Mothering Corner

I fixed something simple this morning. With my busy schedule, it’s hard to come out with anything fancy lately, but as long as my kids are “well fed” after school, I guess I’ve done my best.

Hubby started work at his new office today, but judging from my workload, I will still have to pick up the kids and bring them back to the office and wait until mommy is ready to go home. Hopefully, the bentos are sufficient to keep them “stuffed” and they won’t scream “in hunger” while the mommy frantically get dinner prepared after work. Sigh…

Here are today’s bentos:

My boy’s bento with 2 chicken balls, some blueberries and mango

Here’s the side view of the chicken balls in my gal’s bento

The chicken balls are decorated as little chicks, just like the previous  bento.

My kids have enjoying their 10 weeks summer holiday now, but the bad mommy is sending them to 4 weeks of holiday camp. I can’t have the kids “disturbing” at the office because I’m pretty tied up with my new tasks. My hubby is going to work at a new place soon, so I’m taking over his work officially. *patting my own back* I’ve always wanted to get back to workforce anyway, so I’m glad that I’ve “found” myself a new job, without any job interview or healthcare job search. LOL!

Even if I’m getting busier, I will still try pack bentos if possible. Bento-ing releases my work stress!

Today’s theme is Sanrio characters again. I’ve always wanted to fix Shinkansen with blue egg sheets, so I fixed the egg sheets yesterday in yellow (yolk only), light blue and darker blue. I’m not sure how much time I used for the preparation as it was done when I was preparing our dinner yesterday. Anyway, the cutting part was not too hard since it’s mostly done free hand with exacto knife.

I did the decoration on a piece of white bread, and kept it refrigerated in an air tight container. After I had packed the fruits and spread some jam on the sandwiches this morning, I topped the decorated white bread on the rest of the mini sandwiches. A quail egg was decorated as tiny Shinkansen too.

My boy’s Shinkansen overloaded bento.

As for my gal, I fixed her Hello Kitty and Cathy.

My gal’s Hello Kitty and Cathy quail egg bento.

I packed lesser fruits for my gal as she already had some jackfruit and pineapples for breakfast. Their summer camp is full of games and activities, so by the time I pick them up at 4.30pm, they should be quite hungry for their tea.

So, what do you think about Shinkansen now? I think it looks nicer in blue, as comparing to my previous Shinkansen here and here.

I haven’t packed buns (pao) for quite some time because my kids don’t like them anymore. Their taste buds change from time to time, so it’s best to pack their “preferred” food at the moment to avoid food wastage. I’ve always wanted to fix Hamtaro again since it’s so cute. But without using pao, just like the previous Hamtaro Char Siew Pao Bento, I resolved to using cheese with this cutter:

Rilakkuma cutter

It’s a last minute decision, so I didn’t have time to snap the step by step photos. Hopefully, you can figure out how I did the cheesy Hamtaro.

My boy’s Hamtaro and garlic bread bento, with lots of fruits too.

My gal’s Hamtaro has a smiley expression because I was running out of time to cut the eyes.

From the way I arranged the fruits, I guess you can tell that I was packing these bentos as fast as I could. LOL! I was trying my best to slot everything in before running late. It’s been awhile since I last pack papaya too. My boy doesn’t like papaya and kiwi, and he will only have them at school due to teacher’s pressure. I hope that he will finish his papaya and kiwi today!

A friend told me that she can tell if my hubby is working away for days. I would normally pack less bentos that week, and hardly update my Facebook. She’s right, whenever hubby is away, I don’t need to pack much, and I don’t have time for FB. You can easily tell that I’m too occupied with work, kids and chores and I’m trying my best to keep my sanity. LOL!

Hubby came back from Malaysia with my latest purchase from BentoCraft. I love the Tomica Fire Engine bento, and so does my boy. So, I packed something simple for the kids today.

My boy’s Tomica Fire Engine bento, with cheese sandwiches, a mini wiener and fruits.

My gal has smaller sandwiches.

Very simple huh?

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.

Most of my friends are still enjoying their CNY holiday, but over here in Thailand, we don’t have public holiday during CNY. Our kids can’t skip school for too many days. Their teachers reminded us that they will be having their exams next week, and it’s best to be back to school for revision. As you know, our kids are in Thai school, so we rely on the teachers to blush up their Thai language. I certainly can’t help them much with their school work!

So, we’re sort of like getting back to our normal routine, in a holiday mood. I was having a hard time getting out of bed early this morning, even the stainless steel drums won’t wake me up because I’m still pretty tired after the trip to Hua Hin. But anyway, today’s bentos are not complicated, and I managed to get them ready just in time.

What I had in mind  was Humpty Dumpty, and I fixed the character with quail eggs. I added a heart candy in the bentos, and my kids were thrilled with it.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall in my boy’s bento.

