Mothering Corner

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.

I thought of stopping bento for awhile as my gal is on a food strike, but she is still willing to take fruits as after school tea. However, my boy has a long day at school today, and he will be very hungry after his taekwondo class. Thus, I fixed some spaghetti carbonara for both of them, and hopefully my gal won’t reject her food.

My gal used to love wieners, but she’s been rejecting it for days. But I shall try my luck and see if she’ll take the wiener, if I made cut one into little piggies.

I cut the mini wiener into smaller pieces.

Cut 2 ovals for the noses. Gently cut out the tiny circles on the noses. You may use a straw, if you don’t have the right size of cutter.

Cut a small piece of wiener into tiny triangles.

Then, pin the triangles to the wieners as piggy’s ears.

Besides mini wiener and spaghetti, there are rambutans, persimmon and mango in their bentos too.

The little piggies on spaghetti carbonara.

Pretty simple huh?

My boy requested meat balls and pasta yesterday, so I prepared a bigger portion and kept some away for today’s bento. My kids love pasta, and they are delighted to have pasta everyday, if possible. Besides that, I prepared some egg sheets too, by separating the yolk from egg white:

White and yellow egg sheets

Try to mix a tablespoon of corn starch (mixed with water) into your egg mixture so that the egg sheets are thicker and less likely to tear. You can freeze the egg sheets for next use.

This is what I did this morning:

I placed the spiral pasta and some tomato sauce in aluminum cups. I normally use Prego Organic Tomato and Basil Italian sauce.

Top the pasta with more tomato sauce and add a small meat ball in it.

I prepared the meat balls with minced pork and chopped onions, and mixed the meat with an egg, some soy sauce and corn starch to make it more consistent for patty or easy to form into meat balls. Then, I fried the balls until golden brown, served some for dinner last night and refrigerated a few balls away for today’s bento.

I topped the meat balls with a piece of smoked cheese. I added some mixed veggie and starry cheese on the sauce too.

After that, I baked the pasta in the oven for 10 minutes, and 5 minutes before they were done, I placed some meat balls on the baking tray to heat them up as well. The extra meat balls would be used for decoration.

Here are the reheated meat balls. I purposely formed them in 2 different sizes.

I used tiny spaghetti strips to join the smaller meat balls to the bigger ones.

Then, I packed everything in the bento boxes and here they are before decoration:

I added the egg sheets as Rilakkuma’s nose and ears.

Then, I proceeded to add some nori, punched with the following punchers:

The punchers for today’s bento.

 So, here is the end result:

My gal’s bento, with baked pasta, Rilakkuma meat balls, and 2 strawberries.

And this bento belongs to my boy.

 Let’s not forget about Kiiroitori, which was initially the piece of smoked cheese on pasta.

Kiiroitori on meat balls and spiral pasta.

Today’s bento meal is slightly heavier because my kids are more occupied on Wednesdays.