Mothering Corner

Stitch and Marie sets

The kids wanted me to use the new tools for their bentos, so here they are:

My boy’s Stitch Bento with sandwiches, lychees, cherries, baby carrots and some stacked ham and cheese.

Too bad I don’t have Stitch bento box for the theme so I’ll order one for him next time.

My gal picked Marie the Cat for today’s bento.

Both kids bring after school bentos to school since yesterday. The teachers help them to keep the bentos in the fridge until 3.30pm, so I still have the option of packing fruits. The fridge is located in the pantry where the fresh milk is kept, the kids are served with 2 times of fresh milk daily.

The teachers actually encourage them to bring after school bentos, that’s why they don’t mind keeping the bentos and bring them out for my kids after school. My kids will still be taking the lunch and snack prepared by school, but if I’m late in picking them up after school, they can help themselves with the bentos first.

Most of the kids will buy junk food and ice-cream from the cafeteria, but I only allow my kids to help themselves with rubbish junks on Fridays, on which they will bring some pocket money to school. I know that the temptation is there.  Even if I prefer them not to have any, I can’t just let them be “aliens” among their friends. Thus, we came with an agreement that they can buy ice-cream or junks on Friday. After some time, I will tell them that if they don’t spend the money, they can save it up.

For the time being, I’m so sure that they will go grab junks like their friends! LOL!

My boy is into Pikkachu these days, and he requested Pikkachu again. I did something similar like the previous simplified Pikkachu bento, but added more details with white cheese (for the letters) and nori. This time, I didn’t stack the cheese on ham though.

My boy’s Pikkachu bento with jam sandwich, corn, mini wieners and blueberries.

My gal doesn’t want to have corn and wiener in her meal today.

The wordings were cut with these alphabet cutters:

They had just arrived at my office yesterday, along with these new gadgets I ordered from J-mama.

My kids are very excited with the new tools, and so am I! LOL!

I got this mini hearts sandwich mold from Bento Craft recently, and I’ve tried it twice this week. Most of these bread mold and sealer will only work well if you have the right size of bread (which is big enough) and also at the right thickness.

I’ve been very occupied at work this week, so I didn’t have time to do my grocery at the shopping malls where some major bakery shops are located. Some of these bakeries have bigger slices of bread, and they are thicker too, as comparing to those available at the local convenience stores.

But this is what I’ve figured out last night on how to get a nicer seal with this bread mold.

Place a piece of bread in the mold. Seal it with the top lid and press down to get the imprints.

Obviously, my bread is too small for the mold, and it’s not thick enough.

Add some sandwich fillings. I used jam previously, so last night, I tried ham and cheese.

Top the sandwich with another piece of bread. Repeat the sealing process and press down harder.

This is what I got when I removed the top seal. The cutter didn’t cut though the sandwich well as the bread was too thick enough.

Nonetheless, I cut by the lines with the tip of the knife.

You can see that the mini sandwiches were not properly sealed after the sides were removed.

So I tried to seal them again. You can also pick up the sandwiches, flip them over to the other sides, and repeat the sealing process.

Now, the mini sandwiches sealed better.

You can also “touch up” and seal the sandwiches with the back of a knife. I did that for a piece or 2 which didn’t seal well. Pardon me, my bread is not at the right size.

I hope that this tip helps. I’ll try to get the right size of bread and work on this tool again. Gee…I might need diet supplements that work after eating so much bread this week.

Or is it just me who can’t get the sealing right? Please share with me how do you get a nice seal with bread molds like this. Thanks.

Sorry that I hardly leave comment on most of the bento blogs I’ve visited, but I do read your posts. Most of the time, I will just read from my feed, but for some blogs, I will drop by if I have the time. Life is getting busier for me, but I still want to steal some time for blog hopping.

I know that Hapa Bento organizes BOMB every month, but the theme always slipped passed my mind when I’m too busy. Luckily, there are a few bento-ers who took part and I kept reminded about BOMB. The theme for May is flowers, so here is my submission.

I cut the bread and cheese with a flower cutter. For the bread placed on top, cut out a small circle with a round cutter. Then, I added nori and artificial crab meat as cute faces.

Here are the bentos:

My gal’s bento with flower sandwiches, rambutans, carrot roses in baked fish cakes, strawberries and some blueberries.

This is for my boy. Most of his fruits were hidden in the lower tier under Pikkachu.

I should have place some flower picks for him too, but I was running out of time. I have just got the items from Bento Craft, and my kids love them all.

