Bento #37

Today's bento has french toasts, corn kernels, salmon cheese sausages and strawberries. I seem to have lost my mojo for blog writing. Wonder when it will come back to me again. Is it because little one is in school for a longer time now, and there's really nothing interesting as compared to her kindy days? I find that I've also become lazier and do not bake a lot now. I've been wanting to bake some cream cheese cupcakes, and the recipe is staring right back at me for a few weeks now. Initially, I was missing a lemon, then I finally got that lemon, but still haven't found the energy to get it done. Hope will be more motivated next week. :)

On a happy note, looking forward to meeting the 'god'family tomorrow for T's bbq. It has been a long time since we last visited them. :)

Bento #36

Today's bento is not a charaben but I am pleased with the colours. It's a total change from yesterday's boring yellow. In today's bento there is pizza bread, baked chicken drumlet, piggy fishcake, broccoli & fruits.

My throat is annoying me still. Hope I get well soon, really dislike this haze situation causing people to get sick. One thing I am looking forward to, is tomorrow's breakfast with the girls.

Bento #35

I'm calling this one Missy Mouse. Haha! Today's bento is quite boring in that everything is yellow in colour. Even dinner is yellow tonight. Think it's because today is Ash Wednesday so not much inspiration with food. Plus, on top of that, throat still annoying me. Tomorrow's bento should be more interesting, hopefully. :)

Gobi

Have you heard of Gobi? Well, a friend mentioned it in passing and I didn't bother about it. All I knew was that they have a shopfront in Katong Mall but they do not sell cakes off the counter. You need to pre-order and collect there.

We were handed this box of cake from uncle and aunt who can't consume them so lucky us got to try it.

I love the box with angel wings. To know more about the shop, visit here.

Have the pictures spoken to you? Well, yes the cake was gorgeous and all, but for me, I found it too sweet. I'm not sure of the mousse on the top, but it was basically a green tea-flavoured cake. The chocolate surrounding the cake was very delicate. Wow, I really admire these chefs who can do artwork like that.

Bento #34

Had leftover vermicelli in bolognaise sauce, so heated that up, and boiled some crab sticks as well as fishballs.

Princess asked me after I finished preparing her bento...

Princess : Did you make me a pretty snack?
Me : Yes
Princess : Why?
Me : Oh, you don't like it? Well, it's ok if you don't want a pretty snack, you can exchange it with your friends, I'm sure they'd love to have it.
Princess : NO!

She actually does not like to carry a separate bag for it. She just wants to put it into her school bag but with a pretty bento, the contents will go all over the place if she did that.

Princess came home in the evening and said, I don't know how to eat the noodles. Huh? OMG, then it dawned on me! I forgot to give her a fork! :{ Poor child ate everything else except the pasta.

Bento #33

Today's bento is rather simple. I gave her lunch before she left, so it's a snack bento for school - just some sandwiches. One is with Nutella spread, and the other with blueberry jam. I frankly do not like working with stencil. Luckily, managed to do HK quite ok, but Kathy has too much cocoa powder on her so they spread when I tried to wrap it up. There's sugar prunes and grapes, as well as a banana and Anpanman potato fries.

Bento #31, 32

Bento 31

I made a sandwich with the Cinnamoroll cookie cutter using white and green bread. I didn't have time to do the eyes and mouth though. The box below consists of fried instant noodles with fish cake and some sakura carrots as decoration. The fruits included strawberries, sugar prunes, and cherry tomatoes.

Ganache-ganache asked me how I keep the foods in good (as in fresh) condition. Well, I'm not sure how much this helps, but I use anti-bacterial sheets which can be seen below. I also make sure everything has cooled down to room temperature before packing them.

An anti-bac sheet on the sandwich before I wrap it up in foil. Both sheet and foil also prevent the seaweed from going all over the place.

One over the noodles and fruits.

Bento 32

Plain sushi rice with stir fried pork bits in the middle.

I really need to work more on the face of Hello Kitty. It never looks like her, but then again, it seriously is so tough because the seaweed bits are really tiny. I really surrender to those who can do it so well. Check out the Mothering Corner. She is who I turn to for inspiration. After going through her archives, I realise that she has only been preparing bentos for a couple of months, but yet she is so good, and has really gotten better over time.

The bentos look very big on screen, but they are really small portions. They are just magnified to show the details in them. I gave her tofu cheese fishcakes, cherry tomatoes, and mango. HK's ribbon is cut out of ham, and nose is made from cheese. It isn't yellowish enough, but I didn't want to fry an omelette just to get a tiny nose. :P

Kathy has a funny eye on the right. Not too pleased with that either. For Kathy, I seasoned rice with pink floss (sakura denbu). Her flower is cut out of tomato skin.

Bento #30

I couldn't wait to use this Mickey Mouse bread mould. How cute it is! However, I discovered that our bread slices are rather small so didn't manage to get the full cutout... notice the chin and ends of ears are not white? ;) Decided to put the bak kwa/cheese sandwich in a Minnie Mouse bento which a friend gave many years ago. How appropriate. :)

Bento #29

Bento #27, 28

I made a 'Valentine's Day' bento for little one to take to ballet class. Not much work done on it, except little heart-shaped stuff to keep her happy.

