Festive Food: Christmas bentos

Hello hello! Am popping by to share two bentos that Junior J had over the past week, that were Christmas-themed. The first was a simple Christmas scene, with a large star:

The sandwich was an omelette with a cheesy filling. I just sliced triangles off the top two corners to make a house.

I didn't have a large star cutter, so I just winged it and cut the star out of cheese using a knife. The light rays are made of mayonnaise, which was supposed to go with the salad.

And the tree was made of salad leaves (its called feldsalat here, and you can easily replicate this with other salad leaves), and dotted with cheese hearts to remind the boy that this is a season of remembering God's love.

The second bento was done in a box. We had tortelloni stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach that night, in a garlicky tomato sauce (I just fried tomatoes with loads of garlic, some herbs and salt). I dressed things up a little bit by adding a Christmas tree using broccoli florets, and decorating it with carrot hearts and some mayonnaise:

And for dessert, the boy got some fruits (persimmon and blueberries). I arranged the berries in a cross to remind the boy of what the Christmas tree symbolizes!

This meal was all nicely boxed up in Tyrrell Katz dinosaur snack boxes, which the boy loves (You can purchase these over at JED Packs!). It comes in a set of three nesting boxes, which is good because you can keep the dessert separated from the main meal. This way, I can give the boy his fruits at the end, or he will gobble those up first and then pick at his mains! Another plus point is that they are dishwasher-safe (hubby is breathing a sigh of relief at not having to wash these!), freezer-safe and BPA-free. 

Both meals were done without requiring any bento tools save for a heart- and star-shaped food cutter, as well as a food pick. So you can easily make something similar at home!

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This post is part of a fun festive food train hosted by DinoMama. Do hop on to get more yummy inspiration for this Christmas season!

Tomorrow, PC would be sharing her recipe for biscotti! 

PC is an ordinary mother of two girls, aged 7 and 2 respectively. She opted for a part-time working scheme this year (and the next), in order to better juggle between family and work (as well as herself). 

She blogs at Simply Us, a place which keeps her sane amidst all the whining and messes.

[Disclaimer: We received a set of snack boxes from JED Packs! for review purposes, and opinions are my own.] 

Bento Boxes: Baby's bento and more

Carrot and beef soup, beef puree with tomato and broccoli,
wholegrain pasta, blackberries

Ok, so the baby started getting bentos too. It started off more because he wanted to self-feed himself bits of food. We found that letting him feed himself pasta was a lot neater when we separated the pasta from the "sauce" (the meat puree), and mess was a concern, since the boy has his jacket or various layers of long-sleeved shirts on! So that meant I couldn't put everything in the thermos and mix it up, and this lunch box was perfect to hold everything (including some soup!).

Well, Junior J saw his brother's "bento", and I think he was rather sad that he didn't have one (even though those bentos didn't seem to be helping his appetite recently). So I tried, but I found it quite challenging to make two different meals and get out of the door on time:

Now I've resorted to packing an extra snack box for Junior J instead of the normal bento. He gets a "bento" with some extra nibbles AND gets to eat our yummy food when we dine out, so its win-win for now:

Raspberries are his favourite fruit.
And the piggy contains sunflower seeds and dried cranberries.
I squashed in a note in the piggy, since I've been telling stories about Snufflelump,
a lion with a green mane, who was running about stealing milk.
He would have been upset if he found a villainous critter in his box!

I think meal preparation would get easier when baby J starts eating the same meals as his brother (he turns one this weekend!). But I'm still not wanting him to grow up that fast yet!

Linking up with:

Another SG flag bento

Hello!  How was your National Day holiday?  For us it was just life as usual, but I couldn't resist doing another Singapore flag bento (this is tuna pasta and cheese) this week.  Junior J ate it for lunch while we listened to some National day songs (when Papa was not around, since he's Malaysian!), and read a postcard from a friend.  The little boy commented that the SG flyer looks like the London Eye!

Here's to a blessed weekend!

PS: Am guest blogging over here today, about our under the sea themed birthday party that we had!

Bento Boxes: Ocean-themed bentos

Hello hello!  So here are some meals the boy had, to link in with all the books on the ocean that we've been reading:

:: Fish bento: Omelette, salad, baked baby potatoes.  The eyes of the fishes were made of golden currants, I find them perfect for the goldfish-eyed look!

:: A house for hermit crab bento: Our little hermit crab is walking along a bed of tuna, and has an anemone and starfish to accompany him (made of carrots).  His shell is made of baked corn with butter and herbs.  The corals are made of golden and red currants, as well as salad.  (Click here for another hermit crab bento!)

