Sweet Potato and Corn Bentos

12. July 2010, 10:55 UhrAnimal Theme, Bento, Sweet Potato, Teddy Bear Themeshoppingmum6 comments

I pack after school bentos for my kids 4 times per week, but I don’t do kyaraben all the time. Some times, it can just be a plain looking bentos of sandwiches, Japanese sweet potatoes, corns, fruits and some protein like eggs and processed meat. I’ve always wanted to do something with sweet potatoes, besides cutting them with cookie cutter. To do so, you can’t over steam the potatoes. I would normally set my steamer to 20 – 30 minutes so that it’s not over cooked.

But this morning, I purposely steamed the sweet potatoes for 50 minutes so that they were totally soft. You can do so with a microwave which might save you some preparation time.

I smashed the potatoes when they were still hot, and gently formed a few potato balls and joined them up with spaghetti strips. I bet the spaghetti strips would be totally cooked and soft too in the hot potatoes. LOL!

So, here are the bentos:

froggie sweet potato bento
My gal’s froggie sweet potato bento. She had some fun rolling the leftover potatoes and ate them too. :)


teddy sweet potato bento
I did the same thing for my boy but decorated it as a teddy bear.


Here’s the complete bento, with corns placed in the lower tier.

sweet potato and corn bento

Too bad the color of smashed Japanese sweet potatoes is not as nice as those purple potatoes or normal potatoes. But then, my kids love the taste.

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6 comments:

  1. Lil'chan, 12. July 2010, 13:12

    Nice bento!^^ I wonder why your bear and frog looks green. Are Japanese sweet potato green?

     
  2. shoppingmum, 12. July 2010, 13:24

    Lil’chan, I think it’s slightly oxidized. :P Most of the time, I noticed that the potatoes will turn darker after a while. I haven’t figured out how to prevent this, but it tastes sweet and the same.

     
  3. Susan, 12. July 2010, 15:07

    The pictures aren’t showing on the blog for me, I went and looked in your Flickr. Totally yummy :-)

     
  4. Lia Chen, 12. July 2010, 15:42

    Oh yeay! They are so cute … and great idea with sweet potatoes :)

     
  5. MankyCat, 12. July 2010, 21:54

    I’ve done something similar with American sweet potatoes. I microwaved them, scooped out the flesh, mixed in butter and brown sugar, and then rolled them into balls (about the same size as what yours looked like). Turned out great! I also made potato balls with normal leftover mashed potatoes and they were tasty. Love the idea of adding ears!

     
  6. shoppingmum, 12. July 2010, 22:20

    Thanks Susan and Lia Chen. :)

    MankyCat, thanks for sharing! I might try this again with normal potatoes and add some butter and sugar or salt, as suggested by you. :) Hopefully, I can find some purple sweet potatoes too, that will be a great color.