Mothering Corner

It’s ham and cheese again! What I did was stacking ham and cheese together so that the cheese won’t melt that fast under our hot hot hot summer weather. If you are packing cheese for your preschooler, it’s best to use a cooler bag with icepack to avoid the cheese from melting and sticking all over. But if the cheese is stacked on the ham, it helps a lot.

My gal’s ham and cheese Melody and Piano has 3 layers, with a slice of cheese in between 2 pieces of hams. I hopped the characters on peanut butter sandwiches and fruits.

Shinkansen for my boy.  Cheese was stacked on a piece of ham for these characters.

All characters are cut with Sanrio sandwich cutters, and I manually cut the nori strips for Shinkansen.

P/S: something is seriously wrong with this blog whereby the links of individual posts are not working. I need help!!!

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.

These few weeks have been pretty tough for me. After my boy was admitted and recovered, my girl got admitted to the hospital last Saturday. She was down with fever but recovered for a week. Then last Saturday, she had a temperature all of a sudden when we were out for dinner (kids were at work with me initially), and she had a febrile seizure at the restaurant. It scared the hell out of us as that was her first ever with a fit and she was totally unconscious after that.

We rushed to the nearby hospital ASAP, and even other patrons at the restaurant helped out. One of them offered hubby a ride on a bike, while I tried to drive the car out from the BUSY car park. Thank god the hospital was just less than 200m away.

Needless to say, she was admitted immediately for monitoring. The doctor knew that our boy just had influenza A, so even if my gal was tested negative last week, they did all the rest on her again. X-ray, reflex exams, blood test and also nose swab. Poor gal was in a total shock again when she regained consciousness as she had never been admitted before.

Oh well, we were glad that the doctor ruled out seizure on the second day, and her temperature was under control. She was discharged in the evening, and she is alright now.

These 3 weeks must have been the time when we paid so many trips to the hospital, for admission, check up, tests and etc. If there is a reward card for these, I would be getting lots of points. LOL! What a joke. I hope that all these mishaps are all over for good.

So, my boy is the only one who’s off for school but the gal’s tagging along with me at work. That’s why I only packed one bento this morning.

Nothing special but Cinnamonroll for my boy.

Actually, the mommy is out of creativity for a while. The brain has too much to handle lately so no clue for kyaraben.

We had a great Sunday and all of us slept very late. As the result, I almost couldn’t drag myself up from the bed this morning. LOL! I only prepared something simple by boiling the quail egg, a small piece of kamaboko, hams and washed the lettuce and fruits. Everything was done and packed in less than 30 minutes for 2 bentos.

I’m using wholemeal buns for today’s bento, hopefully my kids won’t reject them.

Here’s a close up of Cinnamonroll:

My kids have enjoying their 10 weeks summer holiday now, but the bad mommy is sending them to 4 weeks of holiday camp. I can’t have the kids “disturbing” at the office because I’m pretty tied up with my new tasks. My hubby is going to work at a new place soon, so I’m taking over his work officially. *patting my own back* I’ve always wanted to get back to workforce anyway, so I’m glad that I’ve “found” myself a new job, without any job interview or healthcare job search. LOL!

Even if I’m getting busier, I will still try pack bentos if possible. Bento-ing releases my work stress!

Today’s theme is Sanrio characters again. I’ve always wanted to fix Shinkansen with blue egg sheets, so I fixed the egg sheets yesterday in yellow (yolk only), light blue and darker blue. I’m not sure how much time I used for the preparation as it was done when I was preparing our dinner yesterday. Anyway, the cutting part was not too hard since it’s mostly done free hand with exacto knife.

I did the decoration on a piece of white bread, and kept it refrigerated in an air tight container. After I had packed the fruits and spread some jam on the sandwiches this morning, I topped the decorated white bread on the rest of the mini sandwiches. A quail egg was decorated as tiny Shinkansen too.

My boy’s Shinkansen overloaded bento.

As for my gal, I fixed her Hello Kitty and Cathy.

My gal’s Hello Kitty and Cathy quail egg bento.

I packed lesser fruits for my gal as she already had some jackfruit and pineapples for breakfast. Their summer camp is full of games and activities, so by the time I pick them up at 4.30pm, they should be quite hungry for their tea.

So, what do you think about Shinkansen now? I think it looks nicer in blue, as comparing to my previous Shinkansen here and here.

