Mothering Corner

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.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by Mari Miyazawa’s blog post, as well as my boy’s encounter with a baby chick which fell from the nest. Just check out the link and see how creative Mari is in decorating food as cute little chicks and birds!

On the other hand, my boy found a dead baby bird a few weeks ago at his school. It’s rainy season here, and the storm can be rather strong. I guess the baby chick fell from the nest accidentally by the strong wind, so it’s quite sad to see its dead body. But my brave little boy just picked up the chick and showed it to his friends and teachers, while the mommy was basically screaming, gosh, that’s gross. Sorry, I’m not so into little animals, especially a dead one.

Then a few days ago, he found a bird nest in our garden, probably dropped from the trees as well. We saw some egg shells but no birds were found in it. Maybe they had all flown away, but the nest was still there. Again, blame it on the strong wind.

With this theme in mind, I decided to decorate a piece of sandwich as a hatching, and some nuggets as baby chicks. This is what I did last night:

I cut the bread with a stainless steel bento. By doing so, the bread can fit well in the lunch box.

Then I cut some smoked cheese with the bento too.

Cut the bread and smoked cheese into semi circles, but the cheese is slightly smaller than the bread.

Cut off 2 smaller semi circles as shown in the pic.

Next, cut a round piece of white cheese. Sorry about the lighting, I know the pics can’t show the different colors of the cheese!

Then I cut off the sides of the circle. After that, cut them in halves.

Cut some kamaboko as the chick’s beak.

This is what you would get after stacking up the details, which will be placed on the sandwiches.

For the little baby chick nuggets, cut some baby carrot as their beaks.

Try to blanch the baby carrots for a minute or so to soften them. It’s easier to pin them onto the nuggets (with spaghetti strips) if they are soft.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s baby chicks nuggets.

Here’s the top view of the bento, showing the baby chick sandwich.

This bento belongs to my boy.