Another bento lunch

Here's E's lunch for her second day of school. I featured the bunny-shaped egg this time, cut in half and with yolks removed. Otherwise, it was the same old, same old: cubed cheese stick, pretzels & blueberries.

Oh and here's a shot with the super cute lid, which I realized I forgot to show last time I used this bento box. I also decided to get crazy and add an applesauce cup to her lunch, which I've never done before. I forgot to ask how she did with it.

First day of school bento and egg molds!

Tomorrow is E's first day of preschool, and I've been super excited about packing her a cute bento lunch. So much so that for what is probably the first and last time, I made it the night before.

Since she's been a chowhound lately, I decided to use one of the few two-tiered boxes I have. I don't use them often because I usually don't have enough food to fill them, but not today! In the top part, I made four little sandwich cut-outs, plus some blueberries, and a stick of colby cheese. The bottom tray I just filled with Veggie Booty.

It was only after I packed the lunch, took pics and then put it away in the fridge that I remembered I had made eggs earlier and forgotten to put them in.

On my trip to California both this year and last, I picked up some egg molds. For the uninitiated, they're plastic molds that you shove a warm hard-boiled egg into that forces it into a fun shape. I briefly tried them out last year, with lukewarm results. At that point in time, E was decidedly not interested in eating eggs, cute shapes or not.

Here's a pic of my lame attempt from last year. I will add that I did indeed use XL eggs, and they STILL were not big enough!

But a lot can change over the course of a year. E's little palate has definitely broadened a bit and while she still claims not to like hard-boiled eggs, I knew that if I let her help me make them, she'd change her tune. Just like with sandwiches - she used to hate them, but now happily eats them if I let her make them herself. Of course it takes about 45 minutes to make one sandwich, but that's a different can of worms.

Generally, I've always been told that you need to use extra large eggs, and that some brands tend to be larger than others. I had exactly four large organic eggs left in my fridge that needed to be used up, and I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

Oddly enough, I went 2-2. Two molds turned out great, two did not. I honestly don't know if it's the eggs or what, but I'm thinking next time, I might orient them a different way before I press them in there.

In any case, E was super excited about the whole process and could not wait to open them up and see. And when I told her she could eat the car...I think she was in hog heaven.

Here she is, waiting patiently.

We opened the car first. Success!


It has a bit of a greenish tinge because I tried putting it in a cup with water & food coloring. But both E and I were too impatient to wait for the dye to take, so I pulled it out.

She ate most of a whole egg - a first! I don't think she cared for the yolk, so I picked it out of the second half after she spit the first half in my hand - lovely.

Here are pics of the second set (minus the car). I'm hoping to get her to eat one for breakfast before school tomorrow.

Can't wait for school!

E starts up with preschool (better known down here as "Mother's Day Out" or MDO) this week and I cannot wait! It's partly because I'm excited to have a couple days to myself (thus the term, "mother's day out"), but mostly I'm just excited to use all our new bento stuff to make her lunches!

I got these little sandwich cutters that I've been dying to try. Usually, I just use mini cookie cutters, but from the picture on the packaging these appeared to be specifically for sandwiches. They even have a stamp, so that you can stamp the outside of the bread. So neat!

Anyways, I took advantage of our trip to the aquarium last week to do a little test run. E is really really into making her own sandwiches. It takes about 20 minutes to make one sandwich, but I figure it's worth it since she actually eats the sandwich when she's done (as opposed to wasting it, which was her previous MO). She LOVED cutting out the shapes and stamping the tops. So much so, that she's been asking me to make them every day since. Of course, I wish these didn't result in so much waste since I can only get 4-5 shapes out of a full size sandwich, but for now it's a price I'm willing to pay.

So here's a picture of her lunch, packed in the cute new giraffe bento box I picked up in San Francisco last month. The box turned out to be a bit smaller on the inside than I anticipated, so I ended up having to pack the pretzel sticks in a separate baggie. That partly defeated the purpose, but I was in a hurry to get out the door. Next time I'll try to be more strategic. Stay tuned for more bento lunches!

Mini-bento

E recently decided to stop taking naps, so there's been a lot less time for crafting lately. So instead, I decided to have her help me try out some of my new bento goodies. I have a bunch of rice (onigiri) molds that I've been dying to try out. E has never been a big fan of rice (it almost makes me wonder how we're related), but she really enjoyed making these rice shapes the other day.

I realized after playing around with some of the mold the other night that most of them are going to make onigiri that are way too big for most kids to eat. But on a whim, I did pick up this cute set that makes little shapes.

If you do a basic google search for onigiri, you'll find lots of links to recipes and how-to's. For the uninitiated, it's basically a big old ball of rice, usually vaguely triangular with something in the middle. I'm not a big fan of plain rice, or of the traditional Japanese fillings (like umeboshi), so I decided to wing it with some other stuff I had on hand. My two favorites of late? Furikake and pork sung.

I have nori furikake, which is basically bits of nori (seaweed), sesame seeds, salt & sugar. It comes in lots of flavors though, including salmon, shrimp, etc.

