Mothering Corner

I know that it’s way too early for Qixi festival, but I felt like fixing a Qixi bento after watching Karate Kid. I really like the movie, especially the breathtaking scenes and the kungfu actions. My boy likes it too but he felt asleep before it’s over, while my gal basically closed her eyes as soon as the fighting scene started in the very beginning. *slap head* She doesn’t like any movie with fighting scene, so she preferred not to watch and felt asleep shortly after. LOL!

FYI, Qixi festival is celebrated as Chinese Valentine’s Day. It falls on the 7th day of the 7th month in Chinese lunar calendar, so it should be in August this year.

Actually, I wanted to dress up Niu Lang and Zhi Nu but I was running out of time. So, these lovely couples (made from quail eggs) are kind of under decorated in the bentos.

My gal’s Qixi bento.

This is for my boy. I should have filled up the gap with lettuce but I don’t have any.

Besides quail eggs, there are butter toasts, some apple, kiwi and rambutans in the bento too. I cut a mini wiener diagonally and joined them up as a heart.

A close up of my boy’s Niu Lang and Zhi Nu

I think some Japanese bento blogs, such as Ssmama and Mari Miyazawa, have started this theme too. Do hop around…

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.

Before I start blogging about today’s lunch bentos, I would like to let some of my friends know that we are doing fine here, despite the bombing incidents, and chaotic situation in Bangkok. Things are not getting any better, and I believe more violence might be going on soon if the protesters refuse to leave the most populated commercial area of the city. Anyway, we are hardly affected as we stay in the outskirt of Bangkok, and we don’t use the trains.

I really feel sorry and bad for the victims of the bombing incident that happened days ago because they are just normal civilians. On all the clashes that happened in Bangkok, I think this is the first time civilians were targeted, ever since our stay here.  The Majesties would pay for the medical fees and funeral costs of the victims, but still, a great loss is still a great loss.

My worrying parents even asked us to move back. And by us, I mean my kids and I, but not hubby who has a job and business here. Of course, it’s a big decision, but we haven’t made up our minds yet. I still think Bangkok is a good place to stay, but a lot of other reasons might have changed our lives, besides the unstable political issue. Oh well, let’s see how things go. I haven’t paid for my kids’ new school fees, and the local insurance quote, so I guess we still have an option.

Ok, let’s get back to today’s bento.

I still have some B-herbs Herbal Coated Rice left on the shelf, so I steamed some for today’s bentos. I used this rice mold to form the shape by stacking different colored of rice layer by layer.

Square Rice Mold

I added 2 pieces of chicken nuggets, a piece of teriyako salmon and some blanched broccoli in the bentos too. The gap was filled with some lettuce, which I doubt my kids will eat because it’s kind of bitter. So, here are their lunch bentos:

My boy’s multi-colored rice bento. Nothing special about the decoration except some cute picks.

My gal has something slightly different. I added smiley faces on the rice.

My kids summer holiday ended last week, so they are tagging with me to the office, and everywhere I go. I might pack lunch for them daily this week, and then I’ll have a long Songkran break. We haven’t registered them to the new school term, so if they are not going for any new summer camp, they will be following mommy around.

I packed a simple lunch for them today. Just rice, blanched broccoli, deep fried buffalo wings, and some seafood tofu. To make their bentos more attractive, I decorated the tofu as toy soldiers. Here’s how I do it:

I prepared a blanched carrot, 2 artificial crab meat, and 4 tofu.

Hard tofu will be a better choice, or alternately, you can also use seafood tofu.

Cut the tofu into thinner slices.

Top some nori as hats and red artificial crab meat on the tofu as their red uniform.

Add stars and buttons on the hats and uniform.

Add cheeks (carrot), nose, and a thin strap of white artificial crab meat.

Punch some nori as eyes and lips, and that’s it! Here are my kids’ toy soldiers bento.

My gal’s toy soldiers, topped on her rice.

Here’s my boy’s bento.

Both kids polished the bentos clean. Yippie!

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.

Oh well, not exactly fruity as I packed some sweet potatoes too.

Some times, I will just pack fruits in my kids’ after school bento, especially on busy mornings. My kids are not so into greens, so I’m making sure that they have enough fiber and vitamins from fruits. I really missed those days when they were not so picky about veggies!

