Mothering Corner

My kids have been asking for a Dragon Ball bento for some time, but I told them to wait until the kitchen is ready so that I can fix it with egg sheets. Nevertheless, they kept bugging me! So yesterday, I decided to give it a try with ham and cheese. It’s not easy to do so with the smoked cheese I bought, which is not from Chesdale and it melts faster in room temperature!

Thus, I froze the sliced cheese for about 30 minutes to harden it before cutting. It makes cutting tiny details easier too.

For this type of kyaraben, egg sheet is still a better option as you can prepare it in the desired color with food gel or natural food coloring. Besides that, egg sheets are great under room temperature and you don’t have to worry about them melting in the lunch boxes before your kids have time at break time.

But for cheese, it’s best to take these factors into consideration:

• stack the cheese on ham to avoid it from melting fast and hold to its shape.
• use  a cooler bag and icepack to keep the lunch box cold while transporting.
• freeze the cheese before cutting to prevent it from melting fast.
• you can also try coloring the cheese with food pen, but I haven’t tried this method. So far, I only stick to white and smoked cheese.

The preparation and cutting were done last night. Then, I wrapped the details in cling wrap and refrigerated these Goku(s) in an air tight container.

This morning, I prepared the sandwiches and fruits, before topping Goku on the bread. The last but not least, I added nori for facial details.

So, here they are:

Dragon Ball Super Sanyai Goku bentos

Ham and Cheese Super Sanyai Goku

It’s hard to pick up the momentum in bento-ing especially after resting for so long. Instead of trying out something harder, I prefer to stick to simple kyaraben which can be done in 5 minutes for each bento.

Today’s bento is inspired by a Japanese blog, which I  can’t remember which. *so sorry again * I don’t have much time in blogging hopping these days, so I just browse through my Google reader feed, and if the pics show up, I can view the bentos. Otherwise, I won’t be bother much and just mark all as read. Oh boy…I’m getting very lazy!

Anyway, I remembered that it was something about decorating sandwiches as dogs and I tried the same idea by fixing rabbits and pigs as shown below:

Rabbit sandwiches for my gal. I packed her fruits separately.

Piggies for my boy…somehow, I still think they look like dogs. LOL!

It’s my second attempt in creating a dragon bento, especially after my boy said that the previous dragon looked like a cow.

Due to time and space constraints, I decided to make a speedy bento with sandwich balls and quail eggs, instead of fulfilling my boy’s wish of having this dragon.

I would be out of my mind if I want to fix that dragon!

So, instead of picking a kyaraben challenge, the mom decided to do a simpler one.

Another dragon bento, with sandwich balls, quail eggs and fruits.

And a girlie dragon for my gal.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Things are not going as fast as I expected. My kitchen is still not ready!!! It’s just a hassle trying to prepare breakfast and bentos in the morning without a proper cooking area and a kitchen sink. Sigh…

But then again, my kids are still pleased with their meals, even if the mother can’t seem to do much kyaraben as planned. I wanted to fix a cute dragon with mini wiener but it didn’t turn out what I had in mind. LOL! Pardon the zigzag cutting line on the dragon as I cut the wiener with a spreader, instead of a proper knife. That’s how unorganized my kitchen is!

Year of Dragon Bento

Since the dragon doesn’t look like one, I spelled it out with cheese. LOL!

I must admit that my bento skill has deteriorated  after the long rest.

Kids have started school again after 3 months of “holidaying”! I’m back into packing after school bentos but I can’t do much kyaraben. My kitchen is not ready yet, and the renovation is way much delayed!!! As you know, millions of houses need reconstruction after the flood, so most of the construction workers are quite busy with projects, and they keep on accepting new orders without finishing their existing jobs. >.<

Anyway, I’m just trying my best to pack some food for the kids and we are still trying to cope with the new routine, new route to and from school, and our new place. Living in a condo is not that bad, except that kids don’t have a garden and playground to run around in the evening.

Their school has not fully refurbished too, but at least the classrooms are fit to be used now. I can’t check on my gal on surveillance cameras online anymore, but she should be doing fine. Kids are surely glad to be back to school.

Simple bentos

I hope that I can at least make a CNY themed bento. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my kitchen will be ready in time!

I’m trying to kill 2 birds with one stone. Firstly, my kids have been waiting so long for a Halloween bento, and secondly I’m trying to use this long-forgotten cutter which I bought from Daiso. From the post date, the last time I used this cutter was like almost 2 years ago! Check out these cute little sandwiches cut with the same cutter. Maybe I have other bentos which were prepared with the same tools, but I can’t seem to remember where are the posts. Oh well…

The pink bread cutter from Daiso.

