Mothering Corner

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.

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?

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 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!

My kids are really into tigers these days. So, I’m fixing them another tiger bentos, with little kids dressing up in tiger costumes.

I didn’t manage to snap any photos during preparation because both kids were bugging me and “playing” with the cutters and leftover too. They were very excited in helping out, considering that they haven’t done so in weeks. The preparation was done last night, and I wrapped the decorative cheese nicely in food wrap, before storing it in an air-tight container. Thus, I could bear to sleep in a bit this morning, and only spent about 15 minutes in preparing the fruits and packing the bentos.

So, here they are:

My boy’s bento with little kids in tiger costumes.

Besides cheese topped on sandwiches, there are blueberries, a quail egg, some jackfruit, cherries and a tangerine too.

My gal will have strawberries instead of cherries.

I love the tiny flowers on the girls. They were cut with the flower plunger, given by Ellena. Thanks a million pal!

Today’s bentos are inspired by miho nao chin. I saw the sandwich cutter at Daiso some time ago, but never really thought of buying it until I saw how cute Mihochin’s bento is. Just take a peep and you will know why!

This sandwich cutter is quite big, but I managed to grab a loaf of white bread which fits it quite well. Only the crust was cut off, and I can easily cut the bread into 4 different shapes at a go. Besides decorating the sandwiches as Pikkachu, Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma, I created a tiger, a koala bear and a kitten too.

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s bento with Pikkachu, koala bear and tiger.

My gal will have Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty and a kitten.

The koala bear and Rilakkuma were cut from brown eggsheet. I mixed some dark soysauce, a pinch of sugar and a table spoon of mirin into the egg mixture to create that color. As for tiger, it was cut from “egg yolk” sheet.  The other characters were cut from cheese and I topped all the characters on the sandwiches.

A reader asked if I’m still packing bentos every school day since she noticed that I don’t update about bentos daily now. Oh well, here are my answers. Yeap, answerS. LOL!

Firstly, my kids are so into eggs lately, they want to fix their own egg breakfast (except the frying part). They will get up about the same time as I do, and with them bugging me at the kitchen, I don’t have much time for kyaraben but just pack some simple bentos like what I did this morning:

Hello Kitty Sandwich Bento, and fruits were packed separately.

My boy’s Tomica bento.

If they are something simple, I don’t feel like posting them. These sandwiches were cut with these sets of sandwich molds. My bread is obviously too small for the cutters! LOL!

Another reason is, SIL may prepare dinner at office once in a while, and she will cook for my kids too. Her toddler has started going to nursery, which is located at my kids’ preschool. Thus, all 3 children will have early dinner at the office if she cooks. She will let me know a day before if she prepares dinner, and I will just pack fruits for my kids because they don’t need a heavy meal. How convenient huh?

Today’s bento is something simple again, and the main tools used is this mickey veggie cutter.

I prepared both Mickey and Minnie last night, when my kids were occupied by the idiot box. They will take every opportunity to watch TV in the weekends since they can’t watch any on school days. They will also stop by the bell tv at the shopping complex just to check out the programs, if we pass by one. LOL!

I didn’t snap any photos during the preparation of Mickey and Minnie, but here’s a summary of what I did last night:

1. I cut the ham as base for the characters by using the veggie cutter.
2. Trace the outline of the cutter and cut a piece of Mickey-shaped nori with an exacto knife.
3. Place the nori on the ham.
4. Then, cut a piece of cheese with the cutter and cut of the excess cheese with an exacto knife so that you will get the shape of Mickey’s face.
5. Stack the cheese on nori.
6. Repeat Step 1 – Step 5 for Minnie.

I wrapped the decoration pieces in food wrapper and kept them refrigerated in an air tight container. The face features were added this morning, after I’ve prepared the sandwiches and fruits.
Hence, here are the bentos:

Mini Mickey and Minnie in Sandwich Bentos

Here’s a closer shot of one of the bentos:

There are raspberry jam sandwiches, 2 tangerines topped with a smiley strawberry and a dwarf apple in each bento.

It’s easier to prepare both bentos with the same decoration. I shall do this more often to speed things up!

My kids love the chocolate milk bread from Oishi, so I bought them a loaf yesterday. This bread is yummy to be eaten on its own, that’s why I love to pack bentos with it. I only cut the chocolate bread with the stitch cutter set, and decorated them with cheese and nori. So, it’s a simple and speedy bento.

Stitch cutter set

Besides chocolate bread, I packed some strawberries and kiwi in the bentos too. Hence, here they are:

My boy’s Stitch Bento in his new Cinnamonroll bento box.

This is my gal’s Stitch bento.

I don’t have any ham left in the fridge, so I cut the ears from kamaboko which is too pinkish for Stitch. Anyway, the colors are quite striking, so my kids didn’t complain about their bentos. Actually, I think they are too sleepy to even realize what’s in their bentos when I showed Stitch to them this morning. I’m still trying to “tune” their biological clock and get them in bed earlier because they stayed up very late during their holiday. I need to get them in bed at least an hour earlier so that they can wake up easily in the morning. Right now, it’s a struggle to get them out of their beds, and I don’t think they can even hear the alarm of the emergency alert system too if I have one!

It’s the first day at school for the new semester, and luckily, both my kids didn’t make any fuss in the morning. It took us awhile to wake them up, but we managed to get them to school just in time.

I only prepared a simple tea bento for each of them, which is consisted of a SPAM sandwich with carrot bun, an apple and a quail egg. I decorated the quail eggs as a piggy and a puppy respectively because they are pretty easy.

My gal’s piggy bento

My boy’s bento with a little puppy. Mmm…it doesn’t look like a real puppy though.

Both my kids didn’t say much about their bentos as they were pretty blur at breakfast. LOL!

I better get back to the paper work and Admin Jobs piling up on my table after a month of holiday. It’s going to be a busy Monday for me.