Exam and Halloween Bentos

I'm so GLAD Girlet's exams are finally over. Cos we've not only struggled with Mandarin, there was Malay Language to contend with too. Sigh!

Bento #138 was a quick and simple Good Luck in Exams bento. Just peanut butter, and chocolate sandwich with cheese accents, ham flower and papaya flowers. I forgot about the brocolli that was left in the steamer, otherwise it should go in the empty spot beside the ham. Yup! I was that stressed. Have I mentioned how GLAD I am that the exam's over.
Bento # 139 & #140

I'd admit to being a procrastinator ...... waiting for the very last day to make a Halloween bento. For Girlet, there was a chicken rice (with chicken stuffed in) coffin, with bones on top (from the Scooby Doo pasta), poison beans (edamame), sausage fingers (copied off Kel here) with bloody nails (chinese sausage stuck on with ketchup), quail egg eyeballs (raisin pupils and foodmarkers) and a blood-filled mouth with fangs (the blood being red dragonfruit, and the fangs was a gummy candy).
Boylet's bento had a blood-filled tombstone (strawberry jam sandwich), a sausage finger, an eyeball (made a hole in the egg to stuff the raisin in), Frankenstein (pandan eggsheet, seaweed & cheese eyes), decaying flesh with bone (leftover sausages and pasta) and Jack O'Lantern carrot (using the facial expression multi cutter). The finger at the bottom left was a gummy candy.

Lastly, a pic of Girlet in her witch costume.

Back to school again with Smiley Sandwiches.

It's back to school again for Term 2. Phew! I must say that I'm glad to have two kids out of the house. Finally some peace and quiet.

Just noticed it's almost 1 month since my last update. Was busy with Girlet's revision for exams back then. Thought I would have time to update this blog during the hols, but as it turned out I was busier than ever. The kids are getting more demanding as they grow older. Who said it'll be easier?

After two weeks vacation, Girlet refused to go to school today, and offered to go Kindergarten with Boylet instead. Haha..... Don't we all want to do that! And that's despite having a new roller Barbie schoolbag. Her previous bag was looking battered. Even with her new bag, it came back with black patches all over only after one day. She doesn't seem to cherish her possessions. D'hubby says it's because she gets things too easily. Maybe, I should have let her continue using her old bag. It is still in working order, just look old even after cleaning. The rate she's going, her new bag is going to look the same after one week.

Anyway, here is Girlet's bento for today. Finally took out the facial expression multi-cutter from its package. Even Babylet willingly eat up her sandwiches with such cute smiling faces.

Contents : Sandwiches with kaya (it's wholemeal bread on the bottom layer), fishball with mayo, a piece each of fried chicken and fish, egg roll, grapes and a cherry. Drats! Forgot to use the smiley faces picks.

I still have 3 months worth of bentos to post, as well as the activities done over the hols. To my dearest sis and Emily: I've updated. Now it's your turn!

Boylet's Snack Bentos

I've been packing snacks for Boylet, which I'll loosely call bento despite not meeting the various criteria. Boylet's kindy serves fruits as snack, so I normally pack carbs and some protein to fill him up as he only drinks milk in the morning. His bentos are not tightly packed, but no worries of food moving around since I carry his things right to the door of the kindy.

Bento #126 - Reaching for the stars with a rocket ship.

Bento # 127 - A spinosaurus chomping on leaves on a cloudy day. The spinosaurus is jam sandwich decorated by Japanese lunch (egg) sheets.

Bento #128 - A herd of elephants (cheese sandwiches) meeting up with another herd (fishballs skewered with elephant picks). The grapes were extras from Girlet's bento.

Boylet thrives on themes. He likes to coordinate his clothes with his snacks. So if he's wearing dinosaur t-shirt, it's dinosaur bento, spiderman t-shirt with spiderman bento, and elephant (safari animals) with his safari t-shirt. Being picky, he eats better that way.

Bento # 129 - Croissant with nutella, cubed cream cheese, cereal, and grapes as fillers.

Bento # 130 - Dino in the jungle with oversized mushroom. The polka dot dino was an inspiration from a song in Boylet's favourite CD (bought two years ago in Sg).

I'll leave you with the lyrics of the song. It's a catchy song which I find myself humming sometimes. Even Babylet can sing the song, as of others from the CD. The link to the CD is here.

