Sumptious sushi spread for my birthday!

Time flies. Much as I dread it, I turned 33 on Sat 8th Aug.

A day before, inlaws gave me an unexpected & pleasant surprise as they turned up at the door with much yummy food: nuo mi fan, fried noodles, herbal chicken, cereal prawns. Mil had already told maid not to cook anything the day before & I didnt know anything about it! Am really quite touched by their gesture.

The surprise mini cakes Mil got for me. Ks held the doraemon one while the Melody one was balancing dangerously (and got a bit smashed too) on both of Rn's little palms. Sang the birthday song to me too. Mil also did a handmade birthday card with Ks which he did some colouring and writing. How sweet...


Dinner on 8 Aug at parents place:
Mum made sushi, inari zushi, miso soup, karaage chicken. Dad & I did a quick stop at Meidiya to pick up 3 sashimi platters to 加料.

Ks's 1st try at sushi & inari zushi (sweetened beancurd skin with stuffed vinegar rice)

and he loved it! He whacked about 4 sushi & 1 inari.

Bento #11 A pinky Anpanman

This is actually my 2nd time at Anpanman. The 1st done 1 mth back is too ugly to be posted cos its just bread and ham & cheese. Photograph turned out badly blurred too. This took me an hr still ( i had hoped that I could cut down on time since I only had to prepare Anpanman's face). Fried noodles & sausages by my dad was at the bottom, star-shaped carrots prepared and stored in freezer last night & leftover chicken katsu fillets stored in freezer. Anpanman was made of egg, seaweed eyes & brows (maid did a great job cutting them out for me), ham cheeks, kamaboko nose & mouth. What 'dya think? I was quite pleased with myself actually, hee..cos it does resemble Anpanman, doesnt it??
I had no round-shaped moulds yet so I used an ikea plastic cup base to cut out the egg face. And for the nose & cheeks, I didnt have any moulds again, so I used a little round-based medicine container belonging to Ks to press out the shape. Thoroughly washed prior to using it, not to worry about hygiene ya...

This is Nana's bento, she's got 2 flower carrots. The eyes & brows are nicer & more even here cos this was the 2nd one made.

This is Ks's bento, he's got 3 star carrots and more chicken katsu as he's a bigger eater than meimei.

Hmm...at the end if it, I realised there are no greens in this bento so I threw in the cherry tomatoes (and of cos they were left untouched!) for decor purpose & just to fill in the gaps.

Next time I'll steam some broccoli or something.

Bento #10 Jam bread rolls

Well, actually this isn't quite a bento. I made it last night in fact while the kids were still prancing around like monkeys and it was tough having to roll the breads with the pin, spread the jam, while keeping the other eye on them climbing and dancing on the dining chairs. My heart skipped many beats in fact! The princess was even caught putting 1 leg up on the table! Gosh, these 2 sure are a handful.
Anyway...this is my 1st try at making jam breadrolls using strawberry & blackberry (I only eat those from Beerenberg cos they're the best!), and again, I got the idea from talented shoppingmum but well, it didnt quite turn out as nice and even, cos the sizes are all kinda different. I find it great for kids cos it's bite size and good for tiny fingers to grasp. Ks came to wallop a few as I was still making them. I cling-wrapped them and stored them into the Tomica box for their breakfast this morning. So it wouldnt be a mad rush for me.

Here it is.

New tools from Daiso & new friends made!

My new bento tools from Daiso! 2nd trip there in 2 weeks...ohh gosh. I kinda swept thru every single corner of Daiso, hunting for luncheon mats, cake moulds, punchers, rolling pin (intend to make a swissroll bread with jam filling with this). Also got a coupla rice bowls with cute car, bunny cartoons for the kids and a bigger kid (myself), hee. Splurged $42...2 weeks ago was $40. See, thing is I'm really a lover of beautiful cute stuff and a sucker for lovely packaging. Not too sure about how Daiso's quality is like but anyhow so far so good.

The lil gangster insisted on having his sharkie in the pic as I was taking this photo, so his hand got in as well.

