Mothering Corner

My kids love Japanese sweet potatoes, so I would normally pack some for them at least once a week, especially in those undecorated bentos. If only these sweet potatoes won’t turn black so fast, they would be great for kyaraben.

Reasons Potatoes Turn Black After Cooking:

Potatoes occasionally turn gray or dark after they are boiled; this color change may be caused by the conditions under which they were grown or stored. It’s impossible to tell which potatoes will turn dark, but the discoloration does not affect flavor, texture, or nutritional value. Contact with aluminum or iron will also discolor potatoes, so cook them in stainless steel pots.

I didn’t add any lemon juice as suggested because I doubt that my kids will like the taste. So, I just used the smashed sweet potato as it was, after steaming it. While waiting for the potatoes to be ready, I managed to snap some photos during preparation.

I boiled a piece of pink kamaboko.

Cut it into tiny bits with these cutters.

Once the sweet potatoes were cooked, I peeled and smashed them with a spoon, and formed potato balls as shown in the pic.

I packed the potato balls and fruits in the lunch boxes.

Then, I proceeded to adding the details.

So, here are the bentos:

My boy’s sweet potato balls bento, with piggies!

The first thing my gal said when she saw her oink oink bento was….Mommy, I don’t like pigs.

That’s why she replaced the pink pig food pick with a party hat pick. LOL!

I pack after school bentos for my kids 4 times per week, but I don’t do kyaraben all the time. Some times, it can just be a plain looking bentos of sandwiches, Japanese sweet potatoes, corns, fruits and some protein like eggs and processed meat. I’ve always wanted to do something with sweet potatoes, besides cutting them with cookie cutter. To do so, you can’t over steam the potatoes. I would normally set my steamer to 20 – 30 minutes so that it’s not over cooked.

But this morning, I purposely steamed the sweet potatoes for 50 minutes so that they were totally soft. You can do so with a microwave which might save you some preparation time.

I smashed the potatoes when they were still hot, and gently formed a few potato balls and joined them up with spaghetti strips. I bet the spaghetti strips would be totally cooked and soft too in the hot potatoes. LOL!

So, here are the bentos:

My gal’s froggie sweet potato bento. She had some fun rolling the leftover potatoes and ate them too.

I did the same thing for my boy but decorated it as a teddy bear.

Here’s the complete bento, with corns placed in the lower tier.

Too bad the color of smashed Japanese sweet potatoes is not as nice as those purple potatoes or normal potatoes. But then, my kids love the taste.