Mothering Corner

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. 

I shared the link with Ellena yesterday, and both of us went “woo wow wah ah…” all the way on MSN when we were drooling over the results of the 3rd Sanrio Charaben Contest. If you are a bento-er who loves Sanrio characters, please hop over to the link and check out the wonderful bentos, which are too nice to be eaten!

I can recognize a few bento-ers’ creations, but not all. Too bad Sanrio didn’t link the bentos to the bento blogs (assuming that some of them are bloggers), if not we would have a chance to check out their other creations.

These Japanese mothers are not only talented in decorating the lunch boxes or picnic bentos, they took nutrition into consideration too when the charaben bentos were created. Personally, I think all these bentos need a lot of planning, preparation, skills (you really need to be good at forming rice balls and cutting the details) and time to be done, so don’t you think they are awesome?

Oops, it’s Sugarbunnies again! LOL! I just have to use the Sugarbunnies rice molds, which I bought recently at Sanrio. Besides that, I think Sanrio is promoting Sugarbunnies here as there are a lot of new items with the 2 cute bunnies, and even Sanrio shopping bags are printed with Sugarbunnies, instead of Hello Kitty.

So, I used the rice mold as a bread cutter again, and trust me, you can easily cut the bread with it! I cut the bunnies from white bread and milk bread, since I planned to pack both types of bread for my kids.

Tools for today’s bento (please click on the pic for bigger view at Flickr)

Their noses and ears were cut from cheese and ham last night and stored away. If you ever wonder what will I normally do with the leftovers…

I let my kids “play” with the cheese and ham. My boy likes to cut the shapes and keep some away for his bento.

As for my gal, she prefers to slip all in her mouth. LOL!

There’s hardly any food wastage as most of the leftovers were eaten. As for the leftover of fresh fruits (after I cut them in shapes for my kids), I will pack them in another bento box for hubby and I at the office. The shapes might not look good, but we don’t mind about it.

Hence, here are today’s bentos:

My boy’s Shirousa sandwich bento with kiwi, watermelon,grapes and cherries. The milk bread sandwich was stacked behind the white bread.

And my gal’s Kurousa sandwich bento, with the white bread stacked behind as well.

I decorated the sugarbunnies with some flowers (my boy helped to cut some), just like what I saw on Sanrio’s shopping bag. They look lovely with the flowers huh?

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

I saw Cherina Cherine from Sanrio’s catalog the other day and thought that they are cute!

Since I have some cherries in the fridge, I decided to decorate my kids’ char siew pao as Cherina. I didn’t follow exactly the same but modified the ears and ribbons so that I could speed things up.

So, here are the bentos:

Besides mini char siew pao, there are seedless grapes, cherries, strawberries and rambutans too.

Here’s a closer shot of Cherina. Cherina should have the ribbon on her neck.

Needless to say, today’s bento is pretty simple again!

CP sent me a photo of a new tool the other day, and I thought of sharing it here:

I don’t think I will buy it as I already have the panda sandwich cutter. I’m trying to spend lesser on shopping to be frugal and avoid debt consolidation if I overspend! But the idea is great, and I decided to give it a try.

Firstly, I prepared one of the Sugarbunnies veggie cutters, which I bought from Sanrio during the weekend. If you can’t find these sugarbunnies veggie cutters in your area, check out NST.

I used these cutters for today’s sandwiches.

Firstly, print sugarbunny’s face with this cutter.

Then, use this cutter (the oval shape facing down) to outline the imprint of sugarbunny.

I did an “upside down” imprint on the top of the bread.

Then, I spread some butter and placed a thin layer of meat floss on another piece of bread. Try not to place too much filling as the sandwich might not be able to seal well if it’s too full.

Use the panda bread cutter to cut off the crusts and seal the sandwich. Then, cut the sandwich into halves.

I repeated the same process for another piece of sandwich, and packed some banana, mango and an quail egg in the bentos. Of course, I added some details for Sugarbunnies too.

