Mothering Corner

I did a mouse bento previously, and I felt like fixing this theme again because it’s quick and easy. But this time, I used 2 quail eggs for a mouse, instead of one like the previous bento. Today’s bento are quite light, with only kiwi, mango and a piece of jam sandwich. Thus, I packed 2 quail eggs in each bento.

I didn’t manage to snap the step by step photos on how I decorated the mouse’s head, but I shall explain in detailed.

The mice, decorated from quail eggs

1. Cut a line diagonally on the equal egg and slip in the ear. You can cut the ears from kamaboko, with the orange cutter as shown in this post. This cutter comes with the quail egg cutter set.

2. Then, I added the eyes, nose and lip punched from nori.

3. Break 2 tiny bits of spaghetti strips and pin them on the mouse as whiskers. I only added whiskers at one side since I wanted to create a “side-view” mouse.

4. Pin this pick on another quail egg as the tail.

5. Join the quail eggs with spaghetti strip. (Tips on Spaghetti Strips)

Then, I slipped the mice in the bentos, and here they are:

A Mouse Bento

There’s lots of gap in today’s bento, but the mouse should be stagnant in the silicon cup, unless you swing the bento around.

This mouse belongs to my gal.

I fixed something simple and easy this morning. It’s been awhile since we last had SPAM, so I felt like having SPAM sandwiches. I cut the SPAM with a flower cutter before frying it.

The bread was cut with the same cutter too.

Cut some cheese with this Rilakkuma cutter.

Then, I stacked the cheese on SPAM sandwiches.

Some details were added with bits smoked cheese and kamaboko.

More details are added in, including punched nori.

After that, I slotted in some corns and fruits in the bento, and here they are:

My gal’s bento

This bento belongs to my boy.

I was very busy last week, thus I didn’t have time to fix anything nice for the kids. With Chinese New Year around the corner, I think I will be pretty occupied with some preparation, mainly because we are expecting hubby’s family members, who are flying here for the celebration. It’s our second Chinese New Year in Thailand, and I’m very grateful that they are willing to fly over here to join us. Chinese New Year is not a major celebration in Thailand, so my kids can’t skip school for many days, if we want to fly back.

Anyway, today’s bento is tiger again, and I hope that you are not getting bored with this theme.

I cut the smoked cheese with this teddy cutter.

Cut 4 small ovals as the noses and tummies.

Then, add some nori on the tigers and that’s it! It’s very simple and fast.

This preparation was done last night, and the cheese tigers were refrigerated in air-tight container. So this morning, I took them out and topped them on the sandwiches.

Both bentos have the same decoration to speed things up.

I “created” the word “hu” by joining bits of nori together. It will look nicer if you trace the character and cut it out as one.

Here’s a close up of the tiger year bento:

Hi there! I’m a little tiger cub, cut from sweet potato. My tail was “made” with cheese topped on ham (to prevent the cheese from melting fast).

I hope that you’ll like me as much as my little “owner” .

He could not resist himself from snapping a photo of me with his camera. LOL!

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.

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 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.

Today’s bentos are inspired by miho nao chin. I saw the sandwich cutter at Daiso some time ago, but never really thought of buying it until I saw how cute Mihochin’s bento is. Just take a peep and you will know why!

This sandwich cutter is quite big, but I managed to grab a loaf of white bread which fits it quite well. Only the crust was cut off, and I can easily cut the bread into 4 different shapes at a go. Besides decorating the sandwiches as Pikkachu, Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma, I created a tiger, a koala bear and a kitten too.

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s bento with Pikkachu, koala bear and tiger.

My gal will have Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty and a kitten.

The koala bear and Rilakkuma were cut from brown eggsheet. I mixed some dark soysauce, a pinch of sugar and a table spoon of mirin into the egg mixture to create that color. As for tiger, it was cut from “egg yolk” sheet.  The other characters were cut from cheese and I topped all the characters on the sandwiches.

Hubby bought some buns last night, and I packed 2 in the kids’ bentos. Since the buns looked rather “boring”, I thought of decorating them as Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer by adding a cherry tomato and 2 mini chicken wieners on each of them. It’s something speedy and simple, and the reindeer were ready in less than 5 minutes (excluding the time used for boiling the wiener). LOL!

Rudolf, before he was allowed to join in any reindeer game.

And the happy Rudolf after he’s gone down in history. LOL!

Very simple huh? Their fruits were packed in the lower tier of these basket bentos and are not shown in this post.

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.