Mothering Corner

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.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by some Japanese blogs. I can’t remember where I saw the bentos though, but I’m pretty sure that some of us might have come across some Japanese blogs showing these kyarabens. You don’t have to create exactly the same as the actual characters, but try to add in some elements and let your kids guess what’s the bento theme.

I prepared the bentos with this loaf of fancy bread from S&P.

It comes in 4 colors in the same pack.

I planned to fix Mickey and Minnie Mouse with the bread, so I did some preparation last night. Firstly, I prepared a pink (egg white mixed with pink food gel) and orange (egg york) egg sheets. I could have used kamaboko, but I had forgotten to buy one. The orange egg sheet was used for Mickey’s shoes.

Then, I proceeded to cutting the details:

I cut Minnie’s ribbon with this cutter (recently bought from Jmama)

Cut another ribbon.

Cut off the tips and stack the second ribbon on the first one.

My gal helped me to cut a small oval and top it on the 2 ribbons. This will be Minnie’s element.

Draw Mickey’s hand on a piece of baking paper, and cut it out from a piece of cheese. I did the same for Minnie too.

Cut the leftover cheese with these round and oval cutters.

The smallest circles will be used for Minnie’s ribbon, while the medium sized circles are for her dress. Cut 2 ovals as Mickey’s buttons.

Wrap all ingredients with food wrapper and store them overnight in air tight container.

The next morning, I proceeded to cutting the bread with the bento box so that the sandwich will fit nicely in the box.

Cut a strip of nori and stick it on the sandwich with jam, butter or mayonnaise.

Top cheese on sandwiches, and add in some nori strips as shown.

Add in the rest of the elements.

Next, I packed the fruits in and here are the bentos:

Guess who am I? Of course, my boy could easily tell it’s Mickey by just looking at its glove.

My gal’s “Guess Who Am I” Bento.

We are going to have a long day today, and the kids won’t be having dinner early at home. Hubby and I have to finalize the interior of our condo, and both kids will be tagging along to the designer’s office. Considering how “cha poh” my hubby is, I can foresee that both kids will be pretty hungry and tired waiting at the sofa, and after a late eating out, they will probably doze off in the car on the way home.

So I decided to pack them some ham sandwiches and fruits, and maybe I might grab some snack for them too, just in case they are too bored waiting for us.

Since I had already fry some ham for the sandwiches, I used another piece of ham and a piece of cheese as decoration.

I prepared these Minnie and Stitch cookie cutters.

Cut 2 pieces of ham with Minnie’s cookie cutter. Make an imprint on one of the pieces.

Cut the cheese with the same cutter.

Stack the cheese on the ham without the imprint.

Gently cut off the excess part of the imprinted ham to get the outline of Minnie’s face.

Add a flower kamaboko for Minnie.

Punch nori with this Mickey seaweed cutter and add in the details.

Repeat the same steps for Stitch. With the cookie and puncher set, this kyaraben can be done in less than 15 minutes each. So here are the bentos:

My gal’s Minnie Mouse on her sandwiches.

A Stitch Ham and Cheese for my boy.

It’s ham and cheese again! What I did was stacking ham and cheese together so that the cheese won’t melt that fast under our hot hot hot summer weather. If you are packing cheese for your preschooler, it’s best to use a cooler bag with icepack to avoid the cheese from melting and sticking all over. But if the cheese is stacked on the ham, it helps a lot.

My gal’s ham and cheese Melody and Piano has 3 layers, with a slice of cheese in between 2 pieces of hams. I hopped the characters on peanut butter sandwiches and fruits.

Shinkansen for my boy.  Cheese was stacked on a piece of ham for these characters.

All characters are cut with Sanrio sandwich cutters, and I manually cut the nori strips for Shinkansen.

P/S: something is seriously wrong with this blog whereby the links of individual posts are not working. I need help!!!

MIL bought some prepacked mini pancakes from Hong Kong, and gave some to the kids last night.

So, these mini pancakes went into today’s bentos. All I did this morning was cutting the Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty from cheese and nori, and topped them on the pancakes. On top of that, I packed some mangoes and blueberries too. Oh ya, MIL gave the kids lots of blueberries! They are way much cheaper in HK, as comparing to BKK.

My gal’s Hello Kitty and pancakes bento.

My boy’s Mickey, not so well cut though.

I supposed to fix these bentos on Valentine’s Day, but since I don’t pack bento on Mondays, my Valentine’s bentos are a day late.

My gal’s Valentine’s Day bento.

The characters are cut from cheese and decorated with kamaboko (pink), artificial crab meat (red) and nori (black).

My boy’s teddies.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day!

We had a great trip in Singapore, even though it’s not for holiday. The kids enjoyed their stay with their cousins, and hubby and I managed to get a good look at “something which we might venture into”. It’s nothing related to our business nature here, not selling VeloBind machine or anythings we are familiar with, but we shall see how it goes.

We didn’t manage to bring the kids for sightseeing, except visiting the zoo and checking out the Merlion (which was taking a shower) at Marina Bay. Actually both kids are not interested in Merlion, they are totally clueless about the history of Singapore.

I guess they can always visit Sg again some day, and hopefully we can bring them around to more places next time. I did have my loh mee!!! And a lot of other hawker food! In fact, both hubby and I had overeaten in Singapore. LOL! I really miss the food there, maybe it’s because I used to stay in JB and I hanged out in Sg once in a while.

The bonus of this trip is, I managed to meet up with Ellena from Cuisine Paradise.

We have been reading each other’s blogs for so many years, and it’s nice to have finally seen each other in person!

Anyway, I still feel like fixing the kids a Merlion bento each today. The main ingredients are ham and cheese, and I cut the merlion with these tools:

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s Merlion (ham and cheese) bento.

This is for my gal.

Thanks to all who had left comments about where to get good food in Sg. I really appreciate that. Muaks!