Bento #6 Hello Kitty with polkadot!

It's Hello Kitty Time again!

It's another mad rush for me this morning after putting Rn to sleep at 10.15am. Had an hour or so, so quickly got to work. Realised I am still very slow and waste a lot of thinking about what tools to use or how to cut etc. Parents made fried beehoon for the big one already so I fried rice for our own lunch and Rn's.

I was actually planning to make Anpanman for him, a nicer one this time. But again, lack of round-shaped tool so dropped the idea. Decided to make life easier for myself, so made same as meimei. Cheese as the face, kamaboko for ribbon and eyes and whiskers were seaweed.

I made this first. This is Ks's new Tomika bento: notice the whiskers are grossly thicker. haha.

This is Rn's bento. I learnt from my mistake and this time, I thinned the whiskers and it turned out nicer, dont you think? But then I lost 1 of the seaweed eye, so had to ask maid to help cut out one (I had to rush to shower for work) for me, and she did, but a tad smaller. so this poor kitty looked like she has 大小眼. haha... I really need to get my hands on some seaweed cutter or else cutting with scissors are really tricky and time-consuming, and just dont do a good job. I also threw in some fish sausage, the kids' favorite, just for decor. And the butterhead lettuce at the bottom were for decor purpose too, they wouldnt touch it I think.

Bento #5 Ham buns for hubby's breakfast

Nothing special actually as I didnt really have time to put in cutesy details. I made these last night, with ham, shredded cheese & butterhead lettuce as the filling. Also threw in 2 cherry tomatoes. Wrapped them in clingwrap so they dont harden overnight, then stored them in the fridge. I had to prepare everything the night before cos he leaves for work like 6am (!) And since he's so pampered and dislikes hassles, he only needs to open the fridge, grab his lunchbox and off he goes.

Bento #4 Breakfast for the Princess

As grandma had porridge for Ks, I prepared the sandwiches for Reina's brekkie last night.
Just cutting out the shapes from the mould from the bread took a good 30mins or so, amidst having to stuff a greedy Ks who was loitering around the dinner table. He had some of the remnant cheese, fish sausage and also asked for his usual rabbit jam sandwiches.

Here is what I had in Reina's new Poohbear bento box:
1. 2 rabbit-shaped bread - 1 raisin, 1 plain white (with ribbons of cheese and fish sausage)
2. a couple of flower shaped breads with cheese and fish sausage in the centre.
3. some honey star cereals in the little silicon container since she likes sweet stuff.

I didnt put anything in between the breads, like strawberry jam as she will spit them out, saying "spee out" as she sticks out her tongue. She prefers her breads plain I figured. She didnt quite finish her entire bento, left half of the rabbit raisin bread and a couple of honey stars. She loved the small flowers though. And oh yes, she could even tell they were rabbits as she said "wabbi", so not too bad eh?

I need to start being more adventurous soon and try to attempt other ingredients like egg sheets or quail eggs, spaghetti even to make a nicer bento, instead of having ham and cheese all the time.

Arrival of 2nd bento tools & boxes!

I think I've gone mad ordering from NST. This is my 2nd order, just 10 days after I did the 1st order. This time I got Poohbear bento box, Pikachu bento box, Tomika bento box, ABC alphabet moulds & Poohbear sauce containers.
I managed to sort and tidy them up in a pink big container which was previously used as Reina's storage container for milk bottles. Hee.

Bento #3 Fried kway teow

I think this is one of the nicest bento so far (not that i made many...) It's actually fried kway teow (by dad) and then I cut out from the mould I received from my 1st NST package last week. I used dolphin, musical note & yacht shapes on kamaboko (for the pink bits), cheese & ham. I realise ham & cheese are what I use so often cos they are easy to cut out. I decorated them around the top of the noodles. Simple eh? Looks rather nice cos of the colours i think. Later on, I added in のりbits to it too, since Ks also likes seaweed. I packed this for him before i left for work, so he can have it as a tea snack in the car when dad picks him from school later.

Arrival of my 1st set of bento tools!

I received them a day before we went for our Penang getaway.
Here they are.
Got 9 items in total and also ordered a 2nd batch of bento boxes (poohbear & tomica) and other tools. This is starting to become an addiction. I also got a チャラ弁book from Kinokuniya just for reference.
Yesterday i finally had the chance to drop by at Daiso and splurged $40 on some bento stuff like baran, mini fork/spoon, piggy slicing sheet, nice cups and saucers for the kids.
At the moment, I am still finding it hard to find time to properly prepare the ingredients as I need time to think abt how to decor it and also wat to do with wat. Of course, it doesnt help the least when I am trying to do all that amidst the screaming and a wailing Rn by my side.

Bento #2 - Hubby's birthday breakfast

This was my 1st bento prepared for hubby on 14 July 09. It was his 33rd birthday.

Good thing I prepared the 下準備for the 材料 the night before. Boiled weiners, heart-shaped chocolate & pandan breads with his favourite peanut butter filling then threw in a small cherry tomato. The most challenging was the preparation of the stripe cheese which I had learnt from Shoppingmum's blog. I bought the wrong brand of cheese. Got President instead of Chesdale and P was so soft that it was real hard to cut out the shape cos everything was like sticking together. But hey, not too bad for the 1st time right?? I saved the rest of the "kueh lapis" cheese, cling-wrapped them and stored them in airtight container. I've got not other decoration stuff so this bento looks rather　寂しい to me. Hubby finished everything (including the cherry tomato). :)

Bento #1 - Onigiri

This was breakfast for the kids.

Onigiri with weiner, ham/nori. Onigiri is supposed to panda eyes but cheese were cut way too thick so they didnt look the least like a freakin panda!

Trial #1 - Hello Kitty & #2 - Anpanman buns

Presenting my somewhat 'imitation-looking' Hello Kitty sandwiches.
Used the pink bits from kamaboko for the ribbon and a cheese. As I didnt have any tools on hand, I had to cut out the whiskers and eyes from seaweed by bare hands which was really tricky. No standardisation whatsoever thats why it turned out looking like that. I also realised that my position of the eyes/nose/whiskers were all wrong and eyes were too close together, so Kitty looks a tad strange.

Nonetheless, Rn said "Hao Jiji" when she saw the sandwiches...so my kitty ain't that bad after all!

I also made an Anpanman bun. Not difficult at all since it was just cut-out ham & cheese on the round buns.