Mothering Corner

Again, today’s title sounds weird! Anyway, you will know what I mean later.

My gal requested that I fixed her some mini heart, so I thought of decorating the hearts, instead of just packing them as plain heart sandwiches. I spread some jam on the bread and cut and sealed the bread with 2 heart cutters as shown below:

The cutters are slightly different in sizes. Make sure that the smaller one is used “upside down” so that it will seal the bread instead of cutting through.

Then, I proceeded to decorate the jam sandwiches. I fixed two hens for my gal by adding picks and cheese as wings.

They will be hens, after adding nori and kamaboko as their rosy cheeks.

As for my boy, I cut 3 pieces of cheese with 3 different sizes of round cutters to create the shell of the snails.

I stacked the cheese to create the spiral effect.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Two Little Hens Bento. Let’s pretend that the hens are hatching eggs.

There are quail eggs, oranges (hidden under the strawberries) and rose apples in the bento too.

These snails belong to my boy.

Pretty simple huh?

It’s something simple again for today’s bento. My initial plan was to fix a brown egg sheets for Chip and Dale, but I was out of eggs. So, this is what I did yesterday:

I cut the cheese with the cutter and mold.

Try not to press hard with the imprint mold. What I wanted was to get the outlines of the chipmunk, then I cut off the excess cheese with an exacto knife. You can also use a toothpick to cut the cheese.

I wrapped the cheese pieces and kept them refrigerated. This morning, I cut some bread with the same cutter, and fixed some butter and sugar toasts for today’s bento. Once the toasts cooled down, I topped the cheese on them and added nori as decoration. The nori bits were punched with the chipmunk puncher, which came in the same set.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Chip and Dale bento, with strawberries, blueberries and rose apple too.

This bento belongs to my boy.

When my boy saw his bento, he asked me why are there only 2 chipmunks but not 3? I was puzzled, then I realized that he was expecting to see Alvin and the chipmunks!

But I fixed Chip and Dale! LOL!

Ok, next time boy! I think the same set can be used for Alvin and his friends too.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by Mari Miyazawa’s blog post, as well as my boy’s encounter with a baby chick which fell from the nest. Just check out the link and see how creative Mari is in decorating food as cute little chicks and birds!

On the other hand, my boy found a dead baby bird a few weeks ago at his school. It’s rainy season here, and the storm can be rather strong. I guess the baby chick fell from the nest accidentally by the strong wind, so it’s quite sad to see its dead body. But my brave little boy just picked up the chick and showed it to his friends and teachers, while the mommy was basically screaming, gosh, that’s gross. Sorry, I’m not so into little animals, especially a dead one.

Then a few days ago, he found a bird nest in our garden, probably dropped from the trees as well. We saw some egg shells but no birds were found in it. Maybe they had all flown away, but the nest was still there. Again, blame it on the strong wind.

With this theme in mind, I decided to decorate a piece of sandwich as a hatching, and some nuggets as baby chicks. This is what I did last night:

I cut the bread with a stainless steel bento. By doing so, the bread can fit well in the lunch box.

Then I cut some smoked cheese with the bento too.

Cut the bread and smoked cheese into semi circles, but the cheese is slightly smaller than the bread.

Cut off 2 smaller semi circles as shown in the pic.

Next, cut a round piece of white cheese. Sorry about the lighting, I know the pics can’t show the different colors of the cheese!

Then I cut off the sides of the circle. After that, cut them in halves.

Cut some kamaboko as the chick’s beak.

This is what you would get after stacking up the details, which will be placed on the sandwiches.

For the little baby chick nuggets, cut some baby carrot as their beaks.

Try to blanch the baby carrots for a minute or so to soften them. It’s easier to pin them onto the nuggets (with spaghetti strips) if they are soft.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s baby chicks nuggets.

Here’s the top view of the bento, showing the baby chick sandwich.

This bento belongs to my boy.

My initial plan was to make a zoo bento, but then, due to my crazy workload this week (mommy’s out of breathe soon), I could only fix a simple giraffe.

This is what I did this morning:

I boiled some mini wieners and a quail egg.

Cut off the end of a mini wiener.

Do the same for another piece, but cut it off diagonally.

Cut the quail egg into halves.

Join all the pieces together with spaghetti strips.

I secured the wieners onto the sandwich (to prevent them from moving around) with 2 bits of spaghetti strips. I added 2 food picks as its tiny horns.

