Mothering Corner

I woke up feeling great today because I would sleep late on Saturday! Nonetheless, I felt bored after awhile, especially after hubby left for work. My kids don’t want to do anything much except watching the TV, so I had so much free time, I fixed lunch bentos for them. Besides that, I was very bored after checking out some insurance quotes for our family here in Bangkok

My gal starts to eat veggie at meal times, but still not a lot. At least there’s an improvement. She’s more willing to eat carrots, so today’s theme is no other than Ms. Carrot itself. Ms. Carrot was cut with the green cutter from Bento#114.

My gal’s lunch with Ms. Carrot and a bunny. I used the same tools as in Bento#89 to form the bunny’s face with salmon. I sprinkled some sesame to outline the bunny, but I still need more practice on this. There are stir-fried cabbage and carrot, and 2 small pieces of pork fillets in her bento too.

My boy has a bigger portion for his lunch. I decorated his bento with a little boy.

Both of them just couldn’t wait to eat as soon as I snapped the photo. They had their lunch with a bowl of radish soup each. My kids can’t take rice properly if it’s too dry, and they always want some gravy or soup to go with their rice. My gal asked for more salmon because she likes fish. But when she’s almost done, I had to feed her the veggies. She managed to finish most of her lunch, and left some pork fillet behind. Same goes to my boy, he didn’t like the fillets. Both my kids don’t quite like frozen food like pork or fish fillets and chicken nuggets. I just wanted to introduce the fillets to them since the frozen food is easy to be prepared for bento meal. But too bad, they still don’t like it.

Since today is Saturday….have a nice weekend everyone!

I spent more time on preparing today’s bento as I was busy snapping photos along the way. Sorry that the photos didn’t turn out sharp as it’s still pretty dark at 6 something in the morning. My wet kitchen light is not bright enough, I guess. But hopefully, this clear the doubts of some readers here.

My kids are recovering well, but they haven’t got back their full appetite yet. They couldn’t finish the corn and edamame in yesterday’s bento, so I cut down their carbo intake today by just giving them a piece of raspberry jam sandwich each. Since they asked for some wieners, I cut the wieners in shapes to make them more attractive. I got this idea from Kaerenmama, who makes pretty bentos. Do check it out.

So, this is how I did it:

Cut the wiener in smaller size and use a cutter to form a shape in the middle of the wiener. If the wiener is not too soft, the shape will come out nice, with shape edges. Try my wiener tips here.

Cut some vertical lines at the outer part of the wiener.

Place the wieners in boiling water for a few minutes and if the shapes are prominent, the wieners are cooked and done. I placed some carrots in the boiling water at the same time since someone asked me how to make the flower carrots.

I would normally steam or boil the carrots first before cutting them. But I think you can do it the other way round, if your cutter is sharp enough.

Use a flower cutter, or any cutters of your choice to form the shape.

Cut out smaller holes on the flower carrot. If you don’t have this cutter like mine, just use a straw.

The carrot flower. You can keep the smaller bits for eyes or just eat them. LOL!

While waiting for the wieners and carrots to cool down, I cut some mangoes and kiwis, and prepared the sandwiches. Then, I placed everything in the lunch boxes, and continued with the decorative details. It’s my boy’s birthday today, so I decorated his sandwich with a birthday cake, cut from high calcium cheese and smoked cheese for color contrast.

My boy’s bento with mango, kiwi, carrot, wieners and a piece of sandwich. He asked me why the “4″ candle was not lid, but I was running out of time to fix him the “fire flame”. LOL!

Some of you are wondering how I did the smiley faces? I use the punchers by Carla’s or Carl’s. They are the best punchers I have, and I love them. LOL! I don’t have a smiley face puncher yet, so I have to cut out a smile from this …

Punch the seaweed to get the “nose”, and carefully hold that tiny piece with a pair of tweezers and cut out the “U” shape. It looks tedious, but once you get used to it, it’s really not that hard. 

As for my gal, I fixed her a Hello Kitty as requested. She really loves HK.

My gal’s lunch box has a Hello Kitty, and she brought it to school with her today! Luckily, I didn’t give her any picks or barans, if not they will be lost again.

I stopped using the HK puncher because it always gets stuck. I use this puncher by Carl’s (or Carla’s?) for the eyes.

I think this puncher is great for shaping eyes in different sizes.

So, it’s really not that hard in preparing bento huh? But I’m still in learning stage, so there are still a lot to learn from Japanese bento blogs.