:: Pufferfish lunchbox, for after church: The boy had bread with cream cheese, currants, strawberries and two biscuits (Those were hello panda cookies sent to us by a dear DG mate.  I admit I hardly give him such biscuits, so he got two as a treat! :p).  The pufferfish were made of hard-boiled egg and cheese, and were swimming in a sea of cheesy peas.

:: Crab bento: The boy affectionately named the crab "Tip Tap" after the book he read!  We had bak kut teh soup that night, so I fished out some pork and mushrooms to form the base.  The seaweed was made of spinach.  Crab carapace was made from sweet potato mash, and the legs and chelipeds from carrot.

Happy weekend everyone!

Bento Boxes: Learning about countries

Breakfast over here is rather boring.  Most days, I find it hard to crawl out of bed early, so usually we keep the first meal of the day simple.  Junior J usually ends up eating cereal with fruit and milk, and he seems quite ok with it.  However, I thought I'd try to put in a little more effort in giving him more variety, and couldn't resist tying up some of his meals to what we've been learning during the week (this time we've been exploring the book "How to make an apple pie and see the world"):

:: Day 1: Italy, wheat.

:: Day 2: France. 

I tried making an Eiffel tower, but it was a little tough doing it with rice!

:: Day 3: Jamaica, banana boat.

This was his dinner: fried rice topped with omelette, seaweed and beans.

:: Day 4: England, milk.

:: Day 5: Sri Lanka, cinnamon and elephants in rainforests...

We had spaghetti bolognese for dinner, along with baked bell peppers.
I wanted to make a bento with the Sri Lankan flag, but the sword-holding lion
bit was just too hard to make!

:: Day 6: Vermont, USA.

Each time Junior J got a flag (I printed them from here), he would get to find the country and stick the flag up on our world map: 

I'm hoping to add loads more to this flag collection, will see how it goes!  Oh, and meanwhile, if you're in need of breakfast ideas like I am, do stay tuned for a yummy breakfast series by blogger moms starting 1st Aug!  Blessed weekend!

Bento boxes: Before and after

A few weeks ago, we were reading a few books about the Netherlands.  One was about a cat, and the story inspired me to make this:

We had minestrone soup that day, with sandwiches.

Half-way into the meal, the plate was looking like this:

According to the boy, the bread slices represented the dike, and he had flooded one side with soup to represent the ocean.  On the other side was Amsterdam, with a dinosaur nest containing eggs (the beans).

Ah, yes.  We are still working on getting him to eat properly and not make a mess, but this also taught me that meals can be springboards for learning too!  So instead of just trying to make the food look interesting, I've been linking up his meals to what we are learning or reading at home... will share more next week!

Do you include your child's meals as part of their learning?  Do share!

Bento boxes: Useful tools

Hello!  I'm back to share some of the bento tools or materials that I find particularly useful.  There are a whole lot of tools out there, however, these are the ones that I have and use (all tools pictured here are from Daiso, except for the sandwich cutter):

- Food picks:
These come in a myriad of colours and patterns, and are great for dressing up food in a hurry.  I usually use them to hold fruit, or sometimes make "mini kebabs" using the longer ones, with fishballs and quails eggs.

- Silicon muffin cups: 

As mentioned previously, these are great to compartmentalize your bento box/plate, and keep food separated.  They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes too!  (Psst... Another option for packing fruits/vegetables would be to use lettuce leaves to form a cup instead.)

- Food cutters: 

Those shown below come in sets and are rather small in size, and are useful for cutting food into little shapes like flowers etc.  

You could also use normal cookie cutters to cut larger pieces of food, eg. bread/omelette, and there are also specialized sandwich cutters that are shaped to cut away the crust of the bread:

Daiso also sells sandwich cutters,
but the animal ones I've been using are by Lunch Punch.

- Rice molds: 
Rice molds come various shapes, and right now I only have the star-shaped version.  Aside from using that mold, I've tried improvising by using other kitchen containers to mold the rice.  For example, a tea cup was used to make the panda's head and belly (less rice for the head = smaller circumference!):

And a small rectangular plastic container was used to make the cow's body:

All in all, these tools are really useful... but do look around your kitchen (or even your fridge) for stuff you could use, and have fun!

