Mothering Corner

I don’t feel like decorating lunch boxes this week because…

• I’ve just realized I lost more cutters than I thought. All those cute Doraemon, Melody, Tigger cutters!!! I can’t seem to find the box, so maybe I’ve left it behind when we were evacuating from the flooded house.
• I’m going back to yoga class this week, which means I will have to rush more in the morning.

Thus, my kids will have more plain looking bentos from now onwards.

But today, I felt like spending extra 5 minutes in decorating the egg tart. It is pretty easy to decorate one as a clown, and I’m glad that I managed to fix the broken party hats purchased from Jmama. Jmama was so kind to reimburse the purchase, which I’m truly grateful about it.

Clown bento

My gal’s egg tart was squashed, thus her clown looks a bit weird. LOL!

Again and again, I love this Rilakkuma bento box for being able to fit 3D decoration in.

My kids have show and tell once in awhile on various topics. They had done favorite toys, plants, custom coins, animal habitats and etc. Yesterday, my boy had to bring his favorite food to school for show and tell. He requested spaghetti carbonara.  This lazy mom pathetically used a ready made sauce for it instead of cooking from fresh.

To cut my guilt, I made him a Pikachu upon his request too. It was done by ham and cheese, by cutting it with rice mold. Instead of tracing and cutting its mouth, I just simple cut it free-handedly. LOL!

Oh well… I was running out of time!

I must share this wonderful idea of molding bread with rice molds by Bento with Love. At least I have something to do with all my rice molds, which I haven’t used for a very long time! I hardly pack rice because my kids have their bento meals very late, probably like after 4 or 5pm and the food is packed early in the morning. As much as the food can be kept cool, but rice doesn’t seem to taste well after long hours. Thus, I hardly use the rice molds and stop buying them.

But this morning, I tried this method of molding the sandwich balls with small rice molds, and I’m glad that they turned out well.

Snoopy and Woodstock sandwich balls bento

It’s easier to shape the sandwiches now! But it doesn’t work for big rice molds, but you can tried “encapsulating” 2 slices of bread together to seal the sandwich fillings.

BTW, this Tomica bento is sooooo cute!

Too bad it’s a bit too small for my boy’s appetite now.

It’s Valentine’s Day, but we won’t be doing anything special. Hubby is not the type who celebrates special occasions and to him, Valentine’s Day is too commercialized and just wanna rip off $$$ from lovers. Some times, I wonder how I ended up with an unromantic guy, but whenever he’s helping out with house chores and laundry, I know the reason why!

A Valentine’s Day bento for my gal.

I prepared the decoration while waiting for macaroni and cheese to cool down for packing. The mouse was made from quail egg, kamaboko and the heart was cut from mini wiener. Her grapes were packed separately in a smaller lunch box.

I did a speedy and simpler decoration for my boy.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’d just realized that I have some quail eggs in the fridge, so it’s best to use them before they are expiring soon. What I had in mind was Pooh and Piglet, and here’s how I decorated the quail eggs based on these characters.

I prepared 2 quail eggs, a small slice of kamaboko (pink fish cake) and some red artificial crab meat.

I wrapped the bottom half of a quail egg with red crab meat. I repeated the same step with the pink slice of kamaboko for the other egg.

Cut 2 small circles from white kamaboko and use them as Pooh’s ears.

Pin the ears with small bits of spaghetti strips.

Pin the egg on the sandwich to secure it.

For Piglet, I cut its pink ears from kamaboko, and pinned them on the egg.

Secure Piglet on the sandwich too.

Punch some nori and add in their facial details.

I cut some cheese with these alphabet cutters for Pooh bear.

And here’s the complete bento:

Pooh and Piglet quail eggs on sandwich. There are strawberries, blueberries, grapes and baby carrots in the meal as well.

Tammy from Laptop Lunches offered to give me a free bento set, after reading that I’ve lost some tools in the flood. I’m truly grateful, and thanks again for the wonderful bento set, Tammy.

It does look like a mini laptop bag.

In the bag. I love the guide book, it will be a great reference for beginners who have just started packing food.

Ok, it took me awhile to open the box. There is an instruction sheet in the bag.

As you can see, the set consists of smaller bento boxes and lids, except one. They are all BPA-free and eco-friendly, so you don’t have to worry about the plastic material used for packing food. I was actually looking for a bigger bento box for my boy for Tuesdays, when he needs a bigger after-school meal . This set will be great if it comes in the biggest bento boxes as shown:

The top right with lid!

That set will be great for packing pasta or noodles, without spilling out the meal and mess up the “laptop” box. I totally love the little compartment for a fork and a spoon. It’s neat.

I will give this set a try and see if the portion is adequate for my boy (he complained the previous Pokemon ball bento was too small). If he needs more, I will replace the boxes with a bigger lunch box, just like what I did this morning.

My boy has to pack some Thai omelet to school for his “project”. I have no idea what it’s about but he told me that he needs Thai omelet (more deep fried than normal omelet) for his class today. I packed the omelet in a bigger stainless steel lunch box, and place it in the laptop box with the cutlery set. He took some time learning how to open the box too, so hopefully he can manage it at school.

Thanks again and again, Tammy.

My boy has pretty hectic schedule on Tuesdays, so I decided to pack some macaroni and cheese for today’s bentos. I topped a piece of sliced egg on the macaroni, and gave it a fast decoration.

Guess who am I?

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!