The bento above had cuttlefish balls, and rice wrapped up into a ball. I make sure she has almonds every day now, as a friend mentioned to me that she gives them to her girl each day for breakfast as it is good for their brains. Well, no harm in trying. ;) I bought the smoked almonds and she loves the taste of that. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

A very Happy Valentine's Day to all. I baked some cutout biscuits yesterday using my new Cinnamoroll & My Melody cookie cutters. However, I won't be posting the recipe here as I wasn't too pleased with the result of the dough. It was too soft to handle and really tough just putting these few pieces together. Have to hunt down a good cutout cookie recipe.. Do you have one to recommend? :)

Yesterday was hubby's birthday, so we went for an early lunch before sending little one to school. Since she was having a proper lunch, I decided to just give her some cookies and fruits for her snack. Bought 2 punnets of blueberries at $4plus for 2 at NTUC.

Bento #26

I borrowed a book from a friend the other day, and decided to try out the methods used in cutting shaped mini sausages. Very pleased with how the crab turned out, and octopus is pretty easy to do. Made some bowl-shaped pizza bread and princess said it was yummy. She didn't like the corn kernels though, as I had mixed in a bit too much butter.

Just complaining...

Something is very wrong with blogger today. It doesn't allow me to load photos. It keeps saying it's done but no photos are loaded at all. Am I the only one facing this problem today? Anyway, it's frustrating having to do it over n over. I even tried logging out and in again. Will try again later...

Oh alright, have checked out other blogs and it doesn't seem to be a problem with just me. All our photos are missing from blogger so there must be something funny going on.

Bento #25

I made a mini hamburger with homemade beef patty, lightmeal roll, some egg mixture (leftover from this morning's breakfast of french toast) which I fried into an omelette, and a slice of cheese. I gave her some strawberries which I need to clear off, together with grapes, some young corn, and cashew nuts (which she loves). I used the cute 'Minna No Tabo' bento box, a gift from KY & A, all the way from Xiamen. :)

Bento #24

Today's bento is made up of ready stuff which I didn't even have to cook or prepare. I got a stick of chicken balls, a sausage bun from Crystal Jade bakery, and washed some cherry tomatoes as well as some grapes and just arranged them in the box. I hope to be more creative tomorrow. :P

Bento #23

Made a bear-shaped jelly and added some fresh-cut strawberries. Fried some udon and baked a few pieces of seaweed chicken as a side dish. My bento-making days are slowly coming to an end as March is just round the corner, which is just as well, since I am running out of ideas as to what to pack in them. Haha!

Bento #21, 22

I made an instant bento yesterday, with breakfast bee hoon from the market stall, added some car & aeroplane-shaped tamago, some pieces of fishcake, as well as fruits and biscuits. I gave her some hamtaro furikake. Aren't they very cute?

For the Hello Kitty bento, it was done at the last minute. We were going to be out this morning before school, so had initially not planned to make a bento, but decided that if she was going to not have lunch, then poor child would be super hungry by 3pm. Made a quickie hello kitty-shaped rice flavoured with sushi vinegar, and added some tuna mayo within. I also boiled some salmon cheese sausages, and didn't remove the green of the strawberries so they could last longer.

Bento #20

This is my weak attempt at a Doraemon bento. It didn't pass my princess' test. She claimed that it didn't look like him. Oh well, I did try. ;)

I put her fruits (strawberry n dragonfruit) in a separate container as well as a treat of snake gummies.

Bento #19

This bento was 'created' last evening while watching tv, and imagining what I should do for bento today. I made a drawing of it, and it made things a lot easier this morning. Since today is not a 'rush' day, I had plenty of time to prepare it. Rice was leftover from last night, which I steamed and mixed in some dried tarako flakes. I kept a piece of broccolini from last night's dinner, and cut up a piece of ham for the roof. Windows, door, sun, and sunrays are made with tamago. The house is made from bak kwa, and I decided to toss some corn kernels in butter for the cobblestones.

I bought little Anpanman potato fries and added some pineapple tarts as a treat. Kawaii no? ;)

Bento #18

I wish I am better able to manage my time well. I always seem to be in a hurry in the late morning, rushing to prepare meals for the little one. However, I also try to keep it till the last minute before I prepare my bento, as it helps keep the food fresher till recess time. This bento was done at the last minute, as usual, so only managed to dot some little mayo on the girl and boy for the eyes and mouth. I need to find some puncher which allows me to make little faces. The one I have currently, produces way too big facial expressions. :P Made omu rice today shown in the first picture and added some ebikko since she likes that.

Potato Salad

I know I owe someone a recipe for the potato salad that I made in December. Sorry about that. I don't have the exact measurements but these are the ingredients that go into it.

1. Potatoes approximately 3 big ones. Boil and peel off skin, then cut into small bite-sized pieces.

2. Back bacon - Trim off fat and fry to extract oil. Cut up meat into small pieces and fry till brown and crisp. Set aside.

3. Brown onion - approximately half, diced.

4. Celery - 1 stick, diced.

5. 2 hardboiled eggs, chopped up.

6. Chives or spring onions, chopped into bits.

7. Mayonnaise

8. White or black pepper, and salt to taste.

9. Mix everything in with potatoes and top off with bacon bits.

Holy Grill

No idea what to eat last evening as have been lazy to cook after being pampered over the CNY period, with meals taken care of on most days, so decided to check out some hawker food. Mum had shown me a write-up on a certain Western food stall so thought we'd give it a try. It didn't disappoint, and the food was good quality and value for money. $5.50 for a big piece of chicken as well as 2 side dishes. Hubby had the Hickory BBQ chicken, with fresh salad and a baked potato, while I had the Teriyaki chicken, with fresh salad and tasty rice. Both were nice.

Holy Grill
Old Airport Road Food Centre
#01-27