Mothering Corner

Thanks to ~Rachel~ for giving this award to me. I’ve always loved her blog, which has a lot of nice bentos and cakes!

I’m slowing down in bento-ing lately and don’t even mention about baking. LOL! It’s end of the year, and I’m slightly occupied with short trips this month. In fact, we have only spent the weekend in Phuket and Similan Islands, so my heart is still on holiday today even if we are back to our normal routine. *roll eyes*

I shall try to pack something for the kids tomorrow. They are asking for cute bentos already!

I’ve lost count of the number of Pooh Bear and friends bentos I’ve fixed over the year, but my kids love them a lot, so I decided to repeat this theme again. But this time, Tigger and Piglet would have the limelight instead of Pooh. LOL!

The bentos before decoration.

The sandwiches were cut with these cookie cutters, as shown above. There are kiwi, grapes, rambutans and strawberries in the bentos too. It’s very windy and cool in Bangkok, so I hope that my kids won’t get any running nose by having more fruits daily.

I decorated the sandwiches with cheese, nori, ham and kamaboko. Most of the bits and pieces were cut last night, and nori was added this morning. My boy helped me with Tigger, but I had to “touch” up his work after that. As the result, we spent quite some time on today’s bentos!

My girl’s Piglet and Pooh bento.

My boy’s Tigger and Pooh. He loves his pinkish nose.

We were running late but my boy still insisted on snapping his Tigger.

I was very touched to see him bringing out his camera and snap a photo of his bento. It showed that he appreciated my effort and his is proud of helping me with his meal.

This month is full of celebrations for us, so my mind is all about spending great time with my kids and hubby.

I turned 32 yesterday, and we had a great time at Hilton. Thanks to hubby for all the planning, and it’s one of my best birthday “pressie” ever. A wonderful memory and time spent will be cherished more. Of course, I secretly hoped for a nice gift, but I know my hubby too well, he’s not good at shopping. All the while, I’m the one who shops, and he can’t beat me in getting the right gift. Maybe I should just get myself another gift and let him pay for it. LOL! I’m actually checking out a few items online now. You can basically get anything including cigars online these days, what a luring trap for shopaholic like me. *faint*

Besides that, a expat friend baked me a cake last week and I’m so happy about it. It’s nice to have someone baking you a birthday cake, and it’s my first one ever! *thanks Nicole*

A reader asked if I’m still packing bentos every school day since she noticed that I don’t update about bentos daily now. Oh well, here are my answers. Yeap, answerS. LOL!

Firstly, my kids are so into eggs lately, they want to fix their own egg breakfast (except the frying part). They will get up about the same time as I do, and with them bugging me at the kitchen, I don’t have much time for kyaraben but just pack some simple bentos like what I did this morning:

Hello Kitty Sandwich Bento, and fruits were packed separately.

My boy’s Tomica bento.

If they are something simple, I don’t feel like posting them. These sandwiches were cut with these sets of sandwich molds. My bread is obviously too small for the cutters! LOL!

Another reason is, SIL may prepare dinner at office once in a while, and she will cook for my kids too. Her toddler has started going to nursery, which is located at my kids’ preschool. Thus, all 3 children will have early dinner at the office if she cooks. She will let me know a day before if she prepares dinner, and I will just pack fruits for my kids because they don’t need a heavy meal. How convenient huh?

 I should stop checking out bento tools, the more I see, the more I feel like buying. LOL! Maybe some guys don’t get it, but it’s like you see any auto accessories, or a high tech gadget, or a nice set of golf clubs which you just got to have one, or else you can’t sleep tight at night. Got it now? LOL!

I’ve always loved this webstore, which has a lot of nice things to offer. But I haven’t bought from it directly as most bento stores will get the items and sell in local market. What we need to do is just wait for them to “import” the stuffs.

So, I wonder if these nori punchers will hit some online bento stores soon…

They are really cute! But I guess I can imitate these facial expressions with my existing punchers, or just cut with exacto knife. But if you have only started collecting bento tools, maybe you can give them a try.

Here are my new bento gadgets…

Hello Kitty and Tomica Sandwich Moulds!

Yeap, I got the tools in my bento wish list, yippie! They are from Bento Craft (thanks Carmen!) and my kids love them the moment they saw it. My boy already used the Tomica set this morning for his breakfast, but the bread was too small for the mould. So, he suggested that we use the milk bread next time, which is slightly bigger. My boy is very interested to play with most of my bento tools, and luckily, these tools are not as “dangerous” as electrical supplies. So far, I haven’t let him try my exacto knife, maybe only when he’s older.

And thanks to Carmen again for the pack of autumn leaf picks. They are so pretty for an autumn theme bento.

It’s been awhile since the last time my kids and I fixed bentos together. So last night, all of us decided to have some “playing-with-our-food” fun by fixing a mini Santa Claus. My boy did most of his Santa Claus by himself, but my gal was enjoying leftovers after cutting them.

I wanted to fix the Santa Claus with quail eggs, but I couldn’t get any last night. Thus, the eggs were replaced by fish balls. Besides that, I prepared a white egg sheet, a piece of ham, a blanched baby carrot and some tiny spaghetti strips. Here’s how we did our Santa Claus:

Cut the ham and egg white with a small flower cutter, and stack them together.

Actually, you may skip this step if your egg sheet is thick enough. But to prevent it from tearing, stacking it on a piece of ham will help a lot.

