoers even if the bentos looked familiar. Please let me know if you know the bentoers and I shall post up their links.

Too bad I can’t read Dutch, but it’s going to be something I treasure a lot. LOL!

Yeap, that’s the bento! The one with the sleeping bunny.

I’ve seen a few blogs with goldfish lately, especially those from Japanese bentoers. Thus, I wanted to give this a try too.

I prepared 2 quail eggs, blanched carrot cut in hearts and mini circles, and tiny bits of kamaboko.

Make a cut at the end of the quail egg.

Gently slip in the heart-shaped carrots.

Add the eyes (kamaboko, or you may use egg white) to the eggs with spaghetti strips. (Why I use spaghetti strips)

Make a small cut on the top of the eggs and slip in the tiny bits of carrots as fins.

Then cut semi circles of nori for the eyes.

Punch some nori for more facial details.

Besides the goldfish quail eggs, I packed some garlic toasts, grapes, edamame and apple in the bentos too.

My boy’s bento with his little goldfish.

And here’s my gal’s goldfish bento.

I should have snap the quail eggs in different view but I was running out of time. If you dye the egg in yellow, black or orange, it will look more like a goldfish.

I bought a pack of B-herbs Herbal Coated Rice a few months ago, but I didn’t have time to try out the colored rice. I stumbled upon the rice at a Thai food fair which was held at Impact Muang Thong Thani. I love checking out the fairs at Impact because there are a lot of things to see, and not to mention, you might even find a few surprises!

Hubby and I will check the events held at Impact from time to time, and we will surely make a visit there if we are interested. We brought the kids to the National Science and Technology Fair yesterday, while I checked out the booths at Bangkok International Fashion Fair & Bangkok International Leather Fair 2009. I spent a lot at the fairs yesterday, and that explains why I stay at home on Sunday! LOL! *pokkai liao* Even if you are not interested in shopping, you can also watch the shows during some events, such as dog shows (go grab the pet supplements during the dog shows as they are a great bargain!), fashion shows, or just window shopping. I hope that I can make a trip to the annual gems and jewelry fair. I will be drooling over the items displayed at the booths! LOL!

Oops, I got too carried away! Let’s get back to my rice.

I was immediately attracted to the colored rice, especially since it’s dyed with natural herbs such as roselle, turmeric, pandanus (pandan in Malay) and butterfly pea. I bought a pack that comes with all 4 naturally colored rice.

I cooked all 4 colors of rice and thought of fixing some colorful rice balls with various rice molds. However, my boy wanted sushi so I fixed a sushi roll for their lunch. I didn’t have the right size of nori, and it’s a struggle to me to form the sushi roll! LOL!

My kids’ lunch with sushi rolls, salmon teriyaki, a piece of baked chicken wing and mixed veggies (hidden)

The dye faded off for roselle rice when I washed the rice, that’s why it turned out white. I wanted to do more with blue and green but my kids were anxious to have their lunch already. So, maybe I will “play” with the dyed rice again, if I don’t have any plan during the weekends.

I’ve just realized that I’ve been packing food for my kids for more than a year now. It started out as packing lunch when we first moved here. Our kids tagged along with us to the office when we first started and they rejected  Thai food. If it’s just a day or 2 of eating bread and snacks, I could just let it be. But I could not see my kids eating like that in the long run, and thus I started cooking and packing lunch for them. My only bento tool was a thermal lunch set by Thermos! LOL! I didn’t do any decoration as I was too tired waking up at 5am, adjusting to a new life in a foreign land and also busy helping hubby with his new biz.

As time goes, I found a few bento blogs and got hooked in bento-ing. I started posting about my bentos as my own journal at this blog, and I’m so glad that I did that. I could have just started a new bento blog, but I was too lazy to start one, submit to web directory, and waiting for it to “grow”. Thus, I converted my breastfeeding blog into bento blog. Anyway, I had retired from being a moo. LOL!

The best thing about having a bento blog is I gradually made a few new friends who share the same interest. Too bad I haven’t got to know any reader or bento-er from Bangkok, maybe it’s due to the fact that I don’t blog in Thai. I can’t read or write Thai. LOL!