Mothering Corner

Again, today’s title sounds weird! Anyway, you will know what I mean later.

My gal requested that I fixed her some mini heart, so I thought of decorating the hearts, instead of just packing them as plain heart sandwiches. I spread some jam on the bread and cut and sealed the bread with 2 heart cutters as shown below:

The cutters are slightly different in sizes. Make sure that the smaller one is used “upside down” so that it will seal the bread instead of cutting through.

Then, I proceeded to decorate the jam sandwiches. I fixed two hens for my gal by adding picks and cheese as wings.

They will be hens, after adding nori and kamaboko as their rosy cheeks.

As for my boy, I cut 3 pieces of cheese with 3 different sizes of round cutters to create the shell of the snails.

I stacked the cheese to create the spiral effect.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Two Little Hens Bento. Let’s pretend that the hens are hatching eggs.

There are quail eggs, oranges (hidden under the strawberries) and rose apples in the bento too.

These snails belong to my boy.

Pretty simple huh?

Changed of plan again. I’m leaving this week and will be away for a week with a heavy heart. This is the first time I’m leaving the kids behind with hubby, who keeps assuring me that everything will be fine but I still don’t believe him.

Anyway, I can only pack one bento this week for the kids, and they requested French Toast with honey. I cut the bread with Rilakkuma cutter and pan fried them with some egg. Then, I spread some honey between the French toasts when packing the bento. On top of that, I packed some nuggets and fruits for the kids too. Today’s bentos are quite speedy since I only needed less than 5 minutes in decorating Rilakkuma.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Rilakkuma French Toast bento

This is for my boy.

Ok, I’ll have a short break from bento-ing, and I sure miss my kids! And thanks for hubby for helping out.

Today’s bento theme is inspired by Mari Miyazawa’s blog post, as well as my boy’s encounter with a baby chick which fell from the nest. Just check out the link and see how creative Mari is in decorating food as cute little chicks and birds!

On the other hand, my boy found a dead baby bird a few weeks ago at his school. It’s rainy season here, and the storm can be rather strong. I guess the baby chick fell from the nest accidentally by the strong wind, so it’s quite sad to see its dead body. But my brave little boy just picked up the chick and showed it to his friends and teachers, while the mommy was basically screaming, gosh, that’s gross. Sorry, I’m not so into little animals, especially a dead one.

Then a few days ago, he found a bird nest in our garden, probably dropped from the trees as well. We saw some egg shells but no birds were found in it. Maybe they had all flown away, but the nest was still there. Again, blame it on the strong wind.

With this theme in mind, I decided to decorate a piece of sandwich as a hatching, and some nuggets as baby chicks. This is what I did last night:

I cut the bread with a stainless steel bento. By doing so, the bread can fit well in the lunch box.

Then I cut some smoked cheese with the bento too.

Cut the bread and smoked cheese into semi circles, but the cheese is slightly smaller than the bread.

Cut off 2 smaller semi circles as shown in the pic.

Next, cut a round piece of white cheese. Sorry about the lighting, I know the pics can’t show the different colors of the cheese!

Then I cut off the sides of the circle. After that, cut them in halves.

Cut some kamaboko as the chick’s beak.

This is what you would get after stacking up the details, which will be placed on the sandwiches.

For the little baby chick nuggets, cut some baby carrot as their beaks.

Try to blanch the baby carrots for a minute or so to soften them. It’s easier to pin them onto the nuggets (with spaghetti strips) if they are soft.

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s baby chicks nuggets.

Here’s the top view of the bento, showing the baby chick sandwich.

This bento belongs to my boy.

My kids love SPAM, but the mommy is trying her best not to buy too much SPAM for them. Nonetheless, I do have my SPAM craving too once in a while. So, I fixed mini SPAM burger as breakfast this morning, and packed 2 in my kids’ lunch boxes. Needless to say, they were so thrilled to see that piece of processed meat!

My boy’s SPAM burger bento, with some star fruits, cherries and blueberries.

I decorated his burger as an unhappy face with a little bird resting on the nose. Ok, it doesn’t make sense. I didn’t have any bug pick, so I just pinned the duckie pick on the nose. The white was cut from hard boiled egg white, and the red was cut from strawberries.