Cut off the top to form Santa’s beard. (The top was later used as my boy’s Santa’s mustache)

Pin the beard on a fish ball with spaghetti strips. (You may replace it with quail egg)

Cut a small heart from the egg white and cut it into halves.

Pin the beard and a nose for Santa.

Pretty simple huh? My boy had no problem fixing his own Santa Claus, but I helped him to pin on the details.

He used a bigger flower cutter though…

I refrigerated the bento work in air-tight container, and took them out this morning. I pinned the fish ball on a cherry tomato, and added the eyes and lips with nori. I’ve forgotten to add the buttons, which were cut by my boy, but I guess he’s forgotten about them too. LOL!

Mini Santa Claus

Anyway, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Santa Claus, with tangerines and spaghetti too.

My boy’s Santa, which he’s very proud of it.

You must be wondering how I closed the bentos huh? LOL! Actually, my gal voiced her concern too. She’s too worried that her Santa will smashed when I closed it, so my boy suggested that they packed the tangerines in smaller bento boxes. So, their Santa could nicely lay down in the bentos, and I filled in the gap with some lettuce. Both of them are sooooooo “kan cheong” about Santa, I guess they really like today’s theme.

It’s quite fun doing this with my kids, even if it might be kind of messy some times. My kids have been asking me to bake with them, but I’m too tired to do so by the time we are back from the office. Besides that, weekends are quite packed with activities and TV, and some times, the mommy is too lazy to do anything much. If I have a maid or central vacuum to clean up the mess, then maybe we will bake some cookies for Christmas.

In short, mommy is simply too lazy. LOL!

I bought some mini wieners and hot dog buns yesterday, and decided to pack some for today’s bentos. To make the hot dogs “look” cuter *ahem!*, I decorated them as little puppies.

I prepared halves of hot dog buns and 4 mini chicken wieners.

Secure one of the wiener in the bun. You may add some lettuce if prefer.

I used a heart pick at first, but then I switched the pick with spaghetti strip because it torn the top surface of the bun.

Then, I added another piece of wiener on the first wiener, and secured them together with tiny spaghetti strip.

After that, I added the ears and face details with nori and artificial crab meat. You may use some ketchup as the cheeks, but my kids complained once that the ketchup messed up the “faces” when they opened their bentos.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s puppy hot dog bun. It will look better if you add legs and tail for the puppy. Just cut them from cheese or nori.

Yeap, I should have added legs and a tail for the puppy!

Anyway, I was running out of time this morning, so the puppies are “limbless” now.

It’s been a few months since my kids last tasted donuts, and my gal is craving for one. So, I bought some donuts yesterday, and I thought that my kids would love the sugar. But what do you know? They asked me to shake off the sugar! Argh…Next time, I will get sugarless donuts!

Besides the half piece of donut, I packed hard boil egg for the kids as well. I decorated the hard boiled egg as the cute raccoons in Tenorikuma. Here’s how I did the characters in Tenorikuma.

I prepared 2 hard boiled eggs.

Cut halves for one of the eggs.

For the other egg, I gently sliced of the egg white, and use a small round cutter to cut the ears.

Use spaghetti strips to join the ears to the eggs.

I Cut some cheese as nose and ears too.

Place the cheese on the eggs as shown.

Punch some nori and add in the facial details.

Then, I packed the donuts and fruits in the bentos and slipped in the eggs. So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s little raccoon named Latte, who is the manager of Tenorikuma cafe.

My gal will have Maple instead.

The fruits are slightly lesser in today’s bentos because my kids snacked on them when I was packing their meals.

Both my kids were very sensitive with food when they were babies. When I first supplemented my boy with formula milk at 9 months old, he was admitted to the hospital for cow milk intolerance, and it scared the h*ll of me as a first time mother. I was pregnant with my second baby, and my milk production subsided significantly. Besides that, I had low lying placenta and a few bleeding episodes and my gynae was against the idea of me breastfeeding during pregnancy. So, I had no choice but to wean him off.

But after that incidence, I was very careful with the food I introduced to my babies, especially my gal. Egg is definitely something I try to avoid, including seafood. She had very sensitive skin and mild eczema, and even her skin doctor took her skin photo (some kind of unidentified rash) as case study. LOL! Nonetheless, I’m very glad that they slowly grow out of “these problems” as they are older now. However, they are very picky with those “sensitive” food which I avoided when they were younger.

My gal only took hard boiled quail egg at first, that’s why you hardly see any chicken egg or fried egg in my bentos. But recently, she loves eggs! Any form of eggs! I’ve been trying to introduce eggs to them for a few months, and I’m so happy that both of them love eggs now.

The trick is…I let them prepare their eggs. My kids love to crack the egg and beat it up by themselves. They will request to mix some carrots or tomatoes or meat in their eggs, just like scrambled eggs, but some times, they will just take it alone. By getting them involved in food preparation, they are more keen to try new food now. But I still haven’t let them cook their eggs on their own yet.

Since both of them love having eggs, I have more food options for their bentos! Yippie! Not to mention, it’s easier to order food or eat out as eggs are pretty common at buffet breakfast. Mmm….one less worry about food when we are out on our trip to one of the south beach hotels next time.

I guess I will be fixing more egg sheets in their bentos, and there is so much we can do with egg sheets.

Fried rice covered with egg sheet, decorated as Pooh bear

Another egg sheet bento decorated as Pikachu.

 That’s what I prepared for their last weekend, with just a simple fried rice but decorated with egg sheets. Too bad the egg sheets were not nicely done, my “skill” must have gone rusty after a month of holiday. LOL!