Mothering Corner

Again, today’s title sounds weird! Anyway, you will know what I mean later.

My gal requested that I fixed her some mini heart, so I thought of decorating the hearts, instead of just packing them as plain heart sandwiches. I spread some jam on the bread and cut and sealed the bread with 2 heart cutters as shown below:

The cutters are slightly different in sizes. Make sure that the smaller one is used “upside down” so that it will seal the bread instead of cutting through.

Then, I proceeded to decorate the jam sandwiches. I fixed two hens for my gal by adding picks and cheese as wings.

They will be hens, after adding nori and kamaboko as their rosy cheeks.

As for my boy, I cut 3 pieces of cheese with 3 different sizes of round cutters to create the shell of the snails.

I stacked the cheese to create the spiral effect.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Two Little Hens Bento. Let’s pretend that the hens are hatching eggs.

There are quail eggs, oranges (hidden under the strawberries) and rose apples in the bento too.

These snails belong to my boy.

Pretty simple huh?

Changed of plan again. I’m leaving this week and will be away for a week with a heavy heart. This is the first time I’m leaving the kids behind with hubby, who keeps assuring me that everything will be fine but I still don’t believe him.

Anyway, I can only pack one bento this week for the kids, and they requested French Toast with honey. I cut the bread with Rilakkuma cutter and pan fried them with some egg. Then, I spread some honey between the French toasts when packing the bento. On top of that, I packed some nuggets and fruits for the kids too. Today’s bentos are quite speedy since I only needed less than 5 minutes in decorating Rilakkuma.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Rilakkuma French Toast bento

This is for my boy.

Ok, I’ll have a short break from bento-ing, and I sure miss my kids! And thanks for hubby for helping out.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by Mari Miyazawa’s blog post, as well as my boy’s encounter with a baby chick which fell from the nest. Just check out the link and see how creative Mari is in decorating food as cute little chicks and birds!

On the other hand, my boy found a dead baby bird a few weeks ago at his school. It’s rainy season here, and the storm can be rather strong. I guess the baby chick fell from the nest accidentally by the strong wind, so it’s quite sad to see its dead body. But my brave little boy just picked up the chick and showed it to his friends and teachers, while the mommy was basically screaming, gosh, that’s gross. Sorry, I’m not so into little animals, especially a dead one.

Then a few days ago, he found a bird nest in our garden, probably dropped from the trees as well. We saw some egg shells but no birds were found in it. Maybe they had all flown away, but the nest was still there. Again, blame it on the strong wind.

With this theme in mind, I decided to decorate a piece of sandwich as a hatching, and some nuggets as baby chicks. This is what I did last night:

I cut the bread with a stainless steel bento. By doing so, the bread can fit well in the lunch box.

Then I cut some smoked cheese with the bento too.

Cut the bread and smoked cheese into semi circles, but the cheese is slightly smaller than the bread.

Cut off 2 smaller semi circles as shown in the pic.

Next, cut a round piece of white cheese. Sorry about the lighting, I know the pics can’t show the different colors of the cheese!

Then I cut off the sides of the circle. After that, cut them in halves.

Cut some kamaboko as the chick’s beak.

This is what you would get after stacking up the details, which will be placed on the sandwiches.

For the little baby chick nuggets, cut some baby carrot as their beaks.

Try to blanch the baby carrots for a minute or so to soften them. It’s easier to pin them onto the nuggets (with spaghetti strips) if they are soft.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s baby chicks nuggets.

Here’s the top view of the bento, showing the baby chick sandwich.

This bento belongs to my boy.

I’ve recently bought some bento boxes and bento tools from Bentocraft.com and NST.my, so I’m trying my best to use them all, at least once.

When my kids saw these bento boxes of Rilakkuma and Korillakkuma, they were not too excited. To them, it’s just another teddy bears. But I found that these bento boxes are quite “tall”, considering that the gap is higher between the box and the lid, so it would be great for packing cute food without squashing the details.

So, I cut some bread last night and stored them away for today’s bentos. I toasted some teddy shaped bread and decorated them as Rillakkuma (the brown teddy). Kiiroitori was cut from cheese and topped on mini sandwiches, while Korilakkuma was just the normal white bread spread with jam.

As usual, I packed some fruits for the kids, and used some lettuce to fill in the gap and prevent the food from moving around. The tiny details of carrots and kamaboko were pinned with spaghetti strips onto the bread so that they would stay in place.

Hence, there are the bentos:

My gal’s Korilakkuma bento box

Rilakkuma bento box for my boy

Both kids were thrilled to see a full theme bento.

These bento boxes came with transparent lids.

The kids even reminded each other not to swing the bentos so that all details will be in placed when they have their tea after school. I’m so glad that they like it.

We had a great Sunday and all of us slept very late. As the result, I almost couldn’t drag myself up from the bed this morning. LOL! I only prepared something simple by boiling the quail egg, a small piece of kamaboko, hams and washed the lettuce and fruits. Everything was done and packed in less than 30 minutes for 2 bentos.

I’m using wholemeal buns for today’s bento, hopefully my kids won’t reject them.

Here’s a close up of Cinnamonroll:

For todays’ bentos, I’m repeating something similar as I did with triangular origiri mold, but I cut the bread with these chicken triangle bentos, instead of an origiri mold. The bread fits well in the bento, and I love the cute chicken design on the covers!

I decorated the sandwich as if a boy is wearing a chicken costume. The fruits are packed separately in another bento box.

This bento belongs to my gal.

The Chick Family Bento Cases came in a set of 3. Do check them out at J-Mama.

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.

Sorry that I hardly leave comment on most of the bento blogs I’ve visited, but I do read your posts. Most of the time, I will just read from my feed, but for some blogs, I will drop by if I have the time. Life is getting busier for me, but I still want to steal some time for blog hopping.

I know that Hapa Bento organizes BOMB every month, but the theme always slipped passed my mind when I’m too busy. Luckily, there are a few bento-ers who took part and I kept reminded about BOMB. The theme for May is flowers, so here is my submission.

I cut the bread and cheese with a flower cutter. For the bread placed on top, cut out a small circle with a round cutter. Then, I added nori and artificial crab meat as cute faces.

Here are the bentos:

My gal’s bento with flower sandwiches, rambutans, carrot roses in baked fish cakes, strawberries and some blueberries.

This is for my boy. Most of his fruits were hidden in the lower tier under Pikkachu.

I should have place some flower picks for him too, but I was running out of time. I have just got the items from Bento Craft, and my kids love them all.

New bento tools by Bento Craft. Thanks for the cute duckie cutting board, which my gal claimed it’s hers!

BTW, the tiny carrot roses are inspired by Hippomum. Do check out her tutorial. I just replaced fish sausage with blanched carrot strips.

Carrot rose.

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.