Mothering Corner

I fixed a simple tea bento for my boy yesterday. It was something spontaneous, and I got this idea after preparing the can of Campbell soup, with alphabet pasta in it. The moment I saw the letters in the soup, I thought of fixing this simple Mother’s Day bento which consisted of sandwiches and mini wieners. The kids took their fruits separately, so I didn’t pack any in this tea bento.

BTW, my gal walloped her tea before I could even pack them nicely in a bento, so I could only show one bento presentation today.

Happy Mother’s Day bento with toasted milk sandwiches and mini wieners, which my boy had with his soup.

I cut some tiny flowers from kamaboko, cheese and artificial crab meat, and wrapped them with a small piece of lettuce as a bouquet of flower, presented by a kitty.

The top view.

Pretty simple huh?

Now, can anyone tell me where to get alphabet pasta in Bangkok? They are so nice for bentos!

The last but not least, Happy Mother’s Day to all of you.

I have this idea of fixing a Chinese New Year bento for some time, and at first, I thought of fixing it some time next week. But then, considering that I might be quite busy next week, with spring cleaning, finalizing on where to have our reunion dinner, packing for our beach trip (again!), preparing the guest room and move the refurbished fitness equipment away, I better share my idea now before it’s sank to the bottom of my to-do list.

For this bento, I prepared:

Some blueberries, quail eggs and mini wieners.

Then, I joined the “parts” together with tiny spaghetti strips.

Then, I placed the pieces in silicon cups and packed everything in the bentos. I cut some kamaboko (fish cake) and red artificial crab meat with an oval cutter, and added them as arms. I cut the red artificial crab meat into halves and stacked them on kamaboko as red sleeves. These tiny pieces are arranged as “gong xi gong xi” hand gesture, which is a common greeting on Chinese New Year.

Next, punch the nori and add it as “hair” on the eggs.

Add the eyes and lips.

And that’s about it! So here are my Gong Xi Fa Cai bentos:

My boy’s bento. I gently lay the characters before closing the bento.

This is my gal’s bento.

BTW, since this year Chinese New Year falls on Valentine’s Day, I think the cute couples can be used as valentines too.

I packed these bentos on the last day of 2009 for our trip to the floating market. We left home before 7am, so the photos were taken under the dim light of my house. Hopefully, you don’t mind about the ugly photos. LOL!

My boy has always wanted a tiger bento, especially after he’s got himself a tiger coin box from the Christmas party. Since it’s the year of tiger this year, and there are already a lot of bentoers fixing the same theme, I might as well just join in the gang.

I cut the ham with this panda cutter, and used the ham as the base.

Then, cut a piece of cheese with the same cutter.

Repeat the same step with a piece of smoked cheese.

But for the smoked cheese, cut out an oval for the face, and 2 smaller ovals at the ears.

Stack the ham, cheese and smoked cheese on one another.

After that, I proceeded to decorate the tigers with nori. Hence, there are the bentos:

This is my boy’s bento, with the tiger slipped in the bun.

And here’s my gal’s tigress.

I should have posted these bentos earlier, but we were pretty busy during the break. I didn’t have time to upload the photos all squeezed in my laptop system memory for the past few days. But then, it’s better to be late than never. LOL!

Happy New Year! May year 2010 be a great year for all of us.

One of the best things of living in Bangkok is, we have a chance to learn more about Thai culture and experience its festivals. I guess most expats would agree that the real life abroad is not exactly the same as written on books, and you will only know better if you stay in that country for some time. So, if my hub gets any jobs in philly or any part of the world, I don’t mind moving to another country with him all over again. LOL!

It’s Loy Krathong in Thailand last night, and we celebrated our first Loy Krathong by a nearby river.

Pic Source

It’s a great experience of our kids as they got a chance on learning how to fix their krathongs, sitting by the street. LOL!

My kids busy fixing their krathong.

Thus, today’s bento is inspired by krathong, which is normally made of banana tree trunk or bread as base and decorated with leaves, flowers, candles and joss sticks. The kratong will be released by the river or canal, and it’s believed to “float” bad luck away and bring good luck in the future.