So as I mentioned before, I don't often eat plain rice - usually I eat it with stir-fry, leftovers, or even as a super basic fried rice with just scrambled eggs, onion powder & sesame oil. But once in a while, I'll eat it with some furikake sprinkled on top. It's still rather bland that way though though, so I decided to add some pork sung too.

Again, for those that aren't familiar, pork sung is basically pork that's been dried with sugar, soy sauce and usually lard & MSG (hey, I didn't say this was healthy food!), and then ground up so it has sort of a fluffy, powdery consistency. There's also pork fu, which is similar, but a bit more stringy. I'll admit, it's not for everyone. T thinks it's weird and is not a huge fan, but I grew up eating it, usually with rice porridge, so it has a comfort food aspect that appeals to me.

It normally comes in a small tub, but since I'm a freak, I have the gigantor jar.

Anyways, I mixed a bit of each with some warm white rice.

Then I spooned rice into each of the molds, and E helped by pushing the rice down.

Put the top on and press.

Then flip it over and pop out the finished rice shapes out! Voila! (Excuse the crazy background - E insisted I use this plate)

I was really surprised that E actually ate these since she's shown little interest in rice up until now. Although to be honest, she ate maybe 2 of the 4 shapes, and I ate the other two. I think she enjoyed making them more than eating them because she asks me every day now to make more. I'm going to work on coming up with some other fillings to mix in and hopefully these will become a regular fixture in her school lunches. Slight word of warning, these do dry out quickly if you leave them out, so either eat them right away or wrap them up and put them in your fridge for later.

Bento booty

Not that kind of booty (dirty minds!), I'm talking more about the treasure kind. We are finally back from our trip to California and somewhat back to normal life! While out there though, I may have gone a little bit bento crazy. Believe it or not, this isn't even all of it - I couldn't fit everything on the table when I went to take a picture.

I just couldn't help myself - between all the cute (and different things) at Daiso and Ichiban Kan, it was very very hard not to overindulge. Thankfully, most of this is NOT for E. In order to enable my shopping fix (because honestly I didn't really need very much), I offered to pick up some items for friends back in Texas. It might have gotten a wee bit out of hand. Needless to say, I have a very very understanding husband who did not even bat an eye when I told him I'd need to ship a box home because my suitcase was too full. Eek!

In any case, I know the bento supplies themselves don't have a ton to do with craftiness, but with school starting up in a few weeks, I will (hopefully) have some fun and cute lunches to post about. Last year, E was not interested in anything beyond chunks of fruit, cheese, and turkey ham. I'm hoping that her palate has evolved a bit to include bunny-shaped sandwiches and maybe rice & seaweed.

First day of "school"

Today was E's first day at "school." I put school in quotes because, honestly, it's not really school. It's more like a cross between pre-school and part-time daycare, referred to down here as "Mother's Day Out" or MDO for short, and it's only once a week.

She does go for long enough that I need to pack her a lunch though, so I was excited to have an excuse to use some of the bento supplies I'd been hoarding and even bought some new stuff. Here is a pic of the lunch I packed her today:


She ate roughly half the string cheese, half of one sandwich, most the raisins, and I don't think she touched the peas, except to move them around, but I can't complain since they were cold. Oh and both T & I hate peas, so it's kind of weird to us that she likes them at all, but it's one of the few green vegetables she'll eat.

I also quickly sewed together a little tote bag for her stuff since they have to have diapers, change of clothes, etc. I didn't want to buy the boring old plain one the school had for $5, and a friend is actually making a much nicer one, so this is kind of a lame proxy till she finishes it. It's actually the leftover piece from when I cut and hemmed the curtain in E's room, but the fabric is pretty cute. I actually have a whole other panel that I'll probably do something with one of these days. This is one of the few times I've been able to make something start to finish out of things I already have on hand! Woohoo!

Here's the front:


And back:

I also was going to make E a little lunchbag to go with her bento lunch, but I just ran out of time. I was sitting here at 11pm last night, trying to figure out/modify a couple different patterns and realized that it just wasn't worth staying up all night to make a lunchbag that I probably wouldn't even be happy with. So for now, I'm using the Hello Kitty bag that I got at the Target Dollar Spot. It seemed to work out just fine.

Bento madness

Or maybe this should be called Hello Kitty madness. I have to confess, I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I am normally against buying my kid "character" toys and other items (in particular, Disney princess stuff), but when it comes to Hello Kitty, all that goes out the window.

E starts preschool in a few weeks (she'll be going one day a week), and I may have gone a little bit overboard buying bento stuff for her lunch. To be fair though, the big pink box at bottom was given to me by my friend, Shannon. And the top three items (lunch bag, box, and ice pack) are all from Target's Dollar Spot.

So the overboard part really only applies to the red box and the extra silverware set (which is actually for everyday) I bought at the Asian grocery store yesterday. I really had to restrain myself there, and in fact, bought an extra HK box with the excuse that another friend might need it, which she did. I should have taken a picture yesterday, before I gave some duplicates of the Target stuff and the extra box to her. And maybe thrown in all the bento-making supplies that I've acquired over the last couple months. Then you'd really see the madness. Can you tell that I can't wait to start making cute lunches for E?