Mothering Corner

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Have a great celebration with your loved ones ya!

I bought a pack of cheese wedges yesterday, and packed a piece in today’s bento. Both kids had the same kyaraben so it saved me a few minutes of preparation.

Here’s how I did the Santa Claus.

I cut a small piece of triangular red crab meat and topped it on the cheese as Santa’s hat.

Then I added beard (cut from sliced cheese) and kamaboko as nose.

Punched nori for facial details.

And lastly, I added rosy cheeks to Santa.

So, here’s one of the bentos:

Very simple huh?

It’s another Christmas bento today, and it’s something very simple and speedy too. I prepared some nuggets for the kids and I placed the nuggets on their sandwiches as shown:

Plain looking bentos.

Honestly, I don’t pack kyaraben all the time, and my kids won’t mind non decorated bentos either. It’s just that if it’s kyaraben, they will feel happier.

These are the bits for decoration.

I added picks as antlers, and pinned the blanched baby carrot with a yellow food pick.

Then I added punched nori.

I cut the cheese with this flower cutter.

Cut the cheese into 2 pieces.

Use the bigger cheese as Santa’s beard and the smaller one for Rudolph’s head.

Cut some red crab meat

Top it on as Santa’s hat.

Add a small strip of white crab meat.

Cut an oval from red crab meat.

Top the oval on the hat, and add a small cheese circle.

Add nori for Santa.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Santa and Rudolph Christmas Bento

This is for my boy.

I wish to have a white Christmas, and it’s been years since the last time I saw snow. Too bad Christmas is not a public holiday in Thailand, and it’s a working day for me! Argh…

Even if I can’t enjoy the cold and festive holiday abroad, I can still check out the pretty Christmas decorations at the malls. Most have set up Christmas trees, log furniture decorated with elves and stockings, reindeer, and etc. But so far, I haven’t seen anyone dresses as Santa and giving out candies to little children.

With the joyous mood around, I feel like packing a simple and speedy Christmas bento today. I saw a blog with an apple craved as Santa Claus and I thought that I should give it a try. Instead of fixing Rudolf like last year, I decorated a mini wiener as an elf.

Cut apple into triangular bites.

Cut 2 lines on the leather (don’t cut thought the apple), and imprint a small circle in the middle. Then, gently peel of the skin.

I immersed the apples in a bowl of salted water for a few minutes, and continued with fixing an elf from mini wiener and red artificial crab meat.

Ingredients for elf.

Wrap half of the wiener with artificial crab meat.

Then, I proceeded to packing everything into bentos and added nori for the facial details. So, here are the simple Christmas bentos:

Santa Clause and Elf Bento, with a piece of “Christmas tree” sandwich.

Here’s my gal’s Santa and Elf. She said they are cute.

Today’s bento is very simple, and my kids helped me with it. They were excited to see the confetti sprinkles I bought yesterday because they love sweets. What I did was cutting the pandan cake rolls into smaller pieces and arranging them as a Christmas tree. The tree truck is a piece of mini chicken wiener, and there is a little pressie (cut from striped cheese) placed under the tree. We slotted some strawberries and cherries to fill in the gap, but I guess they will move around, if the bentos are not being handled carefully. Oh well, it’s a kiddie bento (means that it’s done by kids), so as long as they love it, why kill their creativity?

So, here are the Christmas tree bentos:

My gal’s Christmas tree. She was so happy to spread lots of confetti sprinkles on it.

My boy decided to do something different with his star on the Christmas tree.

We managed to get the bentos done in 15 minutes, including the striped cheese. LOL! It’s a speedy Christmas bento that can be easily done by kids. Give it a try.

And BTW, I’m in holiday mood now, and I’m not sure if I will update this blog. With Christmas being 2 days away, I still have some shopping to do, an implant dentist Plano to visit with FIL, cleaning the house for our guests who’s coming for Christmas, and figuring out where to go for next week’s holiday. So, just in case I’m away from blogging…

MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!!!

And a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

God bless.

Just as I thought that I can relax a bit this week, my boy was picked as the drum major for their school marching band. I thought that they won’t be having their sports day this year, since they already participated in an inter-kindy sports day a few months ago. But I was wrong, the school will still hold their own mini sports day in January, and the marching band has been practicing hard start from yesterday.

So, we have to drop him at school slightly earlier for the practice, and I can’t do much kyaraben in the morning, unless I wake up EARLIER than ever. LOL! Nonetheless, this is what I managed to do this morning, by repeating the same Santa Clause idea like I did previously but with different food ingredient. Santa’s head was done with a quail egg, topped with a cherry tomato. The beard was cut from kamaboko with a flower cutter, and the rest is almost the same as previous bento.

Hohoho! Santa’s playing peekaboo. LOL!

There are pasta Bolognese, mango, kiwi, guava and a rambutan in the bento. I packed another small bento with lots of fruits for him, just in case he feels like having more. Besides that, it’s getting chilly today, so hopefully he won’t catch a cold and need any prescription medication if he falls sick. Seeing those kids marching so hard on a windy day is simply impressive, but worrying.

On top of that, my boy might be very tired today because he has taewondo class after school. Yeap! Marching in the morning, then normal school lessons, and then taewondo, all in a day for a 5-year-old.

Hence, I packed some carbo and protein for him like a complete meal. If he sleeps through on the way home and can’t get up for dinner, at least he’s already taken a balance bento meal at our office.