So, this is how I made the mini edible krathong for today’s bento:

I cut the “flower bread” with a cutter.

Gently press a circle on the flower, but make sure that you don’t cut through the bread. I did this by using the top of a cutter, which is blunt and rounded.

After that, flatten the middle circle with your finger.

Repeat the same process for a bigger flower.

I spread some butter and sugar on the flower bread, and slip them into silicon or baking cups to curl up the petals. If you have this tool, it will be easier.

Pic Source

Once the flower toasts cooled down, I placed the bigger flowers at the base of a flower silicon cup.

Then I arranged some cheese around the flowers as shown.

Next, place the smaller flower toast on the cheese petals

The krathong will look better if you add more colors to it, but I only did it with toast and cheese. Nonetheless, I decorated it with a candle, which is cut from mini smoked wiener. Please refer to this bento blog for the tutorial.

Hence, here is the bento:

My gal’s loy krathong bento with toast and cheese, and some strawberries, longan, baby carrots and mango.

I gently lay down the “candle” before closing the bentos.

 So, how’s my loy krathong bento? LOL! BTW, don’t miss the tutorial on how to cut a wiener into a candle ya?

It’s a bit too early for Halloween, but a few blogs have started this theme, so I felt like fixing one too. However, my Halloween bento is not a successful one as both my kids dislike the theme! Both of them don’t want to have scary decoration in their meal, thus I could not add any skeleton, ghost, witch or etc in their bentos.

My boy’s bento with fish roe sushi rolls decorated as pumpkins and a mini wiener decorated as a friend ghost.

There are rose apple, strawberry, grapes, blueberries and cherry tomato in the bento too.

This is my gal’s bento with a carrot decorated as the pumpkin. The sushi(s) are bought from Oishi.

Since I’m meeting a friend this evening, and he requested a bento, I packed something simple for him too. I should have packed some nuts and seeds rich with conjugated linoleic acids but I’ve only realized that now.

His bento has a banana cake decorated as a teddy, and that’s the little ghost I cut for my kids, but rejected.

I packed some fruits for him too, and hopefully, he will like it even if it’s very childish and girlie in pink. LOL!

A bento pressie for my friend.

BTW, I would like to congratulate Ellena on winning the Singapore Food Blog Award. Ellena, you rock!

I’ve almost forgotten about Mother’s Day as the Thai people don’t celebrate Mother’s Day in May, and I only realized this after reading some blogs for the past few days. Thus, today’s bento is about Mother’s Day, and you can ask your kids to fix one for you because it’s pretty easy.

I prepared some heart shaped butter and sugar toast (I think Kel blogged about the recipe some time ago), and also cut the cheese and ham with these cutters:

The heart cutters.

Then, I let my boy did the food arrangement in the lunch boxes.

I helped him with the nori details because he had to start taking his breakfast before he’s late for his art class. My gal didn’t help out because she preferred to fill her tummy instead of packing food. LOL!

So, here’s the bentos:

Two simple and speedy bentos with toasts, ham and cheese. There are some grapes and Thai oranges too.

Here’s a close shot of my boy’s bento.

I think most kids can manage this, if they are interested to do something special for their mothers. If you are wondering why I didn’t get my bento, it’s because I don’t think anyone at home has any idea that it’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. Hubby must have forgotten about it as well.

In short, Happy Mother’s Day! And don’t over eat until you need weight loss pills ya!

It’s my gal’s 3rd birthday today, and my boy and I planned to fix her a special birthday bento. Actually, the initial plan was to have hubby playing with our gal in the playroom and my boy and I would fix her bento last night, but hubby was busy to look after her. Thus, she joined in the fun as well.

My kids helped me in cutting the bread in circles, which we planned to decorate as birthday cakes.

My boy cut the bread with these round metal cutters from Daiso.

The birthday girl took part in fixing her bento too.

 Hubby came home shortly after, so my kids left the table and I took over everything. I cut the cheese and stored them away for today’s bentos. An early preparation always makes things easier for me in the morning rush.

Besides that, I saw a cute strawberry girl illustration yesterday, and thought of giving it a try.

