Mothering Corner

I lost my old Doraemon cutter in the flood and had recently bought a new set from Kristie. My boy insisted that I should replenish the cutter as Doraemon was one of his favorite characters.

I packed some SPAM sandwiches for the kids today, and the Doraemon was prepared last night with cheese, blue egg sheet, and red artificial crab meat. Since I have to spend some time preparing our dinner in the morning, I only have a limited of time for bento now, and by preparing the kyaraben a night before will definitely speed things up.

Doraemon on sandwiches.

I was running out of time to fix anything nice for my gal this morning and I was too tired last night and couldn’t fix her one.

Just an update, the renovation starts again this week! My flooring is done, but my KITCHEN is not!!! And the wallpaper in my living room, my boy’s bed, and some touching up here and there. But we are almost there…I think. I’m getting used to cooking and preparing meals with limited resources anyway, so I guess I can just hold on and be more patient until my stove and hood are installed!

Back to bento-ing. I did a quick kyaraben again this morning, by decorating cube cheese before topping them on ham and cheese toasts.

These cube cheese are tiny!!! But aren’t they cute as Hello Kitty and Melody, without her ears? LOL!

My initial plan was to decorate a Shinkansen for my boy, but he wanted the cube cheese to be boys with hats. So, this is even easier than I thought!

Let’s assume that the boys are boarding on Shinkansen.

Shinkansen is my boy’s favorite train, which he yearns to ride on for years. Ok, let’s see how mommy’s biz goes this year, and maybe…maybe we can plan a trip to Tokyo in the near future. Let mommy sell more sensors and odyssey pc925 batteries first then.

It’s been a busy March for us. Firstly, my gal took part in Thailand National Cheerleading Championship last weekend, and my boy is going for spelling bee competition in a couple of days. After that, they will each have their sports day, and I might be there to snap photos of my kids.

To commemorate this busy month, I fixed my kids a cheerleading and a spelling bee bento each. All cuttings were done last night, and these are some lousy quick shots taken.

For the body / tee, I cut them with this butterfly cutter.

The head were cut with a face cutter. As for the hair, I cut a round cheese, then I use the same round cutter to cut off the sides.

Then I stacked the cheese on nori

Cut another piece from the same round cheese and stacked it on the cheese as well. Then I cut the outline of the nori and this would be the hair.

I use this cutter for their arms.

The pom pom were cut from smoked cheese and red crab meat by using these cutters.

After that, I wrapped the decorative parts with cling wrap and refrigerated them in air tight container. The next morning, I prepared some sandwiches and fruits, and topped the decorations on the bread.

The bentos

I proceeded to punch some nori for facial details, and added food picks in the bentos. So, here they are:

My little cheerleader bento

And good luck to my boy in the coming spelling bee competition!

It’s something quick and simple again! It’s the first time of me using this pocket sandwich mold, which I’ve just bought from Bento Craft. It’s not a new tool but I didn’t get it until now.

After preparing the pocket sandwiches, I cut some cheese and decorated them as Hello Kitty and Anpanman for each bentos.

Hello Kitty Pocket Sandwiches Bento

Anpanman Pocket Sandwiches Bento

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’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.

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

I’m still reading bedtime stories to my kids and recently, my gal fell in love with this classic story called Heidi, which was written by Johanna Spyri. She would love me to read it every night but I must let my boy choose his stories too. So, I decided to fix her a simple Heidi bento today, along with her grandfather.

Heidi and her grandfather.

I decorated the sandwich balls as Heidi’s grandfather, and Heidi was cut from cheese and nori. I’m trying to make it as if  grandpa’s hugging the little girl, in the simplest way ever.

I didn’t pack anything for my kids yesterday and guess what, my gal wailed her lungs out in the car on the way home! Oh boy, I guess I must have really “spoiled” them for the past 3 years to have their after school bentos or snacks, whether if it’s rain or shine. *faint*

Thus, I felt a bit guilty and wanted to cheer her up by fixing one of her many bento requests…. Arlene, Garfield’s girlfriend!

It’s actually ham and cheese, and for Arlene, the cheese is at the bottom. Garfield is just the opposite way around.

Here’s what I did last night, and it took me about 30 minutes for both characters:

Stack ham and cheese together, and cut the outline of the cat with an exacto knife.

For Arlene, the ham will be on top.

Prepare a hard boiled egg and gently slice it for its eyes. I used a cutter to cut them out.

I got this idea from LoveBones, check out her awesome Garfield!

I placed the oval egg white on the drawing and cut off the excess part.

Pardon the low quality photos taken as if they were snapped by a phone on this HD7 page. I was trying to get them done fast so that I could attend to my kids. Once both character were completed, I wrapped everything up with cling wrap and kept them refrigerated in an air tight container.

This morning, I punched some nori, randomly with some punchers. I didn’t cut the nori though as I was running out of time! Next, it’s more about adding nori on the cats to make them look like Garfield and Arlene.

So, here are the bentos:

Arlene, she’s Garfield’s girlfriend. My gal was so delighted when she saw her.

And Garfield for my boy.

My kids complained that it’s been so long since they did kyaraben, thus I let them fixed their own decoration for today’s bentos. Our theme is the characters from The Wizard of Oz, which is one of their favorite books at the moment. Both kids picked their favorite characters, except the Tin Man. Poor thing, no one wants the Tin Man in their bentos. LOL!

As for scarecrow, it’s too hard for my kids to fix it, so I resorted to use a pick. Most of the characters were cut from cheese, with various cutters, and I helped them to add in the seaweed. So, here they are:

The Coward Lion and the Scarecrow bento

My gal’s Dorothy and her dog Toto.

My gal can only manage cutting cheese with cutters. So after stacking the cheese on nori, I helped her with the cutting.