The cutters and nori punchers used for today’s bentos.

So, here is the end result:

My gal’s Kurousa, which is supposed to be a brown bunny, but well, it looks cute in white too.

And here’s my boy’s Shirousa.

I painted the ears with a red edible pen which comes in this set:

Edible color pens.

If you can’t find the pens from your local supermarket, maybe you can try these coloring chocolate pens, or use any jam of your choice, and color the parts with a toothpick. It should do the trick too.

My 3-year-old is going for her first field trip today, and we are all excited about it! Her class is going to the dinosaur museum in Bangkok city, but I’m not sure what’s the name of the place. I still can’t read Thai! That’s why hubby and I can’t figure out the name of the museum, but we did pass by the building before when we were in the city area.

Thus, I fixed her a simple bento for the trip by using her mini Hello Kitty lunch box.

My gal’s mini Hello Kitty and Cathy (the bunny) bento for field trip. Besides strawberry jam sandwiches, there are seedless grapes in her bento too. 

Here are the tools used for this mini bento:

I packed an ice gel in her bento bag too as part of the decoration involved cheese. Hopefully, the cheese won’t melt when she’s having her bento.

If you are new here, you may want to find out more about the food ingredient used for this bento in my Flickr photos.

Besides this mini bento, I packed the usual tea bentos for my kids too, which they will have after school at our office.

My boy’s bento with peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches, some rose apple, mango, a rambutan, and a strawberry and quail egg decorated as a little boy.

Here’s my gal’s bento with the same bento meal.

As you can see, I did’t spend a lot of time preparing the details, and I only used some punchers to decorate the faces.

The flower puncher from Daiso and my favorite paw and smiley punchers by Carl’s.

I shall link the bento photos to my Flickr account, and if you are interested to know more about the bento, please click on the photos. Thanks!

Besides that, I would like to say thank you to all of you who have voted for me at  Singapore Blog Awards. I truly appreciate that. Thanks for making the effort to sign up and vote, and I know it takes time to do so. My hubby who wanted to vote for me was lost “in the middle of no where” when he visited the link. LOL!

So, if you are interested to vote for me, please sign up as a member of OMY.sg or go to

Then you will see

Click on that link and you will go to the finalists in various categories. My blog is listed under Best Food Blog, along with other finalists:

Click on VOTE to cast your vote, and if you click on the avatar, you will be directed to the blog URL.

You will be asked to log in to participate and vote!

Or alternatively, you may go to the links at the top right corner of the webpage:

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The voting process is open until 31st July 2009, and everyone can vote once for each category per day. So, please vote for your favorite finalists ya?

My kids wanted ham and cheese in their bentos today, and at first, I thought of packing ham and cheese sandwiches, but I only had 2 pieces of hams left in the fridge. Besides that, the hams are round in shape, and they won’t look good when I cut the sandwiches. Thus, I packed them jam sandwiches as usual, and used the ham and cheese as decoration.

If you are a regular reader here, you might have seen my previous bentos with elephant and My Melody, so today’s bentos are repetitions.

Tools used for elephant bento.

Nonetheless, I prepared My Melody differently today, as comparing to previous bento. I cut both the cheese and ham with My Melody cutter, and gently print the shape of My Melody’s face on the ham. You can do this with the imprint cutter, which comes with My Melody cutter set.

Tools for My Melody

Then, I cut out the oval part of My Melody’s face with exacto knife, and stacked the ham on the cheese. Its left ear was cut with exacto knife too, or you can do so with an oval cutter.

Of course, I added nori on both My Melody and the elephant, and here’s the end result:

My boy’s bento with ham and cheese elephant, some sandwiches, blueberries, grapes, a piece of corn and a cherry tomato.

My gal’s bento with My Melody and the same bento meal.

TGIF, and it’s the weekend again. Too bad I am not going to Las Vegas hotels nor anywhere this weekend! So have a nice weekend everyone!