I prepared 2 strawberries and cut an oval cheese for each of them.

Here’s the nori punchers I used. If you have been reading my blog, you might have seen a few cute faces bentos, and here’s how I decorate them.

I would normally cut the flower nori (got this puncher from Daiso) into halves and use them as fringes.

Then, I added the eyes. The eye lashes are punched by the sad face Carl’s puncher.

And then, I added a smile to the face. This smiley puncher by Carl’s is my all time favorite!

Here’s the sandwiches prepared by my kids. I added some decorations like candles and flowers.

And here are the bentos…

My gal’s Happy Birthday bento. She’s turning 3 today, and there are 3 candles (it’s strawberry biscuit sticks by Hello Kitty). I packed a black plum, some rose apple and oranges for her too.

I didn’t give my boy a “candle” and he insisted that I add one for him after snapping the photo. LOL!

 If you are wondering how I close the lids of the lunch boxes, I would leave some gap behind so that I can carefully lie down so of the details without spoiling them. But some bento boxes, like this Pikkachu lunch box has a gap between the top cover and the tier, so the food won’t be smashed.

In short, Happy Birthday to my gal.

I thought I won’t be packing bentos, but I was wrong. My kids wanted their lunch in lunch boxes, so I might as well make them more appealing.

It’s fried noodles with pea sprouts and minced pork, a piece of roast pig rib, blanched broccoli, and some fish balls. I used carrot, cheese, mini wiener, kamaboko, sweet potato and edamame as decoration.

After packing for them, I felt like packing one for hubby too. I saw Jacss packing for her hub, and my friends told me that they would do bentos too via MSN, so let’s join in the fun loh. LOL! Here’s hubby’s bento…

A bento for my Valentine (BTW, what’s the pick in Japanese says? )

I’m not sure what will he think about this bento, but I try not to make it too cute. I don’t think him can take cutie stuffs as much as our kids do!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

My wisdom tooth is bothering me for 2 days now, and I’m still thinking if I should get it extracted. It’s a minor surgery, but it’s painful as I’ve done it before. Gee….not again!

I was a monster mommy yesterday, and I didn’t have mood to be nice to my kids. Thus, I wanted to show them that I’m sorry about my behaviour and try to show them that I love them a lot. Today’s bentos have lots of hearts, representing my love for them.

Each bento has heart shaped French toasts, 2 quail eggs, some sausages, heart shaped strawberries and 2 tiny citrus fruits which look like tangerine, but not tangerines! I bought the wrong fruit. I slotted in some strawberry jam in the mini mayonnaise containers.

I need to help the kids to peel of the skin of the fruit, and if you know what’s the name of it, let me know! I bought the wrong pack, and there are only Thai words on the label, so I’m not sure what they are. They taste sweet, but not as sweet as tangerines.

I used the multi cutters to shape a shape on the quail eggs. It’s pretty easy to be done, and as long as you have smaller cutters, you can try it out. I shall practice more in making faces on food since my kids like it and the “faces” are still in place by late afternoon if I keep the bento boxes upright.

I didn’t use lots of picks this time but just packed in a pair of fork and spoon by Ciao and strap the bentos with straps given by Arlene.  I wonder why I can’t find cute straps in various design here at Daiso and Sanrio?

 The blur me has finally remembered that Halloween isn’t over yet. So I fixed Halloween bentos for my kids this morning. I don’t feel like playing with colored rice as my kids won’t eat it by late afternoon. It’s too icy cold and hard, thus they will have smoked chicken sandwiches instead.

To make the sandwiches prettier, I wrapped them in plastic food wrappers and placed some Halloween stickers on. My kids love it! They said the stickers are cute. I got these stickers from Siam Paragon, and they are free!

In my gal’s bento, there are 2 tangerines decorated as pumpkins with nori, 2 pieces of smoked chicken sandwiches and some grapes as fillers.

A different food arrangement for my boy

I think the nori will mess up this time as I didn’t fill up the gap tight enough. I don’t want to smash the tangerines, so I left some gap behind. Happy Halloween in advance!