New bento tools by Bento Craft. Thanks for the cute duckie cutting board, which my gal claimed it’s hers!

BTW, the tiny carrot roses are inspired by Hippomum. Do check out her tutorial. I just replaced fish sausage with blanched carrot strips.

Carrot rose.

Remember the Disney and puncher sets I blogged about days ago? Two of the Disney sets are available at NST.my now. I’ve just placed my order, and oh ya, I’m a shopaholic.

Please don’t remind me that I already have the Mickey cutter, I will just hide one away.  

There is another set for Doraemon and its puncher, but you need to preorder for it. Not sure if the store owner will bring in all the collection, but I do hope that she or other bento store owners will.

So, if you are interested, just hop over to nst.my to check them out.

On top of that, the situation in Bangkok is very bad these 2 days. If you are a reader living in Bangkok city, please stay safe. I’ll probably have another boring weekend, rotting at my office, or checking out green study at home or maybe visiting the shopping malls away from the city. Gosh, things have been dragging too long, I hope that peace and order will be restored soon. I really miss Paragon.

I love my shoe punchers and I use them a lot in bento-ing. They are slightly more expensive than Carl’s punchers, but they never fail me.

I stumbled upon some nice shoe punchers which are pretty good in bento-ing. If you are not so keen with cutting nori with exacto knife, or can’t find the right nori shape from your puncher collection, you might want to check them out.

Images from Cotta.

Are you tempted in getting them? I know that I do!

I can’t read Japanese and I don’t trust my translator because the text doesn’t make sense after translation. So, if you are interested, do check out these Disney products and see if international shipping is available.

It will cost me a bomb if I get all these punchers, and I already have most of these Disney cutters. So, I better go wash my face to cool my shopping itch, and warm my face up with the hand dryers. I can’t be seriously buying all these sets now. LOL!

Most of us who follow some Japanese bento blogs might have seen these new arrivals over the weeks, but I still can’t find any online stores that carry these products.

Pic Source

Pic Source

Have you seen these picks at 100Yen?

Pic Source

Those are the hat picks I mentioned previously! So cute!!! Where to get them though?

There is another blog that featured some cute piggy picks, but I can’t find it in my feeder. Those piggy picks and barans are very cute too.

So, anyone is going to Japan lately?

I’ve just made my order at Bentocraft.com yesterday, and I’m so excited to get these 2 items:

Tomica Fire Engine BentoAnimal Picks

Animal Picks

There are a lot of new bento boxes, especially sandwich bento box. I was tempted to get Shinkansen and Cinnamonroll sandwich boxes, but I know that I’m really running out of space to keep more bentos! So, if you are interested, do take a peep at BentoCraft.

I found a few new picks at some Japanese bento blogs, and maybe Carmen, the owner of BentoCraft, will bring them in soon. I just can’t wait to get the picks with the cute characters with custom hats. I have seen them somewhere, but I can’t remember which blog it was.

Anyway, it’s nice to have a few more cute items added to my bento tools collection!

My SIL got a Hello Kitty pan from Penang, and she is having a hard time using it. I think it looks something like this:

She asked if there is a way of using this pan, and make a nice piece of fried egg sheet. Seriously, I can’t help much as I don’t have any fancy shaped frying pans. Remember that my kids rejected fried eggs and it’s only until recently that they love it?

On top of that, my kids don’t take pancakes, so I don’t think I need a pan like that. I tried preparing pancakes for them, and I ended up eating ALL because they didn’t want to try!!! I had almost needed the best hgh releaser to burn off the extra calories after eating so many pieces of pancake with honey syrup!
Another reason is, I doubt my skill in flipping it over to the other side and I wonder if the shape will come out exactly the same.

Thus, if you have any tips in using fancy pans like this, please share in comment section. Thanks!!!

I should have posted this earlier but I was very occupied for the past few days. Our guests have just left today, so we will have a more relaxing holiday until the new year. I’m not sure if hubby has any special plan on how to celebrate new year’s eve, but I would prefer a nice shopping trip. LOL!

But firstly, let me spend a day cleaning up my house first. The ceiling fans, tile flooring and bathrooms have not been cleaned for a week. That’s how BUSY we were.

On top of that, I would like to thank Ellena for the Christmas pressie, and Arlene for getting me some bento tools all the way from Japan.

Pressies from Ellena

One of the items bought by Arlene.

Thanks ladies! I really appreciate your kindness and help.

I hope that all of you will have a joyous holiday and looking forward to the new year.

Happy New Year!