Then, I proceeded to add some nori and more details on the giraffe. So here are the bentos:

My boy’s little giraffe. He said the nose area looks like a smiley face. O.o

This is for my gal.

Actually, I thought of wrapping the wieners with egg sheets first so that the giraffes will have the right color. But oh well, you may give it a try.

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:

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

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.

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.

When I mean simple, it’s really very simple. This little fish can be done in less than 5 minutes, after you have got everything packed and ready. All you need is a small mini wiener cut into thick slices, a heart pick, and some nori and kamaboko (or artificial crab meat) for facial decoration.

So, here are the little cute fishes:

My gal’s little fish, swimming towards the octopus.

My boy’s fish has 2 picks, and I love the crown.

The picks nailed the wieners to the bread, so the fishes are well secured. As for the bubbles, I think they will move around if my kids snake the bentos.

Here’s what I did previously, but it’s a goldfish bento.

P/S: This bento was added to What’s for lunch Wednesday Week 4 as well.

For todays’ bentos, I’m repeating something similar as I did with triangular origiri mold, but I cut the bread with these chicken triangle bentos, instead of an origiri mold. The bread fits well in the bento, and I love the cute chicken design on the covers!

I decorated the sandwich as if a boy is wearing a chicken costume. The fruits are packed separately in another bento box.

This bento belongs to my gal.

The Chick Family Bento Cases came in a set of 3. Do check them out at J-Mama.

We had a great weekend, and I hope that everyone had a good time too. BIL and his family are here for summer break, thus the kids have a great time playing with each other, while the adults enjoy stuffing themselves silly with food and drinks. My SIL loves Thai food, and the spicier the merrier. LOL! I think she will have as much tomyam kung (prawn) as she can this week, and will only check out apidexin reviews once her holiday is over.

Frankly, I think Bangkok is safe for traveling now, but then it all depends on the travelers. They are going to Siam Paragon today, and her kids will be visiting the aquarium. Too bad that my kids can’t skip school, so they can’t join their cousins. That explained why I packed after school bentos for them today. LOL!

I bought some soft cakes yesterday. FYI, I’m not really into baking on my own.

Orange and banana soft cakes.

I prepared an hard boiled egg and cut the egg white in ovals and triangles.

The triangles would be used as cat’s ears while the ovals were used to decorate the cake as a dog.

I cut 2 pieces of nori in oval, and topped them on the egg white. Try to wrap the egg and nori with food wrap for a few minutes so that they will stick better on each other.

After that, I pinned the “ears” on the cakes with bits of spaghetti strips and punched some nori with these punchers:

The round eyes are actually 2 semi-circles punched with this blue smiley puncher from Daiso.

So, here are the bentos:

This is my boy’s cats bento, with orange soft cake, blueberries and strawberries.

My gal will have a dog instead. She doesn’t like cats.

Ok, the title sounds a bit weird, but it should fit today’s bentos.

Just take a look…

My boy’s “Piggy Says Hi” Bento with some blanched veggie, edamame (hidden beneath), baby carrot, a small piece of teriyaki salmon and fried buffalo wing.

I used 2 rice molds to form the pig and the bunny. Their bodies were formed with a bunny rice mold, and the heads were formed by a cat-shaped and rabbit-shaped rice molds respectively. The round rice balls were manually done by using food wrap.

My gal’s Bunny.

I think the tail on bunny’s back is way too big. I should have formed a smaller rice ball for her.

My Songkran break has finally ended, and I’m back to work again this morning. My kids are still tagging along with me as we didn’t enroll them for second half of summer camp. Hence, they don’t have anywhere to go except following mommy to work.

As usual, I’m preparing lunch so that they don’t have to eat out and it’s easier for mommy, who’s avoiding the hassle of driving 2 monkeys kids out to beat the lunch hour traffic.

Today’s lunch bentos.

I’m using the 2 tiers bento box given from 2 blogger friends who visited Bangkok last week. The boxes are quite big for my kids’ appetite, so I only packed a thin layer of rice, topped with teriyaki minced pork, some fried egg, broccoli and grapes. I decorated a small quail egg as a mole, and cut the words from kamaboko.

My boy’s cute little mole peeping out from his lunch. Its feet were cut from another quail egg white.

I added a ribbon pick for my gal’s mole.

I must say that this 2-tiered bento box is just perfect for my kids’ lunch.

Thank you, Laudryamah and Tricia!