Mothering Corner

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 know that the flood is pretty bad in Thailand, both in the north and started yesterday in the south. It’s a dreadful scene and more people are suffering due to the flood. But nonetheless, the weather is getting cooler and great in the city, despite all the natural “disaster” in the country. I definitely won’t need a Branson vacation to enjoy cool and windy weather now as this is definitely the best time in the year in Bangkok.

It took me awhile to drag myself from my bed due to the cool morning breeze. Honestly, I wish that I can just tug in a little longer! But with dinner to prepare (I prepare some in the morning) and bentos to pack and kids to get ready for school, let’s forget about the whole sleeping in thingy!

Today’s bento is simple simple. I used this bread cutter for the sandwiches. You can get it from Daiso.

Sandwich cutter

But the thing is, the bread has to be slightly bigger as this cutter is quite wide. If not, you might have a lot of wastage.

After some simple decoration and packing in the fruits, there are the bentos:

My boy’s bento with a pig and a kitten. I added a fish ball decorated as a piglet.

I decorated 2 bunnies for my gal.

It’s my second attempt in fixing a car shaped sandwich by using the same Tomica sandwich mold, but I’m still not satisfied with the result. It’s not about the cutter, in fact, it works well today as I managed to grab a bigger sandwich loaf, which is even larger than the mold itself and I had to cut off the crust to fit it in. It’s the decoration which I’m not pleased with, maybe it’s due to the color, and it’s too simple.

Anyway, it’s a Monday, so I have never been a great Monday person. Everything was done in lightning speed again so that everyone won’t be late for school and work.

So, here are today’s bentos:

My boy’s bento with a boy in a car ride.

BTW, kids, never never wave your hand out when the car is moving, it’s extremely dangerous! I just had to add the “hand” there so that it won’t look like a head hanging out from the window.

I decorated a Hello Kitty for my gal instead.

Mmm….After looking at the photos, I still think that today’s bentos are kind of plain.

My boy’s chin still hurts, so he told me to fix him something in smaller bites so that he won’t have to open his mouth wide. LOL! On top of that, my gal wanted some ABC in her bento, thus I packed them mini alphabet cheese and heart sandwiches bentos today.

The sandwiches were prepared  last night, then wrapped and refrigerated in container for today’s bentos. All I needed to do was cutting the cheese and decorated them in the morning.

My gal’s ABC bento, with some corn kernels, apple and pineapple.

My boy has more apples and some raspberries because he doesn’t like pineapples.

I truly believe that there are a lot of good people, with big hearts, who care very much about this city. I’m so happy that yesterday’s event, Together We Can: Bangkok Cleaning Day 2010 is a successful one.

Yours truly here didn’t attend the event. I was busy sending my kids to extra classes. How lame, I know.

I made these bentos to show my gratitude and appreciation to those Thais and farangs, who lent a hand in cleaning up the city.

Together We Can: Bangkok Cleaning Day 2010 bento. Thanks to all the workers and volunteers who came with brooms and hats. LOL!

And also thanks to all the firefighters, army, and authorities that work so hard during this difficult time.

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!

I had to drag myself out of bed this morning. It’s Monday, and I’ve never been a Monday person. LOL!

Anyway, I promised hubby that I would fix scrambled egg for him for breakfast, so I better kept my word. To make things easy on a “sleepy” Monday morning, I decided to fix the kids some egg sandwiches for their after school tea.

My boy likes egg sandwiches, but my gal will only take it when she’s in the right mood. She has always been very picky about eggs, and so far, she won’t reject hard boiled eggs. So, I hope that she will be hungry when she’s back from school, then she will be less likely to reject her sandwich.

In order to make their sandwiches more appealing:

I imprinted the bread with their favorite Disney characters.

You can use any bread or cookie cutters of your choice. I chose Tigger and Marie for my kids.

I outline the imprint with the cutter, but make sure that the sharp part is facing up so that you won’t cut through the bread.

Here are the bread with Tigger and Marie the Cat imprinted.

I made the sandwiches, as usual, but placed the imprinted bread on the top. Then, I cut off the excess and sealed the sandwich with this bread cutter.

Don’t put a lot of bread filling in your sandwiches if you opt for a nice seal.

So, here are the sandwiches:

Tigger and Marie egg sandwiches.

You can toast the sandwiches for a few minutes, if you want to have some color contrast. I didn’t do so as my kids will only have their tea by 5pm, and by then, the sandwich toasts will be soft again.

I packed their sandwiches in Pooh bear ziplock bag as they were too big for my bentos.

Egg sandwich in Pooh bear ziplock bag and some mango and grapes in smaller bento box.

There you go! Today’s bento meal is super speedy huh?

If you are interested, check out how I used the bread cutter for Sugarbunnies.

CP sent me a photo of a new tool the other day, and I thought of sharing it here:

I don’t think I will buy it as I already have the panda sandwich cutter. I’m trying to spend lesser on shopping to be frugal and avoid debt consolidation if I overspend! But the idea is great, and I decided to give it a try.

Firstly, I prepared one of the Sugarbunnies veggie cutters, which I bought from Sanrio during the weekend. If you can’t find these sugarbunnies veggie cutters in your area, check out NST.

I used these cutters for today’s sandwiches.

Firstly, print sugarbunny’s face with this cutter.

Then, use this cutter (the oval shape facing down) to outline the imprint of sugarbunny.

I did an “upside down” imprint on the top of the bread.

Then, I spread some butter and placed a thin layer of meat floss on another piece of bread. Try not to place too much filling as the sandwich might not be able to seal well if it’s too full.

Use the panda bread cutter to cut off the crusts and seal the sandwich. Then, cut the sandwich into halves.

I repeated the same process for another piece of sandwich, and packed some banana, mango and an quail egg in the bentos. Of course, I added some details for Sugarbunnies too.

The cutters and nori punchers used for today’s bentos.

So, here is the end result:

My gal’s Kurousa, which is supposed to be a brown bunny, but well, it looks cute in white too.

And here’s my boy’s Shirousa.

I painted the ears with a red edible pen which comes in this set:

Edible color pens.

If you can’t find the pens from your local supermarket, maybe you can try these coloring chocolate pens, or use any jam of your choice, and color the parts with a toothpick. It should do the trick too.