My gal’s bento

I packed the same meal for my gal, but I doubt that she can finish it. I guess she will pass some of her food to her brother, and that’s what she does usually. LOL! Sharing food!!!

It’s another simple Christmas bento again. But today, I managed to snap some photos during the preparation and I shall share with you how I fixed the mini Rudolf with hotdog and the little snowman with quail eggs.

I cut the hotdog into smaller pieces. I only used the 2 ends.

Add a red nose for Rudolf.

Punch some nori and add the eyes and mouth.

Pin the quail eggs together with tiny spaghetti strip. Add a “scarf” for him.

Add the eyes, mouth and starry buttons for the snowman.

Pin 2 picks as Rudolf’s antlers and a small hat for the snowman.

Hence, here are the simple Christmas bentos:

My gal’s Christmas bento with Rudolf, snowman and some fruits.

This belongs to my boy.

I’m packing more fruits for the kids today as we will be having dinner at MIL’s place. She’s here for the holiday and she cooks for us mostly now. My kids won’t have to starve wait for the mommy to frantically prepare dinner after we get home in the evening, and hot meal will be served earlier by MIL. Thus, I’m packing lighter bento meals these days.

Hubby bought some buns last night, and I packed 2 in the kids’ bentos. Since the buns looked rather “boring”, I thought of decorating them as Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer by adding a cherry tomato and 2 mini chicken wieners on each of them. It’s something speedy and simple, and the reindeer were ready in less than 5 minutes (excluding the time used for boiling the wiener). LOL!

Rudolf, before he was allowed to join in any reindeer game.

And the happy Rudolf after he’s gone down in history. LOL!

Very simple huh? Their fruits were packed in the lower tier of these basket bentos and are not shown in this post.

My kids have been listening to Christmas songs these days, so I thought it would be nice to fix them some bentos based on their favorite Christmas songs. Frosty the Snowman is one of their favorites, and thus today’s bento is all about snowmen.

I prepared a slice of boiled kamaboko, a small piece of ham, an artificial crab meat and some blanched baby carrots last night. I cut 2 mittens for the snowman, as shown below:

Slice the top pink layer of kamaboko.

Cut an oval kamaboko.

Use a star cutter to cut off a small triangle. Alternately, you may use a knife.

There you have it, a pair of mittens!

I saw this mitten somewhere, but tutorial was not given. So, that’s how I cut my mittens. I wanted to snap the photos while preparing the snowman sandwiches and quail eggs this morning, but my kids were bugging me. So, no photos shall be shared today, but I guess you can figure out how I fixed the snowmen.

Anyway, there are the bentos:

My boy’s Frosty the Snowman bento, with some corn and fruits and a little snowman quail eggs.

Here’s a closer shot of his little snowman.

And here is my gal’s snowman bento:

My gal’s Frosty.

And her little snowman.

I accidentally broke my gal’s quail egg while pinning the carrot nose. But never mind la…she still said that it’s cute. LOL!

It’s been awhile since the last time my kids and I fixed bentos together. So last night, all of us decided to have some “playing-with-our-food” fun by fixing a mini Santa Claus. My boy did most of his Santa Claus by himself, but my gal was enjoying leftovers after cutting them.

I wanted to fix the Santa Claus with quail eggs, but I couldn’t get any last night. Thus, the eggs were replaced by fish balls. Besides that, I prepared a white egg sheet, a piece of ham, a blanched baby carrot and some tiny spaghetti strips. Here’s how we did our Santa Claus:

Cut the ham and egg white with a small flower cutter, and stack them together.

Actually, you may skip this step if your egg sheet is thick enough. But to prevent it from tearing, stacking it on a piece of ham will help a lot.

Cut off the top to form Santa’s beard. (The top was later used as my boy’s Santa’s mustache)

Pin the beard on a fish ball with spaghetti strips. (You may replace it with quail egg)

Cut a small heart from the egg white and cut it into halves.

Pin the beard and a nose for Santa.

Pretty simple huh? My boy had no problem fixing his own Santa Claus, but I helped him to pin on the details.

He used a bigger flower cutter though…

I refrigerated the bento work in air-tight container, and took them out this morning. I pinned the fish ball on a cherry tomato, and added the eyes and lips with nori. I’ve forgotten to add the buttons, which were cut by my boy, but I guess he’s forgotten about them too. LOL!

Mini Santa Claus

Anyway, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Santa Claus, with tangerines and spaghetti too.

My boy’s Santa, which he’s very proud of it.

You must be wondering how I closed the bentos huh? LOL! Actually, my gal voiced her concern too. She’s too worried that her Santa will smashed when I closed it, so my boy suggested that they packed the tangerines in smaller bento boxes. So, their Santa could nicely lay down in the bentos, and I filled in the gap with some lettuce. Both of them are sooooooo “kan cheong” about Santa, I guess they really like today’s theme.

It’s quite fun doing this with my kids, even if it might be kind of messy some times. My kids have been asking me to bake with them, but I’m too tired to do so by the time we are back from the office. Besides that, weekends are quite packed with activities and TV, and some times, the mommy is too lazy to do anything much. If I have a maid or central vacuum to clean up the mess, then maybe we will bake some cookies for Christmas.

In short, mommy is simply too lazy. LOL!