Mothering Corner

Today is my gal’s birthday, so I decided to make her a special bento. She’s always fancied those Disney princesses, and Princess Aurora is one of her favorite.

Princess Aurora bento, there were garlic toast (hidden under the princess), some strawberries, grapes and blueberries in the bento.

Only the yellow hair was made with egg sheet and I used pink kamaboko for the dress. Just slice the top pink layer with a peeler and you will get very thin slices of pretty pink!

I know my birthday gal will surely love it!

I lost my old Doraemon cutter in the flood and had recently bought a new set from Kristie. My boy insisted that I should replenish the cutter as Doraemon was one of his favorite characters.

I packed some SPAM sandwiches for the kids today, and the Doraemon was prepared last night with cheese, blue egg sheet, and red artificial crab meat. Since I have to spend some time preparing our dinner in the morning, I only have a limited of time for bento now, and by preparing the kyaraben a night before will definitely speed things up.

Doraemon on sandwiches.

I was running out of time to fix anything nice for my gal this morning and I was too tired last night and couldn’t fix her one.

I’m trying my best to reuse my existing bento tools, but I have to admit that I hardly use my rice molds. I’m not one of those who pack rice often, nor would I have time to decorate my kids’ meals at home!

I’m so glad that I learned a new way of using the rice molds to shape sandwich balls. This skill has given me more chances of using my rice molds.

Bunnies sandwich balls bento.

Tomica sandwich ball.

It’s going to be my 4th year in bento-ing, and as much as I’ve slowed down as comparing when I first started, I still pack after school bentos for my kids, at least 3 times a week. Fridays are reserved as junk food day, which my kids are allowed to buy anything they want from the cafeteria, and most of the time, my gal will go for ice-cream and my boy for sushi or nuggets. I’m trying not to cut them off the fun of buying food on their own, without compromising much on their snacking on empty calories too many days a week. As for lunch, it’s all provided by the school.

I don’t decorate all the bentos everyday. Mind you, I’m a busy working mom. But I’m just doing my best in kyaraben. Furthermore, my kids are totally cool with having non-decorated bentos, even if it’s just some fruits with bread, peanut brittle, sweet corn and potatoes and etc. This morning, I packed some garlic toasts and grapes for them. And I stopped snapping pics of my non-decorated bentos. If not, I will have tonnes of bento pics! LOL!

Packing food should be done with the objective of providing a better meal for our little ones, and food decoration comes as a bonus.

Just an update, the renovation starts again this week! My flooring is done, but my KITCHEN is not!!! And the wallpaper in my living room, my boy’s bed, and some touching up here and there. But we are almost there…I think. I’m getting used to cooking and preparing meals with limited resources anyway, so I guess I can just hold on and be more patient until my stove and hood are installed!

Back to bento-ing. I did a quick kyaraben again this morning, by decorating cube cheese before topping them on ham and cheese toasts.

These cube cheese are tiny!!! But aren’t they cute as Hello Kitty and Melody, without her ears? LOL!

My initial plan was to decorate a Shinkansen for my boy, but he wanted the cube cheese to be boys with hats. So, this is even easier than I thought!

Let’s assume that the boys are boarding on Shinkansen.

Shinkansen is my boy’s favorite train, which he yearns to ride on for years. Ok, let’s see how mommy’s biz goes this year, and maybe…maybe we can plan a trip to Tokyo in the near future. Let mommy sell more sensors and odyssey pc925 batteries first then.

I’m kind of out of idea what to pack for my kids lately as I can’t do pizza or garlic toast without an oven. The renovation workers can’t fulfill their promise of completing my kitchen AGAIN so I’ve given up on rushing them. Thus, there isn’t much variety in my kiddos bento meals.

Then it strikes me that I haven’t made sausage bread rolls for some time. Oh, I didn’t bake the bread rolls but just roll the sausage on flatten sliced bread. After that I cut them into tiny bites and decorated them as boys and girls.

Boys for my boy, of coz.

And this is for my gal.

I packed some blueberries and oranges too.

Oh well, I’m out of idea how to name this blog post.

Decorated the quail eggs as Mickey and Minnie for my gal by using with ear picks.

And can you guess who are these characters in my boy’s bento?

It’s been a busy March for us. Firstly, my gal took part in Thailand National Cheerleading Championship last weekend, and my boy is going for spelling bee competition in a couple of days. After that, they will each have their sports day, and I might be there to snap photos of my kids.

To commemorate this busy month, I fixed my kids a cheerleading and a spelling bee bento each. All cuttings were done last night, and these are some lousy quick shots taken.

For the body / tee, I cut them with this butterfly cutter.

The head were cut with a face cutter. As for the hair, I cut a round cheese, then I use the same round cutter to cut off the sides.

Then I stacked the cheese on nori

Cut another piece from the same round cheese and stacked it on the cheese as well. Then I cut the outline of the nori and this would be the hair.

I use this cutter for their arms.

The pom pom were cut from smoked cheese and red crab meat by using these cutters.

After that, I wrapped the decorative parts with cling wrap and refrigerated them in air tight container. The next morning, I prepared some sandwiches and fruits, and topped the decorations on the bread.

The bentos

I proceeded to punch some nori for facial details, and added food picks in the bentos. So, here they are:

My little cheerleader bento

And good luck to my boy in the coming spelling bee competition!

It’s something speedy again.

These are my kids’ after-school meals consisted of corn, grapes and a sandwich bun spread with jam.

I added some kamaboko as ears and nose.

Then, I punched nori with this Mickey shoe puncher and added them in.

There you have it! Piggy bun bentos.

Very simple huh?

It’s something quick and simple again! It’s the first time of me using this pocket sandwich mold, which I’ve just bought from Bento Craft. It’s not a new tool but I didn’t get it until now.

After preparing the pocket sandwiches, I cut some cheese and decorated them as Hello Kitty and Anpanman for each bentos.

Hello Kitty Pocket Sandwiches Bento

Anpanman Pocket Sandwiches Bento