Most of the time, I don’t decorate their fruit bentos. But since I had some time to kill this morning, I fixed them a nicer fruity bento as shown below:

My gal’s fruity bento.

This bento belongs to my boy.

I left a lot of gap between the fruits so that I could easily rearrange them before closing the lid.

Ah…again, it took more than half an hour to upload these 2 bento photos.

I felt like fixing mee goreng tomato (fried noodles with ketchup) for my gal as breakfast this morning, and I packed some for the bentos. My boy only likes cereals or toasts as breakfast, so he didn’t want to take the noodles. Nonetheless, he won’t mind having noodles as after school tea.

Besides noodles, there are oranges, blueberries, strawberries and champagne grapes in the bentos too.

The bentos looked a bit plain without decoration, so I decorated a piece of fried fish tofu (cut into halves) as smiley faces in each bento.

My boy’s bento.

This is my gal’s bento. I lose the pink ribbon pick, so if you have seen it at 100Yen, let me know!!!

Before closing the bentos, my boy reminded me about the cheese he cut last night. He wanted to add some cheese in his bento, so he prepared them a night before.

He insisted that he must spell his name and added the three teddies in his meal. LOL! Thus, his bento is a bit too “crowded”.

I’m out of idea what to pack for my kids today, so I took out the leftover rice from the fridge, steamed it, mixed some corn kernels in the rice and formed some rice balls for my kids. I spread some butter and soy sauce on the rice ball before baking them for 10 minutes. Make sure that your rice balls are tightly formed as the rice grains might fall out after baking.

Paw rice mold

I wanted to use the paw rice mold, but too bad the corn kernels could not stick well with the rice. So in the end, I formed the rice balls manually with cling wrap. To me, it’s easier and faster to make rice balls manually, and most of my rice molds are bought for my kids.

I let the rice balls cool down before placing them in the bentos. Then, I proceeded to decoration the rice balls and packed a quail egg, strawberry, some blueberries and champagne grapes in each lunch box.

My boy’s bento with 2 smiley rice balls.

My gal has a smaller appetite, so she can only take a rice ball, if she’s hungry.

My rice is a mixed of white jasmine rice and red hom mali rice, so it’s brownish. The rice balls are slight darker after baking too.

BTW, I’ll slow down in fixing bento as my hubby is going for business trip again, and my kids might not be coming to the office frequently. Furthermore, I want to spend some time rushing my crochet poncho so that my hub can bring all my 99% completed knitting projects back to Malaysia and pass them over to the knitting shop. I’m going to be a night owl rushing my poncho! So, I don’t think I can wake up early in the morning. LOL! Luckily, I’m not crocheting anything as big as  adult halloween costumes, so I should be able to complete it in a few nights.

It’s another simple bento today. I pan fried some SPAM for breakfast, and this time, I bought the less-salt-less-oil version from SPAM, instead of Tulip! So, I didn’t have to “struggle” with the can this morning. LOL!

I prepared 2 wheatmeal buns, some lettuce and 2 pieces of Spam.

Obviously, there is nothing special about the mini burgers. I just replaced the burger patty with Spam.

I packed everything in the bentos.

There are mini burger, tamagoyaki (which the lazy mommy bought from the Japanese food section at supermarket ), some blueberries and a strawberry. The strawberries from Driscolls are quite big and I couldn’t slip in more, so I packed a few more strawberries in smaller lunch boxes for my kids.

Since my kids have always preferred to have their food “smiling back at them”, I proceeded to decorate the mini burgers.

I added 2 eyes, cut from fish tofu, to the buns. (Why I use spaghetti strips)

Then I added their eyes and lips with nori (that’s the puncher I used) and 2 rosy cheeks cut from artificial crab meat.

What I had in mind was decorating the buns as frogs, but my boy said, “Mommy, it doesn’t look like a frog.” O.o *sweat*

Anyway, here are the bentos:

My boy’s mini Spam burger bento.

And here’s my gal’s bento.

 I gently pressed down the buns before closing the bentos. Don’t worry, I have an extra pair of tweezers for my boy in the lunch bag, and he might “fix” the nori if he feels that his meal needs some touching up. LOL!

Now, would you please excuse me. I have to go figure out what’s wrong with the buns as they don’t look like frogs. LOL! *just kidding, I have to get back to work. *