The main reason why I hardly use this cutter is, it’s quite big and most slice breads are too small for it, unless you don’t mind wasting a lot of bread. Nonetheless, I managed to get the right size of bread from Yamazaki. Or you can always bake your own bread!

This bread fits well with only the crust being cut off.

I decorated the mini sandwiches with cheese and nori.

Instead of cutting the nori and paste it on the bread, I cut the shapes with cheese first.

Then stacked on the nori and cut the outline with exacto knife.

For the owl, cut off the excess cheese before cutting the outline on nori.

Cut out the eyes and details from the excess cheese, a small piece of kamaboko and red artificial crab meat.

Due to limited space in the lunch boxes, I omitted the heart sandwiches.

Then, I added the details on the sandwiches, and here they are:

My boy’s Halloween bento with boo ghosts and a black cat.

My gal has a cute ghost, an owl and a witch in her box.

I’m still reading bedtime stories to my kids and recently, my gal fell in love with this classic story called Heidi, which was written by Johanna Spyri. She would love me to read it every night but I must let my boy choose his stories too. So, I decided to fix her a simple Heidi bento today, along with her grandfather.

Heidi and her grandfather.

I decorated the sandwich balls as Heidi’s grandfather, and Heidi was cut from cheese and nori. I’m trying to make it as if  grandpa’s hugging the little girl, in the simplest way ever.

I didn’t pack anything for my kids yesterday and guess what, my gal wailed her lungs out in the car on the way home! Oh boy, I guess I must have really “spoiled” them for the past 3 years to have their after school bentos or snacks, whether if it’s rain or shine. *faint*

Thus, I felt a bit guilty and wanted to cheer her up by fixing one of her many bento requests…. Arlene, Garfield’s girlfriend!

It’s actually ham and cheese, and for Arlene, the cheese is at the bottom. Garfield is just the opposite way around.

Here’s what I did last night, and it took me about 30 minutes for both characters:

Stack ham and cheese together, and cut the outline of the cat with an exacto knife.

For Arlene, the ham will be on top.

Prepare a hard boiled egg and gently slice it for its eyes. I used a cutter to cut them out.

I got this idea from LoveBones, check out her awesome Garfield!

I placed the oval egg white on the drawing and cut off the excess part.

Pardon the low quality photos taken as if they were snapped by a phone on this HD7 page. I was trying to get them done fast so that I could attend to my kids. Once both character were completed, I wrapped everything up with cling wrap and kept them refrigerated in an air tight container.

This morning, I punched some nori, randomly with some punchers. I didn’t cut the nori though as I was running out of time! Next, it’s more about adding nori on the cats to make them look like Garfield and Arlene.

So, here are the bentos:

Arlene, she’s Garfield’s girlfriend. My gal was so delighted when she saw her.

And Garfield for my boy.

My boy drew this black angry bird in my sketch book and told me to find some time and fix one for him. At first, I thought of brushing off his request but he said something yesterday while eating his plain looking bento in the car, Mommy, you don’t pack nice nice bentos often anymore huh? O.o

Ok boy, there you have it! It’s a last minute thingy as initially, I only planned to pack fruits and sweet potatoes for the kids, and after looking at the plain looking bentos, I decided to add a quail egg wrapped in nori and decorated it as the black angry bird. The red angry bird was cut from rose apple, and I realized now that I didn’t decorate it well. It didn’t have the white feathery top on its head.

Black Angry Bird Bento

Angry Birds Fruity Bento

I’ve obviously slowed down a lot in kyaraben!!! LOL! As you know, my life has been pretty busy lately, and I’ve started going back to yoga this month. This means I would have to prepare dinner (yeap I do in the morning), breakfast (occasionally), pack bentos (mostly plain looking ones) and get myself ready for yoga class in the morning before heading to the office. If hubby is away, I would have to send the kids to school too. So, how’s that to kick start my hectic morning?

But this morning, I managed to fix something simple for the kids, just to let them know that I still want to do kyaraben if I may.

My gal’s hotdog bun bento

Oh no, I didn’t bake the bread, I bought the buns. I just cut out part of the crust and decorated it as a little girl dressed up in Rilakkuma costume.

Of course, I did one for my boy too.

Anyway, my kids will have a term break soon so there will be less kyaraben for the coming month. Besides that, work is piling up, and condo renovation is still on going, and the office routers are giving me a problem uploading photos!!! I shall just do my best for the next 2 weeks ya!