I packed something simple for the kids today. It’s just sandwiches cut and decorated as sugarbunnies. The bread was cut with sugarbunny rice mold and sugarbunny veggie cutter respectively to avoid food wastage (tools are shown here and here). For a piece of white bread, I can cut out a big sugarbunny, and 2 smaller ones. The tiny flowers were cut from striped cheese and artificial crab meat with these plungers, and my boy helped me with it. He enjoys playing with these new tools. LOL!

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s sugarbunny bento

My gal will have the tiny bunnies instead.

I topped some jam with a toothpick for their ears. They are tiny and cute huh?

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Today’s bentos are inspired by miho nao chin. I saw the sandwich cutter at Daiso some time ago, but never really thought of buying it until I saw how cute Mihochin’s bento is. Just take a peep and you will know why!

This sandwich cutter is quite big, but I managed to grab a loaf of white bread which fits it quite well. Only the crust was cut off, and I can easily cut the bread into 4 different shapes at a go. Besides decorating the sandwiches as Pikkachu, Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma, I created a tiger, a koala bear and a kitten too.

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s bento with Pikkachu, koala bear and tiger.

My gal will have Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty and a kitten.

The koala bear and Rilakkuma were cut from brown eggsheet. I mixed some dark soysauce, a pinch of sugar and a table spoon of mirin into the egg mixture to create that color. As for tiger, it was cut from “egg yolk” sheet.  The other characters were cut from cheese and I topped all the characters on the sandwiches.

A reader asked if I’m still packing bentos every school day since she noticed that I don’t update about bentos daily now. Oh well, here are my answers. Yeap, answerS. LOL!

Firstly, my kids are so into eggs lately, they want to fix their own egg breakfast (except the frying part). They will get up about the same time as I do, and with them bugging me at the kitchen, I don’t have much time for kyaraben but just pack some simple bentos like what I did this morning:

Hello Kitty Sandwich Bento, and fruits were packed separately.

My boy’s Tomica bento.

If they are something simple, I don’t feel like posting them. These sandwiches were cut with these sets of sandwich molds. My bread is obviously too small for the cutters! LOL!

Another reason is, SIL may prepare dinner at office once in a while, and she will cook for my kids too. Her toddler has started going to nursery, which is located at my kids’ preschool. Thus, all 3 children will have early dinner at the office if she cooks. She will let me know a day before if she prepares dinner, and I will just pack fruits for my kids because they don’t need a heavy meal. How convenient huh?

It’s been a few months since my kids last tasted donuts, and my gal is craving for one. So, I bought some donuts yesterday, and I thought that my kids would love the sugar. But what do you know? They asked me to shake off the sugar! Argh…Next time, I will get sugarless donuts!

Besides the half piece of donut, I packed hard boil egg for the kids as well. I decorated the hard boiled egg as the cute raccoons in Tenorikuma. Here’s how I did the characters in Tenorikuma.

I prepared 2 hard boiled eggs.

Cut halves for one of the eggs.

For the other egg, I gently sliced of the egg white, and use a small round cutter to cut the ears.

Use spaghetti strips to join the ears to the eggs.

I Cut some cheese as nose and ears too.

Place the cheese on the eggs as shown.

Punch some nori and add in the facial details.

Then, I packed the donuts and fruits in the bentos and slipped in the eggs. So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s little raccoon named Latte, who is the manager of Tenorikuma cafe.

My gal will have Maple instead.

The fruits are slightly lesser in today’s bentos because my kids snacked on them when I was packing their meals.

After 2 days of non-decorative fruit bentos, my boy politely asked me to fix him something nice today.

Some mothers are worried that once we started decorating our kids’ food, our children might not want to eat “normal-plain-looking” meals. But for my kids, they will still eat the “plain-looking” bentos, as long as they are hungry! I found that we don’t really have to do charabens all the time, just to make a bento more attractive. Check out how Sherimiya does her colorful bentos with wonderful fruits and veggies arrangement.

For today’s bento, I cut the bread with Shinkansen rice molds, which I bought from Sanrio at Central Department store. Besides sandwiches, I packed some mango, champagne grapes, pineapple (for my gal) and a piece of tofu in each bento. I did the decoration with nori and cheese, so my Shinkansen does not look like the real train.

My boy’s Shinkansen, which I’ve forgotten to add some wheels at the bottom. LOL! I’d only realized it.

 
This is my gal’s bento.

It’s best to use blue egg sheet, but I don’t have any food color. Shinkansen will definitely look better if it’s decorated in blue.