It's also uncanny how bento-making (or should I give the credit to the wonderful creation of Internet) brings people together. I started my browsing at Daiso looking out for those stuff I mentioned earlier, skipping those I didnt need..and I noticed how 2 other young ladies were always near me and looking at the same stuff. I must say we have the same taste too! Esp in the choice of lunch mats, barans, moulds etc. I mean, Daiso is rather big there right..so why am I like always bumping into them?? I finally decided to open my mouth at the craft cutter area with one of them. I said," are you like into bento-making or something? Cos i noticed the things u are buying are same as mine!" And thereafter, a brief and pleasant conversation was exchanged and yes guess what, they're also following the same bento blog that I had been reading the past 1 month! Now how coincidental is that? So there we are, all starting out in bento-making and they were gonna do something on thursday night. I noted down their email addresses and hopefully will be able to keep in touch. It's nice how friendships are formed just like that. My very rare visit to Daiso at Vivo landed me with some new friends when it's least expected!

Good luck with your 1st bento, girls!

Bento #9 Cheesy car with salmon mayo

After getting some new tools from Daiso, I was eager to use them so since i bought some ciabatta bread from Giant at Vivo, I decided to make a simple sandwich for breakfast for the family.
Now, I have no idea why this photo is tilted cos it appears normal when I didnt attach it here. Anyway, this is hubb's take-away breakfast which I prepared and kept in the fridge last night.



Ciabatta bread with luncheon meat & lettuce filling. Heart-shaped smoked cheese with bear-shaped seaweed (too eager to use my new daiso puncher!)
Also threw in a not-so-hardboiled egg moulded with bear shape. Not quite visible due to bad lighting and also it turned out soft-boiled and not hard-boiled..oops!

This was for the kids. Their filling was salmon mayo. Did a cheese car with 2 types of cheese, ham and seaweed. Can you see the bunny shape from this egg? Sad to say, this set wasn't a hit with them! Nana ate slightly less than half of the sandwich with the cheese untouched. (the fussy princess shook her head adamantly, muttering "Cheese 不要, cheese不要" So I cleaned it up for her.
Ken ate slightly more than half. I figured they're not quite into mushy stuff like egg or mayo with bread. I did a egg mayo few times with them and it got the same response.

See my new luncheon mat? So sweet, dont you think? I only got 2..the other one is also gorgeous..strawberry.

I've been doing too much bread lately..I really should attempt more main dishes such as rice/noodles/pasta etc. But no time..no time!

Bento #8 Simple star sandwiches for tea

I didnt quite have the time this morning and also no ideas, so I did a quick jam sandwich for Ks.
It's a bear shaped with jam filling (and I moulded a star shape so the jam could be seen) sandwich. The rest were star shapes. Somehow I feel that though its just bread, when it's moulded into shapes like these, it looks so much more appetising and great for tiny fingers to grasp and hold to munch.

Bento #7 Baikinman挑戦！

The order of the photos are a bit haywired. But anyway...

The gangster looking so fierce, devouring his baikinman. He didnt like the seaweed part so only ate the rest.

Friday night, bugger slept early at about 9.40pm so though i was rather run-down myself, I got up flipped thru the bento book, wondering wat i shld do this time. Sat's lunch/dinner is usually out so I thot it might be nice to do breakfast for the kids. I took abt 1 hr pluswith the ingredients preparation, cutting, moulding etc. What killed me was the seaweed strips for Baikinman's teeth. The strips were like so fragile and curled up so easily that it made me all sweaty trying not to mess them up with my cumbersome fingers. I finished the preps abt 11pm and totally crashed after that. Hey, bento-making does take a lot of concentration ok??

Here is the princess's breakfast bento, which had no theme whatsoever. Just a bunny, since she doesnt really know anyway.



And presenting...Baikinman for the lil gangster!
Ingredients: Seaweed for head, ears, eyes and teeth, fish sausage for eyes, star cheese for nose, crabmeat for nose (it should've been slightly more tilted downwards for this part)
Filling: strawberry jam again...

In the morning, I spent another hour decorating and laying out the ingredients on the bread, arranging etc. So the kids finally ate about 8+ am. I feel like I'm really so slow... I really REALLY need those dam seaweed cutters to save me all the hassle. And also more bento boxes! Still waiting for Shinkansen, Melody and Elmo ones to come in stock. hehe...