My gal’s Humpty Dumpty

As you can see, I was going through some blog diarrhea these 2 days. I’ve almost done with all my pending blogging job, so next will be my office work.

If I have some time this afternoon, I will start sorting out the 700++ photos taken over the weekend. I’m in charged of creating and printing our annual family album again, and distributing them out to other family members. What a heavy task huh? LOL!

It’s going to be a busy busy day for me.

My boy needs a heavier bento today after his extra lesson at school, so I packed some bread and spaghetti for him. I would have just leave the bentos like this, if I’m too lazy.

But then, it didn’t take me much time in decorating the bentos to make them appear “nicer”.

My boy’s bento, with a boy trying to kiss a girl.

And this is for my gal.

I have this idea of fixing a Chinese New Year bento for some time, and at first, I thought of fixing it some time next week. But then, considering that I might be quite busy next week, with spring cleaning, finalizing on where to have our reunion dinner, packing for our beach trip (again!), preparing the guest room and move the refurbished fitness equipment away, I better share my idea now before it’s sank to the bottom of my to-do list.

For this bento, I prepared:

Some blueberries, quail eggs and mini wieners.

Then, I joined the “parts” together with tiny spaghetti strips.

Then, I placed the pieces in silicon cups and packed everything in the bentos. I cut some kamaboko (fish cake) and red artificial crab meat with an oval cutter, and added them as arms. I cut the red artificial crab meat into halves and stacked them on kamaboko as red sleeves. These tiny pieces are arranged as “gong xi gong xi” hand gesture, which is a common greeting on Chinese New Year.

Next, punch the nori and add it as “hair” on the eggs.

Add the eyes and lips.

And that’s about it! So here are my Gong Xi Fa Cai bentos:

My boy’s bento. I gently lay the characters before closing the bento.

This is my gal’s bento.

BTW, since this year Chinese New Year falls on Valentine’s Day, I think the cute couples can be used as valentines too.

I promised my boy that I will fix him a ranger bento on his birthday last month, but I couldn’t make it due to a few unforeseen circumstances. So, I wanted to make him something special for his field trip to the butterfly farm today, and I asked him earlier if he still wanted that ranger bento.

He told me that he wanted Gaoranger, but not Power Ranger this time. I am totally clueless about all these rangers, and I can’t differentiate them at all. When he passed me the CD, I could not get a good look at it, so I suggested that he change to Ben 10 instead. He was so thrilled when he heard Ben 10, and he immediately brought out his Ben 10 cards and showed me Humungousaur. The moment I saw the “alien creature”, I regretted that I mention Ben 10…

Humungousaur: Ben’s most physically powerful form. Humungousaur is a dinosaur-man who can, in Ben’s words, “bench press a pickup truck”. He’s also a size changer, who can grow to nearly 60 feet tall, taking unsuspecting adversaries by surprise.

But a promise is a promise and I don’t want to disappoint him again. So, I fixed the egg sheets last Sunday (with the blue egg sheet) and froze them all. The egg sheets will still be fresh for a week, and I took them out yesterday to defroze them. I boiled a piece of ham, which was used as base, and prepared the drawings on a piece of baking paper.

The tracings. Please ignore that Ben 10 Alien Force logo, I gave it up.

Next, I placed the drawing on the ham (and then egg sheets) and started cutting the outline.

Try not to cut directly into the pencil lines so that you won’t stain the food. I’d normally cut along the pencil lines, without touching it. *I hope you’d know what I mean!*

Using a piece of ham as the base will make the “work” more solid and easy to handle. It’s just an option, you may skip this step.

Work in progress…

Frankly, I had almost given up! Cutting nori is sooooo hard!

I wrapped the “work” in saran wrap and refrigerated it in air tight container. So this morning, I just had to top it on the sandwich.

Dang dang dang! Here’s the end product:

My boy’s Humungousaur Bento

He was so over the moon with the bento! He loves it, but he said, why didn’t I fix that Ben 10 logo on Humungousaur? O.o

Boy, it’s too small, let’s forget it ok?

Just in case you are wondering….I took a day off to fix this bento!!!

I don’t know much about Pokemon, and the only character I know is Pikachu. My boy requested a Pikachu bento out of the blue yesterday, so I Google and found other Pokemon characters and decided to fix them for today’s bento. I used this bread cutter for the sandwiches:

But I cut off the “ears” for the penguin.

The blue egg sheet was my first attempt with the food colors, but I didn’t stir it well. You can still see the blue spots. LOL! I shall try this again, when time permits.

My gal’s bento

I don’t know about the names of these characters, please let me know if you can recognize them! Thanks!

Here’s my boy’s bento, with Pikachu and dunno-what’s-the-name squirrel.

Ah…I don’t know how kids remember all these characters. LOL!