Mothering Corner

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.

I fixed something simple this morning as I needed to fix 4 bentos in total, so time was pretty limited. Besides the fruit bento for hubby and me, I packed 2 tea bentos (the usual) and another simple bento for my gal who’s going on a field trip today. She’s going to visit the airforce base, so she’s pretty excited to see the helicopters (that’s what my boy said, he went on this trip last year).

To shorten the preparation time, I cut the bread last night. Try not to expose the cut bread for too long, if not it will turn hard. I always store the cut bread in food container till the next morning.

I used these rice molds as cutters.

I spread some jam and prepared meat floss sandwiches this morning. Cinnamonroll is for today’s bentos, while Sugarbunny is for my gal’s field trip bento.

I gently sealed the meat floss sandwiches so that it won’t drop all over the place when she’s having her meal.

It won’t be perfectly sealed, but at least the meat floss won’t fall out easily. You can seal the sandwiches with a smaller cutter (turn upward) of the same shape of your bread.

On top of that, I decorated the smoked wieners as Mocha.

I prepared some smoked wieners.

Cut one of the wieners in quarters as ears.

Pin the ears to the ends of the wieners with bits of spaghetti strips.

Pin the flowers on the ears too.

Then, it’s all about adding nori and packing everything in the bentos. So here they are:

A simple Sugarbunny bento for my gal on her field trip which she wanted to share with her friends.

This is for my gal for her after school tea.

And here’s my boy’s Cinnamonroll and Mocha bento.

If you are wondering how I cut the lips for Cinnamonroll, please refer to the previous Cinnamonroll bento ya?

I didn’t sleep well last night as my gal cried and screamed in her sleep throughout the night. I’m not sure what kind of nightmares she had, but by the time she’s sleeping soundly, it was about 5am. Thus, I had a hard time dragging myself off the bed when the alarm clock rang in the early morning.

Since I’m very sleepy today (and I already had 2 cups of coffee!), I decided to repeat something simple and fast, just like the previous ham and cheese bento.

I used this My Melody cutter to cut the bread, cheese and ham. Then, I used an oval cutter to cut off some part of the ham.

Stack the ham on the cheese. You may replace cheese with egg sheet too.

After that, I spread some jam on the bread and packed some mango, dragonfruit, strawberries and blueberries in the bentos.

The bentos before decoration.

My gal likes My Melody but my boy wanted to have a teddy bear in bunny suit. So, here’s the end result:

My gal’s My Melody bento.

And this funny looking teddy in bunny suit is for my boy.

 I think the teddy looks rather weird but my boy likes it.

It’s Friday, so have a nice weekend everyone!

My kids wanted 2 different themes in their bentos, so I started the preparation last night. My boy wanted chocolate milk bread again, while my gal wanted Piglet and Pooh (my new cutters). Actually, it didn’t take a lot of time to do a simple preparation the night earlier, especially if you are a working mother or one who needs to rush out of the house just in time, like yours truly here. LOL!

I did the preparation at the dining table, while coaching my kids with their homework. Frankly, my kids’ school does not give a lot of homework, and their work is pretty simple. It’s totally unlike most schools in Malaysia, which are quite hectic and stressful. Maybe that’s why my kids love to do their homework, which is pretty fun. While I was cutting the bread and cheese, my boy was doing his cut and paste homework on letter “Q” while my gal did her coloring and tracing.

For Kuromi, I cut the chocolate milk bread (from yesterday’s bento) with a round cutter for her face, and two diamond shaped bread for her ears.

Then I cut a circle from cheese.

Cut off the crescent at the top of the circle so that the cheese looks slightly oval now. You can also use an oval cutter, but I can’t find the right size in my toolbox.

Cut a V with an exacto knife or normal knife. 

After that, I wrapped the cheese and kept it refrigerated. I boiled a small piece of kamaboko and ham too.

I trace a small circle on kamaboko, and cut the shape of a skeleton.

 The ham was used for Kuromi’s nose and tongue, and Piglet’s ears. Please refer here for Piglet’s tutorial . The whole preparation took about 15 minutes, but if you are preparing one bento per day, you should take lesser time than me.

So, this morning, I just had to wash and cut the banana, oranges, strawberries and blueberries, which were all packed in their bentos. Thus, here’s the end result:

My boy’s Kuromi Bento. I think her eyes are too small since I punched it with nori puncher.

My gal’s Piglet and Pooh bento.

 If some preparation is done a night before, you might need to spend just a few minutes more on punching nori and decorating the bentos. Most importantly, the end result is all worth it.

P/S: If I’m not mistaken, Kaerenmama showed a tutorial on how to fix Kuromi some time ago. Please go through her archive if you are interested. 

Obviously, today’s bento is inspired by Sanrio Charaben Contest! I showed the bentos to my kids the other day and my boy wanted to have that cute little Shinkansen quail egg. He even drew a picture of Shinkansen last night, hoping to fix it by himself, but I didn’t prepare any ingredients for him. I haven’t tried preparing hard boiled eggs a night before, and I’ve always prepared them in the morning.

As for my gal, I decided to fix Hello Kitty for her as it’s pretty easy. I know that I would be spending more time on Shinkansen, so I have to pick an easier Sanrio character for her bento. Besides that, she’s a big fan of Hello Kitty mah…

So, here’s how I decorated an quail egg as Hello Kitty:

I cut 2 small triangles of kamaboko as Hello Kitty’s ears. Make 2 small cuts on the top of the quail egg and gently slip in its ears.

Hello Kitty’s eyes were punched from nori and her nose was cut from a tiny piece of egg sheet. (Try to prepare the egg sheet a night before, and freeze it for next use.)

Next, add some whiskers for Hello Kitty.

As for Shinkansen:

I cut the tiny strips of nori and punched some circles for its wheels.

I added his eyes, eyebrows (cut the sad smile into halves) and his cheeks from egg sheet.

I punched a few tiny strips of nori as its windows.

 After that, I placed the quail eggs in their bentos, consisted of spaghetti Bolognese. Their fruits were packed separately as shown:

Today’s bento with Shinkansen and Hello Kitty quail eggs.

A closer shot of the mini bentos.

If you have food coloring, try to make a blue egg sheet for Shinkansen and it will look better than mine. So, give it a try!

P/S: If you would like to have rounder shape of quail eggs, only put the eggs in when the water is boiling and roll the eggs for 1 -2 minutes before leaving them to cook.