My gal’s burger has a smiley face, as if she’s picking up a hatching bird.

Frankly, today’s bento theme doesn’t make much sense. LOL! But I was running out of time.

My initial plan was to make a zoo bento, but then, due to my crazy workload this week (mommy’s out of breathe soon), I could only fix a simple giraffe.

This is what I did this morning:

I boiled some mini wieners and a quail egg.

Cut off the end of a mini wiener.

Do the same for another piece, but cut it off diagonally.

Cut the quail egg into halves.

Join all the pieces together with spaghetti strips.

I secured the wieners onto the sandwich (to prevent them from moving around) with 2 bits of spaghetti strips. I added 2 food picks as its tiny horns.

Then, I proceeded to add some nori and more details on the giraffe. So here are the bentos:

My boy’s little giraffe. He said the nose area looks like a smiley face. O.o

This is for my gal.

Actually, I thought of wrapping the wieners with egg sheets first so that the giraffes will have the right color. But oh well, you may give it a try.

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:

When I mean simple, it’s really very simple. This little fish can be done in less than 5 minutes, after you have got everything packed and ready. All you need is a small mini wiener cut into thick slices, a heart pick, and some nori and kamaboko (or artificial crab meat) for facial decoration.

So, here are the little cute fishes:

My gal’s little fish, swimming towards the octopus.

My boy’s fish has 2 picks, and I love the crown.

The picks nailed the wieners to the bread, so the fishes are well secured. As for the bubbles, I think they will move around if my kids snake the bentos.

Here’s what I did previously, but it’s a goldfish bento.

P/S: This bento was added to What’s for lunch Wednesday Week 4 as well.

For todays’ bentos, I’m repeating something similar as I did with triangular origiri mold, but I cut the bread with these chicken triangle bentos, instead of an origiri mold. The bread fits well in the bento, and I love the cute chicken design on the covers!

I decorated the sandwich as if a boy is wearing a chicken costume. The fruits are packed separately in another bento box.

This bento belongs to my gal.

The Chick Family Bento Cases came in a set of 3. Do check them out at J-Mama.

I meant to fix this theme last week, but due to the craziness of my work load, the idea was put aside until this morning. The choo-choo train is quite simple, and I only prepared 2 mini wieners, 2 slices of kamaboko, 2 small fish balls and some cheese as “smoke”.

Here’s how I did the train.

I cut the wieners into halves and quarters.

Cut the wheels from kamaboko with a small flower cutter. You can also use a round cutter.

After that, I joined the wieners together with spaghetti strips, and added a small fish ball as the train driver. The kids wanted the train to transport some animals, so I added a lion pick and a pig pick in each bento.

My boy’s choo-choo train bento, with sandwich, rambutan, lychees and grapes.

Here’s my gal’s bento.

Nonetheless, the piggy pick was removed from my gal’s bento because she said her friends will snatch the pig away.  It did happen to her picks in Marie’s bento. Besides that, there is this bully in her class who’s giving my gal a hard time at school, and I hope that the teacher put in more effort in working this out.

That’s why my gal told me not to put any cute picks or barans in her bento. However, I still kept that bird flag pick in hers to make the bento looked colorful. I guess she will be more delighted if her bentos are quite as nice as her brother’s.

Anyway, I can always buy more and replace the lost picks.

It’s been awhile since I last packed quail eggs, so I decided to pack some for my kids today. I decorated the quail eggs as Snoopy and Woodstock respectively, and it’s quite easy to be done. For Woodstock, I soaked the eggs in yellow food gel (diluted with water) for 10 – 20 minutes. I guess I didn’t use enough color so the yellow is not as intense as expected.

I prepared 4 quail eggs

For Snoopy, I gently cut a small piece of egg white for its ears.

Pin the ears on the quail eggs.

Punch some nori as Snoopy’s eyes and lips.

For Woodstock, I just punched the nori and added the details. That’s why it doesn’t look like the real Woodstock.

Anyway, here are the bentos:

My boy’s Snoopy and pale Woodstock. There are garlic toasts, kiwi, baby carrots, cherries and rambutans in the bentos too.

Here’s my gal’s bento.