Mothering Corner

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.

I bought these cute hats from Bentocraft some time ago, and I decided to use them today.

Cowboy Chip and Dale for my boy

And Chip and Dale with snow hats

The hats really sparked up the plain looking Chip and Dale!

I would love to fix a Chinese New Year bento, but I’m too tied up this week. So, I shall see if I have time to fix one next week, before our short break for CNY. It’s not public holidays in Thailand, but we shall take a few days off celebrating it.

So this morning, I fixed my kids some simple sandwiches, decorated as Marie the Cat and Cinnamonroll.

My gal’s Marie the Cat Bento.

I can’t remember how many Marie have i fixed, but they never appeared the same. LOL! Check them out here, here, here and here.

But I did a consistent job for Cinnamonroll, most of my Cinnamonroll bentos (here, here, here, and here) look similar but with different ingredients.

Today’s Cinnamonroll.

I’m not quite sure how to name today’s bentos. They are fish ball snowmen, but decorated as Mickey, Minnie, Pooh Bear and Hello Kitty. Oh well, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

My gal’s bento with Minnie Mouse and Hello Kitty (fish balls), and lots of fruits.

My boy’s Mickey and Pooh.

Actually, Pooh bear doesn’t look quite like himself, but my boy recognized it as Winnie the Pooh. So I guess I’ve passed the test.

Today’s bentos are very simple and speedy, and I only used this set of Piglet puncher and cutter for preparation. I bought this set of puncher from Bentocraft.com.

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s Piglet bento, with ham and cheese sandwich, mango and blueberries.

My gal was rather moody this morning, so I decorated an unhappy Piglet for her. LOL!

It’s something simple again for today’s bento. My initial plan was to fix a brown egg sheets for Chip and Dale, but I was out of eggs. So, this is what I did yesterday:

I cut the cheese with the cutter and mold.

Try not to press hard with the imprint mold. What I wanted was to get the outlines of the chipmunk, then I cut off the excess cheese with an exacto knife. You can also use a toothpick to cut the cheese.

I wrapped the cheese pieces and kept them refrigerated. This morning, I cut some bread with the same cutter, and fixed some butter and sugar toasts for today’s bento. Once the toasts cooled down, I topped the cheese on them and added nori as decoration. The nori bits were punched with the chipmunk puncher, which came in the same set.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Chip and Dale bento, with strawberries, blueberries and rose apple too.

This bento belongs to my boy.

When my boy saw his bento, he asked me why are there only 2 chipmunks but not 3? I was puzzled, then I realized that he was expecting to see Alvin and the chipmunks!

But I fixed Chip and Dale! LOL!

Ok, next time boy! I think the same set can be used for Alvin and his friends too.

Stitch and Marie sets

The kids wanted me to use the new tools for their bentos, so here they are:

My boy’s Stitch Bento with sandwiches, lychees, cherries, baby carrots and some stacked ham and cheese.

Too bad I don’t have Stitch bento box for the theme so I’ll order one for him next time.

My gal picked Marie the Cat for today’s bento.

Both kids bring after school bentos to school since yesterday. The teachers help them to keep the bentos in the fridge until 3.30pm, so I still have the option of packing fruits. The fridge is located in the pantry where the fresh milk is kept, the kids are served with 2 times of fresh milk daily.

The teachers actually encourage them to bring after school bentos, that’s why they don’t mind keeping the bentos and bring them out for my kids after school. My kids will still be taking the lunch and snack prepared by school, but if I’m late in picking them up after school, they can help themselves with the bentos first.

Most of the kids will buy junk food and ice-cream from the cafeteria, but I only allow my kids to help themselves with rubbish junks on Fridays, on which they will bring some pocket money to school. I know that the temptation is there.  Even if I prefer them not to have any, I can’t just let them be “aliens” among their friends. Thus, we came with an agreement that they can buy ice-cream or junks on Friday. After some time, I will tell them that if they don’t spend the money, they can save it up.

For the time being, I’m so sure that they will go grab junks like their friends! LOL!

Here’s the bento I planned to submit for VIRTUAL BENTO BOX BATTLE but I didn’t. Interested to know the reason why? It’s because I have forgotten to snap a photo of me holding the bento!!!!

How to enter:
Send an email by March 31 to bentobattle@japansociety.org with the following information.
Attach 1) a JPEG of your bento design and 2) a JPEG of you holding your bento (for verification only, not for display). Photos should be less than 20 MB combined.

I’ve been very busy this week, so a lot of things tend to slip off my mind. The bentos were all eaten already, and I don’t want to redo.

Anyway, let me explain how I came out with this idea of Mickey and Minnie meeting the Nippon brothers. If I would to go to Japan, I would love to visit the Tokyo Tower. It’s a famous landmark in Japan, so I’m not going to miss it. The Noppon brothers are the mascots of Tokyo Tower. Besides that, Mickey and Minnie are “originated” from US, and almost everyone knows Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

I’m trying to create a bento based on this mission:

• The mission of Japan Society: “…to bring the people of the United States and Japan closer together in their appreciation and understanding of each other…”

“Mickey and Minnie meet the Noppon Brothers” bentos symbolize the strong friendship between US and Japan. All characters were cut from ham, cheese, nori, artificial crab meat (for red) and kamaboko (for pink).

Mickey Meets older Noppon Brother Bento for my boy. Both characters are shaking hands.

My gal’s Minnie Meets younger Noppon Brother Bento. He’s giving Minnie a flower as a token of friendship.

I had a great sense of regret when I realized that I have forgotten  to bring my camera to the office, if not I would have snapped a photo of me holding the bento. But now I realized that I can just do it with my phone!!! Argh!!!

So, in short, I would give this bento war a pass.

I’ve lost count of the number of Pooh Bear and friends bentos I’ve fixed over the year, but my kids love them a lot, so I decided to repeat this theme again. But this time, Tigger and Piglet would have the limelight instead of Pooh. LOL!

The bentos before decoration.

The sandwiches were cut with these cookie cutters, as shown above. There are kiwi, grapes, rambutans and strawberries in the bentos too. It’s very windy and cool in Bangkok, so I hope that my kids won’t get any running nose by having more fruits daily.

I decorated the sandwiches with cheese, nori, ham and kamaboko. Most of the bits and pieces were cut last night, and nori was added this morning. My boy helped me with Tigger, but I had to “touch” up his work after that. As the result, we spent quite some time on today’s bentos!

My girl’s Piglet and Pooh bento.

My boy’s Tigger and Pooh. He loves his pinkish nose.

We were running late but my boy still insisted on snapping his Tigger.

I was very touched to see him bringing out his camera and snap a photo of his bento. It showed that he appreciated my effort and his is proud of helping me with his meal.