Mothering Corner

A reader asked if I’m still packing bentos every school day since she noticed that I don’t update about bentos daily now. Oh well, here are my answers. Yeap, answerS. LOL!

Firstly, my kids are so into eggs lately, they want to fix their own egg breakfast (except the frying part). They will get up about the same time as I do, and with them bugging me at the kitchen, I don’t have much time for kyaraben but just pack some simple bentos like what I did this morning:

Hello Kitty Sandwich Bento, and fruits were packed separately.

My boy’s Tomica bento.

If they are something simple, I don’t feel like posting them. These sandwiches were cut with these sets of sandwich molds. My bread is obviously too small for the cutters! LOL!

Another reason is, SIL may prepare dinner at office once in a while, and she will cook for my kids too. Her toddler has started going to nursery, which is located at my kids’ preschool. Thus, all 3 children will have early dinner at the office if she cooks. She will let me know a day before if she prepares dinner, and I will just pack fruits for my kids because they don’t need a heavy meal. How convenient huh?

After 2 days of non-decorative fruit bentos, my boy politely asked me to fix him something nice today.

Some mothers are worried that once we started decorating our kids’ food, our children might not want to eat “normal-plain-looking” meals. But for my kids, they will still eat the “plain-looking” bentos, as long as they are hungry! I found that we don’t really have to do charabens all the time, just to make a bento more attractive. Check out how Sherimiya does her colorful bentos with wonderful fruits and veggies arrangement.

For today’s bento, I cut the bread with Shinkansen rice molds, which I bought from Sanrio at Central Department store. Besides sandwiches, I packed some mango, champagne grapes, pineapple (for my gal) and a piece of tofu in each bento. I did the decoration with nori and cheese, so my Shinkansen does not look like the real train.

My boy’s Shinkansen, which I’ve forgotten to add some wheels at the bottom. LOL! I’d only realized it.

 
This is my gal’s bento.

It’s best to use blue egg sheet, but I don’t have any food color. Shinkansen will definitely look better if it’s decorated in blue.

I prepared some spam sandwiches for hubby this morning, so I might as well pack some for my kids.  I have never done any bentos with cars, but since we were having hotdog buns, they are perfect to be cut as cars. I cut the hotdog buns last night because I knew that I would be spending some time frying the spam and fixing hubby’s sandwiches. So, this is what I’ve prepared last night:

I cut a hotdog bun into halves.

I removed a small part of the top of the bun before storing them away in a food container.

This morning, I woke up early to fry the spam and fix the sandwiches. After that, I continued with fixing the buns into mini cars. First, I spreaded some jam between the bread. Then…

I pinned some mini wieners onto the buns so that the cars have wheels and steering wheels.

I used a cutter to form the “eyes” of the cars. You can use any oval or round cutter of your choice.

I punched the eyes and mouths of the cars by using this shoe puncher.

Here’s the mini cars.

Then, I proceeded to decorating the spam.

These are the cutters I used to cut the spams before frying them.

I added some cheese and kamaboko to the spam. Actually, I wanted to fix My Melody for my gal, but I noticed that I didn’t use the right size of oval cutter, so it didn’t turn out nice.

Here are the Carl’s punchers I used for nori.

After that, I slipped the spams into the cars, and packed some fruits into the bentos. So, here’s the end result:

My boy’s bento with a teddy bear “driving” a car, and some fruits. I bought some Hello Kitty chocolates from Aki-ko, so I packed some for my kids.

Here’s my gal’s bento with My Melody and Hello Kitty (the chocolate candy).

Too bad my gal’s My Melody doesn’t look like My Melody.

Some Japanese bento bloggers like Akinoichigo and Yukiko have shared a few bentos featuring cars before, so if you are interested, please hop over their blogs for a peep.

Another one to go and it’s my first 100th bento! It’s exciting, but I’m not sure what should I do with my 100th bento. Maybe I won’t be packing one tomorrow too as I’ve been so busy this week, I need to catch up with my beauty sleep.

Chinese New Year is just a few days away and I’m not well prepared yet. I haven’t stocked up those drinks and cookies for my guests, haven’t washed the curtains, haven’t checked out Sferra linen for the beds and argh!!! There are so much to do!!! Did I mention that I haven’t started spring cleaning and we are leaving to the beach this Saturday once we pick up our guests from the airport? I’m rather panic on how to get things done, as some of them will be staying over at my place, and I haven’t cleaned up the whole place yet…

Anyway, I managed to fix bentos for my kids this morning as I woke up early. Since they won’t be having bread, which is pretty easy to prepare, I had to spend some time in the kitchen preparing the chicken rolls and steaming the sweet potatoes. At the same time, my boy found the airplane cutter in my toolbox and asked me to fix one for him. So, here’s how I did it:

I prepared 2 pieces of cheeses.

Use the airplane cutter to cut out the shape. Try not to do it in the middle of the cheese so that you will have bigger leftover of cheese for next use ( I managed to cut a teddy bear out from the leftover). The cheese got stuck with this cutter, so you might need to use a round pointed pin to gently push it out. I found that toothpick tear my cheese, so I prefer to use this pin.

Turn the cutter over and use it to cut out the fine details. I used the top layer of crab meat, kamaboko and high calcium cheese for the details, and you can use other alternatives. Just gently press them down so that you will get the shapes. You can do this free hand with a knife too, but I tend to use the cutters.

So, here’s the end result:

My boy’s Tomica bento with chicken rolls (topped with an airplane), some sweet potatoes (cut with a flower cutter), a sapodilla, some mangosteens, and a teddy bear peeping out from the kiwis. He likes the teddy bear peeping out in his previous bento, and he requested me to do this again.

My gal has almost the same food but I replaced the mangosteen with strawberries. She refused to try it that day and gave all to her brother. As for sweet potatoes, it’s my second attempt. She refused it the other day, even without trying out the taste! I will coax her into taking a small bite again later…

By all means, I don’t have to worry about my gal not taking her meal as her brother will most likely finish everything for her.  LOL! My boy is not as picky as he used to be anymore, and he always finishes his bento, including the lettuce! I hope to see my gal eating like her brother one day, but for the time being, she’s still very picky. The only thing she eats more than her brother is junk food!!! Other than that, her brother “wins”.

Just in case I don’t update my blog tomorrow….

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

We have a day off today, so we went shopping with the kids. Today’s bento is a simple one, with a butter bun, but slightly decorated to make it more attractive. I packed some jackfruits and grapes too, and used flower carrots as barans to separate the bun from the fruits.

Flowery carrots as barans, and they are hidden behind the buns.

A bunny for my gal and Shinkansen for my boy.

But what do you know, my boy left his lunch box at the shopping mall!!! Argh…Thank goodness it’s only one of the lunch boxes from 100yen shop, and not his favorite Pooh Bear or Shinkansen. If not, he will surely bug me about it. He has totally forgotten to bring it back when we ate at the food court. He didn’t want to eat “outside” food but his fruits. So, that goes his lunch box too…

Oh ya, I lost another animal pick, again!