Mothering Corner

My camera is back, so I’m back to bentoing.

Today’s bento is pretty simple (again). I bought a pack of mini donuts and they are so cute for bentos. I decided to use a doughnut as a float, with a teddy bear floating with it in a pool.

I prepared a fish ball as teddy, kamaboko and a piece of artificial crab meat.

Slice the pink off kamaboko, and cut them into thinner slices.

Cut 2 small circles as ears.

Cut off part of the “ears” and pin them with spaghetti strips.

Pin the ears on fish ball. Alternately, you may use a quail egg.

Cut the arms and legs from the leftover kamaboko.

Cut 2 small circles from smoked cheese which will be stacked as ears.

Cut a small oval cheese as teddy’s nose.

Then, I packed everything into bentos. There are garlic bread, blueberries, corn, baby carrots and strawberries in today’s meal.

Decorate tiny strips of red aftificial crab meat on the donut so that it looks more like a float.

Pin fish ball and kamaboko in the donut.

Add cheese.

Punch and add nori.

So, here’s the bento with a teddy bear enjoying himself in a “pool” (it’s garlic bread actually).

My gal’s bento.

Then, I decided to change teddy’s expression as if it dozed off floating in the pool.

Teddy’s enjoying…

Again, I love to use these bento boxes for 3D decoration.

You can think about getting one, but I’m not sure if they are BPA free though.

I still can’t manage to get the Care Bear bento boxes which I saw online. So, is there any local online store selling them?

Anyway, I fixed some sandwiches today and decorated them as Care Bears. I used to be a big fan of Care Bears, but my kids are not so fond of them. These might be my first and last Care Bears bentos. LOL!

Here’s how I decorated the bears:

I cut the bread with this Pooh bear cutter. I spread jam in between the sandwiches.

Cut the nose and eyes from while cheese with these round and oval cutters. You may use white egg sheet since cheese melts fast in hot climate.

I used a smaller oval cutter to cut the eyes from kamaboko.

Stack the kamaboko on white cheese as eyes. I cut off the tip of the eyes, but it’s optional.

Cut a heart for its nose.

Punch nori with this Pooh seaweed puncher and add the details on the bears.

Repeat the decoration steps for other bears with smoked cheese (for orange), and green peas. Hence, here are the bentos:

My gal’s Care Bears Bento.

And this is for my boy.

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.

Most schools in Bangkok are still closed this week, but my kids are back to school again for the new school year. Their new school is located in outskirt of Bangkok city, so it’s not affected. Frankly, I’m so glad that we stay in the outskirt, away from the war zone and our lives here are not much affected. We are still going out as usual, and it’s way much safer than staying in the city.

Since it’s the first day at school, the school session will finish as early as 2.30pm, so I don’t think my kids will be very hungry by then. Lunch and snack are provided at school, so I only pack a few boxes of UHT milk in their school bags. Today’s after school bento is pretty light, and there are only sandwiches topped with cheese, some rambutans, oranges and a piece of mini wiener.

Here’s how I decorated their tea bentos:

I cut the bread with Rilakkuma cutters. I spread some jam between the bread and placed them in silicon cups.

Cut some cheese with a smaller teddy cutter.

Repeat the same for smoked cheese

Turn the cutter over and cut off the ears of smoked cheese.

Stack the cheese as shown in the pic.

Next, place the cheese on the sandwiches.

Punch the eyes and nose with this shoe puncher.

Add eyes and nose to the teddies with a pair of tweezers or a toothpick.

Punch some tiny straight lines with this puncher, and add them on smoked cheese.

Today’s teddy bears looked pretty blur…just like my kids when we woke them up earlier than usual for school.

So, there are the blur teddy bears bentos:

My gal’s teddies…She’s very blur on the “back to school routine”.

This is my boy’s bento.

I will probably need a few more days to figure out my kids’ appetite after school. For the time being, I will just pack them something light.

I did another speedy bento today, and decorated my kids’ sandwiches as teddy bears. Since I’m using the sandwich baskets, I put the oranges in gift packs (which are safe for food), and separated the sandwiches from grapes and blueberries with a baran.

My gal’s bento. She was happy to see that gift pack. LOL! I told her that it’s a pressie.

My boy added some dinosaur nori on his teddy sandwiches. The dinos were punched from his new Carl’s puncher, which were bought by daddy from Malaysia.

Too bad daddy couldn’t find any expression punchers by Carl’s! Hopefully, Carl’s will replenish their punchers back home by the time I go back to Malaysia. Not only I miss the punchers, I miss the great food back home too. Gosh, I will surely need Fenphedra after my serious indulgence in Penang! LOL!

It’s Monday, and it’s always hard to get up on time, especially after a long weekend. Thus, today’s bentos are quick and easy, and I only had to cut some mangoes and strawberries, while waiting for the garlic toasts to be ready in the oven and boiling the eggs.

My boy’s teddy garlic toasts in his new stainless steel Cinnamoroll lunch box.

There is a little quail egg chick in their bentos too.

Since Sanrio is having a sale right now, if you are interested to get these stainless steel bento boxes or those made in PP material, please check out the major Central department stores. I got Cinnamoroll, Hello Kitty and My Melody stainless steel bento boxes at 30% off. But too bad I can’t find Skinkansen, if not my boy would be thrilled to have one.

I admit that I like buying stuffs for my kids. I’m a shopaholic, so it’s pretty easy for me to grab a few stuffs just on a 10 minutes shopping trip. But I’m trying my best not to spoil them, and I won’t buy expensive toys for them, unless they “earn” it. We have a reward chart for the kids, which they will be rewarded with stars, if they finish their meals, sleep through the night by themselves (oh ya, my kids still get up in the middle of the night and drag us to sleep in with them), or behave well. Upon reaching a certain number of stars, they can pick a toy or a book as a reward.

