Mothering Corner

I can’t believe it, I didn’t snap any photos for today’s bentos! Serious! I was in a bad rush this morning (I’m not a Monday person), and I thought that I’d taken the photos of the bentos before packing them up. When I was looking through the photos in my camera just now, I got a shock when I couldn’t find the complete bento photos. But then, I took some while decorating the garlic bread into little tigers, so at least there is still “something” to share. LOL!

This is what I did last night:

I cut a regular hotdog bun into 3 segments. I would only used the ends.

Make a cut on the top of the ends but don’t cut through the buns.

Spread some butter and garlic spread in the opening of the buns.

I stored the buns in air tight container, and kept them refrigerated over night.

By doing so, it would save me some time in the morning! So, the first thing I did this morning was to toast the buns for 10 minutes, boil some quail eggs and a small piece of kamaboko, and prepare the fruits.

Once everything was done and cooled down, I proceeded to decorating the buns.

Cut the quail eggs into halves.

Pin the quail eggs on the buns with spaghetti strips.

Cut the kamaboko into small circles.

Slip in the kamaboko as ears for the tigers.

Punch some nori with this puncher and add the stripes for the tiger.

Then, add the rest of the face features.

Cut 2 small circles from the pink layer of kamaboko and add them as cheeks.

So, here are the little tiger garlic breads.

With my kids getting older day by day, I’ve begun to think about the possibility of going back to work. Helping hubby is not as busy as before, and I’m getting restless.

If I’m still in Malaysia, I would probably start looking for jobs now, even if it’s not going be to easy under this economy situation. But over here in Thailand, it’s not easy for expats to get a job, unless you have years of experience in specified fields. Being away from the engineering world for so long is not making things easier either.

There was a time when I considered about getting an online degree, especially in teaching. There are numerous colleges that offer online teaching degree, such as Western Governors Online University. It will be easier to get a job from the international schools, if you have a teaching degree.

But too bad, I’m not interested in teaching. I just don’t have the patience! So, I guess there isn’t much option left for me, if I want to look for a job here.

Oh well, not exactly fruity as I packed some sweet potatoes too.

Some times, I will just pack fruits in my kids’ after school bento, especially on busy mornings. My kids are not so into greens, so I’m making sure that they have enough fiber and vitamins from fruits. I really missed those days when they were not so picky about veggies!

Most of the time, I don’t decorate their fruit bentos. But since I had some time to kill this morning, I fixed them a nicer fruity bento as shown below:

My gal’s fruity bento.

This bento belongs to my boy.

I left a lot of gap between the fruits so that I could easily rearrange them before closing the lid.

Ah…again, it took more than half an hour to upload these 2 bento photos.

Some times, I wish that my kids can go home straight after school instead of tugging with us at the office after a long day. If I have a nanny or a helper, I would definitely send them back home after school ends at 4.30pm. They spend such long hours at school, and by waiting for us at the office for another 2 hours or more, they have missed up the whole day of being at home. By the time dinner was fixed and served, it’s almost 8pm. Just imagine if I want to tug them in by 9.30pm, they will only have a little time for home work and play.

I used to joke to them that we are not staying in a house, it’s just a hostel. LOL! Everyone just come back to Zzzz… and off we go the next morning. But we are trying to let the kids enjoy the TV and play time at home on Saturdays, which explains why I canceled their art class, and didn’t enroll them to another extra activities on the weekends. I do feel that we are not spending a lot of time at home.

I wonder if how other parents with kids tugging along at work feel about this? Are we spending too much time at the office, and how your kids feel about this? But then, it might be a good experience for kids to see how their parents work, as long as we keep them away from the manufacturing site and harmful or cleaningstains like Anilox.

My kids will be very happy if we leave early, especially when hubby is on business trip or dinner with customers. They will be so thrilled just to come home early and slack on the couch.

My kids are really into tigers these days. So, I’m fixing them another tiger bentos, with little kids dressing up in tiger costumes.

I didn’t manage to snap any photos during preparation because both kids were bugging me and “playing” with the cutters and leftover too. They were very excited in helping out, considering that they haven’t done so in weeks. The preparation was done last night, and I wrapped the decorative cheese nicely in food wrap, before storing it in an air-tight container. Thus, I could bear to sleep in a bit this morning, and only spent about 15 minutes in preparing the fruits and packing the bentos.

So, here they are:

My boy’s bento with little kids in tiger costumes.

Besides cheese topped on sandwiches, there are blueberries, a quail egg, some jackfruit, cherries and a tangerine too.

My gal will have strawberries instead of cherries.

I love the tiny flowers on the girls. They were cut with the flower plunger, given by Ellena. Thanks a million pal!

I’m using Flickr Pro account for most of my photos, but I noticed that the uploader is getting slower, especially after I upgraded it to the latest version. Previously, it would take less than 5 minutes to upload 2 photos, but now, it’s like taking forever! I wonder if it has something to do with my internet connection? Or is it the uploader?

I’ve done most of my daily planning, read my emails, kaypoh at Facebook, clear some of my job tasks and check out some mesothelioma treatments online but the photos are still uploading. Ahh…..

It’s so slooooowwwww….

It’s my first day at the office after a short break since Christmas, and I’m soooooo reluctant to get back to my busy life so soon. But then again, I’m looking forward for the next break in Chinese New Year, when most of our family members will be here in Bangkok for our annual reunion.

We have been staying in Bangkok for close to 2 years, and I am glad that we have really settled down, and my kids love this place. Business wise, it’s still a struggle and a long way to go, but hubby is working hard on it. As for myself, I try not to set any new year resolution because I might not be able to hang on to it until the end of the year. LOL! Nonetheless, I will have some short term goals, like NO SHOPPING this month (I broke my budget in December ), check out the dental discounts and see if it’s still possible to have a bracelet at the age of 32, and get back to my knitting projects which have been left unattended for 3 months.

So, do you have any new year resolution? Care to share?

I packed these bentos on the last day of 2009 for our trip to the floating market. We left home before 7am, so the photos were taken under the dim light of my house. Hopefully, you don’t mind about the ugly photos. LOL!

My boy has always wanted a tiger bento, especially after he’s got himself a tiger coin box from the Christmas party. Since it’s the year of tiger this year, and there are already a lot of bentoers fixing the same theme, I might as well just join in the gang.

I cut the ham with this panda cutter, and used the ham as the base.

Then, cut a piece of cheese with the same cutter.

Repeat the same step with a piece of smoked cheese.

But for the smoked cheese, cut out an oval for the face, and 2 smaller ovals at the ears.

Stack the ham, cheese and smoked cheese on one another.

After that, I proceeded to decorate the tigers with nori. Hence, there are the bentos:

This is my boy’s bento, with the tiger slipped in the bun.

And here’s my gal’s tigress.

I should have posted these bentos earlier, but we were pretty busy during the break. I didn’t have time to upload the photos all squeezed in my laptop system memory for the past few days. But then, it’s better to be late than never. LOL!

Happy New Year! May year 2010 be a great year for all of us.