Bento boxes: FAQs on food

Its Friday, and I'm back with more FAQs for bentos... but before I start answering them, I just thought I'd share the most important principle I've learnt while trying to make meals look good for the boy.  While I do get that sense of satisfaction after making a cute-looking lunchbox, it should always be nutrition over aesthetics.

Junior J is very sensitive to MSG, and we are also rather wary of preserved/processed meats.  So I usually try not to use pre-mixed pastes or sauces for him (save for stuff like soy sauce and sometimes a lil oyster sauce), and I try to add less salt for him.  He doesn't really eat sausages (but these are really versatile and convenient for lunchboxes, and many bento books feature them), so I try not to give him those, and I try to limit ham as well.  But we do give him cheese.  He's not fond of meat, so I do give him minced pork/beef, but we're lucky in the sense that he eats most vegetables, including salad.

So here's my list of commonly used ingredients that I usually have at hand in the kitchen:

Carbohydrates:
- Sweet potatoes: I prefer these over normal potatoes because of the nutrition content (plus I have to steam some for baby J anyway!).  They're really great when mashed cos you can make all sorts of shapes, and they come in various colours:

- Bread: This a great for lunchboxes that are brought out (think tuna sandwiches or egg mayo sandwiches), since pasta doesn't taste so great when its cold.  On busy days, I just make the boy a sandwich and use a sandwich cutter to make it look a little more interesting:

- Pasta:  We sometimes buy stuffed pasta (eg. ravioli or tortelloni) from the farmer's market, since its a convenient way to add protein into a meal.  The nice thing about pasta is that it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so a simple chicken soup with some alphabet pasta may be just the thing for a kid learning his alphabet!

You can make nests out of spaghetti!

- Rice: Of course you have to include this for our Asian diet.  (I'm excluding asian noodles for now since its not readily available in my case!)  I wish I could say we are eating brown rice, but Junior J isn't fond of it, so we're sticking to white for now.  Rice is really versatile since there are tonnes of rice molds out there that you can use to make various shapes, and you can colour rice using natural colourings like sweet potato and spinach.  Long-grained rice also works (no need to get the Japanese short-grained version), just be sure to add more water to make the rice more sticky.  Right now, we only have a star-shaped rice mold, so I've been experimenting with using various containers to get different shapes, or sometimes I just try using my hands! :p

My pathetic attempt at making a turkey!

Protein (and fats):
- Eggs: This is by far my favourite way of introducing protein into Junior J's diet (steamed fish used to be a hot second on the list, but over here fish is expensive and its mainly salmon, so we don't eat so much fish for now).  He loves it in all forms, be it sunny-side up, hard-boiled, half-boiled or in an omelette.

- Cheese: The boy loves cheese so I include it in his omelettes and sandwiches, or add it grated in pasta sauces.  Hard cheeses like emmental (which we prefer since its less salty than cheddar) are also great for adding decorations (I love how they add that extra splash of cheery yellow!), since they cut well with food cutters.  Cream cheese is also great for making dips/spreads.

- Meat: Usually Junior J gets chicken/beef/pork that has been cooked in soups or stews (ie quite soft), or minced meat in sauces.  I've not mastered stir-fries yet... so I can't really say much about these!

Fruits and vegetables:
These are by far the best way of introducing colour into bento.  Salads are great (eg. cucumber slices, lettuce and baby spinach) but some kids won't eat raw greens, and these usually get soggy in a lunchbox.  Good veggies that won't wilt in Singapore's hot weather would include:

- Beans, peas (which are great for protein too) and cauliflower:

A hermit crab digging in the sand (minced pork) amidst coral and seaweed. 

- Broccoli: This is versatile since you can make trees and greenery out of them.

Ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach, in tomato mushroom sauce.

- Carrots: Which are great for kids that run away at the sight of anything green on their plates.  Plus, they can be cut using food cutters too (sweet potato tends to be softer and may fall apart).

The flower and butterfly were made using carrot slices,
while the mushroom was made of rice and sweet potato mash.

- Seaweed: I find this one really useful for decorating food, since you can cut eyes and little details (there are punches that can help you cut out tiny details, but I don't have those, so I use a kitchen scissors).  Plus they are a great source of iodine!

For fruit, anything goes really!  But those that don't require cutting might last a little longer, compared to stuff like papaya that might get mushy.  Our favourites include:

- Strawberries and blueberries, which last longer out than raspberries and blackberries:

- Cherries and cherry tomatoes, and apple slices:

So all in all, just ensure you have a balance of carbs, proteins and fruit/veggies in the meal, pay attention to colours, and have fun!