As time goes, the toys are piling up in their playroom, but I am happy to see them “digging” out some old toys and playing with them from time to time. My kids get bored with their toys quite fast, if the toys are not interesting enough. But if they dig out the old toys and play with them once a while, I won’t feel that they are “wasting” the toys away.

So, today’s theme is one of those ugly old toys, such as a teddy bear with a lost eye which is very worn off and dirty.

The color and texture of sweet potato makes the teddy bear looks quite worn off huh? There are corns, a black plum, some dragon fruits, and strawberries too.

Here’s my boy’s bento. I slipped in the cheese as teddy’s arms and legs, and one of the legs is broken. It’s a very old teddy bear. I packed some mangosteens for him, instead of dragon fruit.

Hopefully, my kids will continue to appreciate what they have as not every child in this world has the “privillege”.  There are some kids who are going through hunger, or fighting with illnesses and staying at hospitals for long period of time.

But then, we should not forget the wonderful and dedicated mothers who are always there for their children. I’m one of the members of MyMomsBest, and I used to be an active one. But since I’ve stopped breastfeeding, I seldom log on the forum anymore, and I lost touch with some of the breastfeeding mothers there.

Nonetheless, I’m glad that Christene informed me about Mothering Mothers 2009, which is a project of giving out presents to those mothers of the terminally ill children at UM Hospital. So, if you are interested to make a pledge, please check out her blog, and also Chanel’s and Ros’ blogs for more information.

BTW, do you have kids who refuse to finish their meals? Hubby found this video and since he showed it to our kids, they are more keen to finish their dinner. Check it out ya?

 We are still adjusting to our new routine, but I guess things are going well so far. Hubby keeps up with his word and he’s helping out at home, which I truly appreciate! We both of us getting up early and share some “household responsibility”, I manage to squeeze some time for cooking lunch (I prepare in the morning before going out) and preparing simple bentos too.

Today’s bentos are speedy, and I got the idea of fixing the heart-shaped sandwiches from Kaerenmama. Do check out her achieve in February and find out how she fixed the sandwiches. It’s very simple but NICE!

My boy’s bento to art class, with peanut butter sandwiches, mangoes, seedless grapes and cheese.

This simple bento is for my gal.

I don’t pack a lot for them for their classes because they will have lunch shortly after I bring them home. I need some time to reheat the dishes, but after a simple bento meal after class, my kids won’t be too hungry waiting for lunch to get ready.

BTW, I would like to thanks Susan for picking my bento for her contest. I’m very happy to get her book! LOL! Thanks Susan!

Oh ya, to all bento-ers. Javapot is organizing a bento contest too. She came out with a theme, so it sounds very challenging to me. Of course, her prizes are very attractive too, so do check it out!

My kids supposed to fix their dinner bentos with me, but they went swimming with daddy as soon as I had prepared the dishes and bento tools. So, I just went on and “finished” everything on my own.

We had yong tau fu (tofu stuffed with pork and prawn fillings), a stir-fried bok choy (Chinese cabbage) with prawns, and also some seafood tofu. I prepared some quail eggs and a mini wiener as well because I planned to make some teddy bear onigiri. If you blog hop around, you might have seen teddy rice balls by Akinochigo, Bento Recipes and many more.

So, here’s my children’s teddy onigiri:

My boy’s dinner in his new stainless steel lunch box. I can easily reheat his meal now, but of course, not with microwave oven!

Here’s my gal’s bento.

The teddy’s ears and paws were halves of quail eggs, and I covered the yolks with a thin slice of mini wiener. I cut some seafood tofu in circles as their hands. I guess you can’t see the bok choy as it’s hidden by other food already.

I kept the bentos warm in the rice cooker so my kids could have hot meal without relying on soup. Oh ya, if you are wondering where I got the stainless steel lunch boxes, I bought them from Daiso just now. I was a bit kiasu, I purposely picked those Made In Japan ones but not those from other manufacturing countries. LOL!

I think my kids miss me a lot after me going back to the office. My boy glued to me as soon as I got home yesterday, and he even insisted that I go swimming with him. I was just soaking in the pool, but he wanted me to be in the water instead of hubby.

Then, he wanted to fix bento together last night, all 4 of us! That was the first time hubby got involved in preparing the cutie details, so I briefed him on how to guide the kids.

I did a simple drawing of two angel teddy bears. I saw these cute teddy bears from a tissue pack.

Then, I prepared the cutters. Please ignore that pink Hello Kitty cutter because it’s not shown in today’s bentos. I kept it away for other days. As you can see, I arranged the cutters together for the teddy bear, so that my kids could have a better idea of how they should cut the cheese.

After that, they got themselves busy with the cutters. Hubby helped our gal by choosing the cutters for her as our 2-year-old was not too sure about how to make the pieces.

On the other hand, our boy understood better about what he should do, and he even managed to join the pieces together. I told him that it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, just join the pieces according to the drawing.

As usual, we kept all the pieces away in air tight container and kept them refrigerated until this morning. So, here’s the end result:

My boy’s bento with peanut butter sandwiches, some mangoes and 2 strawberries. That’s the angel teddy bear he cut last night, and I added his wing and let him sit on the clouds.

Here’s my gal’s bento, with a flying angel teddy bear.

Both my kids had the bentos as breakfast, but they didn’t finish the fruits. When I was leaving for work, they told me that they will finish the fruits later today. BTW, they said that they love the angel teddy bears. Yippie!