No One Ever Saw A Dinosaur

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Ever wondered what they look like

All those years ago
Anyone who knows will tell you

No one really knows

When they lived we know for sure

People weren't around

So how can we be certain

that dinosaurs were brown

They could be blue, green, purple

or a funny shade of pink
Brown or red, orange

or any colour you can think
No one knows cos no one ever saw a dinosaur

Polka dots, plain or stripy
Overall dark or faint

Multicoloured, black or whitey
Any colour you can paint

No one knows cos no one ever saw a dinosaur

Bentos # 117 - 122 : Bread bentos

More backdated bentos. And the bentos are no longer in chronological order since I messed up the timeline. So I'm grouping them by contents. I try to pack food in a rotating order centering on bread, rice, noodles, onigiri, pasta. Hopefully, that'll provide a variety in taste. Anyway, today I'm posting all the bread bentos for Girlet in Feb. All Speed Bentos, made within 15 minutes.

Bento #117 - Kaya sandwich with white and wholemeal bread. Added two chicks and a cheese dog chasing a cheese cat, and some grapes (no vege, so cheated with green picks *_*). First use of the red Hello Kitty box.

Bento # 118 - Egg mayo sandwich, red & orange cherry tomatoes, moulded quail eggs and a cheese cube.

Bento # 119 - Pooh bear sandwiches (can't remember now what filling they were), mini mandarin (which put this into early Feb when the mini mandarin were still sold), and grapes. Didn't pack any protein as Girlet was getting fried eggs and sausages in school.

Bento # 120 - Mini poppy seed bun (again forgot what filling) with My Melody cheese, stewed oyster sauce drumnet, and grapes. This was one of the few bentos that I made decorations with cheese, since they melt in our hot weather.

Bento # 121 - Butterfly sandwiches, nuggets and red dragonfruit cut with butterfly cutter. Girlet decorated the butterfly with pink food marker to match the dragonfruit.

Bento # 122 - A boy holding a girl's hand (raisin bread with kaya), and heart watermelon. Must have been made the period around Valentine's day. Other items were nuggets, quail eggs pretending to be dogs and a jackfruit, deseeded, hence accounting to the weird shape.

Valentine Bentos

I have plenty more bentos unposted, but thought better post the Valentine Bento first in keeping with the season. Haha... that's coming from someone who hasn't posted the Christmas and CNY pics. I've actually been bento-ing practically every schoolday. But more misses than hits, so not inspired to post them.

Anyway, although Valentine was on a Saturday this year, Girlet had school as replacement for the long CNY break. So she had her Valentine bento on the day itself. Made her a heart shape onigiri and two stewed drumnets wrapped with ribbon (made of Jap lunch sheet) for ease of holding.
The day before, I made heart shaped Nutella sandwiches. Now that I put the photos next to each other, I realised the similarities between the two. Same box aside, the lettuce and mandarins were at the same position, and the colours are alike. I'm really stuck in a rut or what??!! Accompanying the wheat shaped pasta was cheese sauce in the orange container. I admit that the lettuce is purely for decoration. While Girlet now is eating lettuce, this particular bunch of lettuce was yuckily bitter even for me. The pet rabbit gets to enjoy it instead.

Didn't make any Valentine bentos for the men in my life. D'hubby had conferences and didn't need any bentos, while Boylet preferred dinosaurs to hearts.

This skipping of posts really messed up my numbering system. Sheesh.... I'll just label them as Bentos # 108 & 109 for continuity sake.

Ox themed bentos for CNY

I'm jumping into the fray by making ox-themed bentos in conjunction with Ox Year this Chinese New Year.

Bento #105 is an ox onigiri for Girlet, with salmon sausage and corn. Thanks to shoppingmum for the idea of using the bone pick for the ox's horn. Saved me lots of time. I made the ox from a Pikachu (pokemon) rice mould and moved the ears down to resemble an ox. Was late and didn't have time to shell edamame, so the middle portion of the bento was left empty. Bento # 106 - A simple cow made of cheese on top of sandwiches, with salmon sausage, broccoli and corn. Lastly Bento # 107 was a snack bento for Boylet. It contained an ox made from quail egg, ham and spaghetti strip. Surrounded the ox with various farm animals cut out from bread & cheese. Corn, salmon sausage and a rooster pick completed the bento .

GONG XI FA CAI to everyone.

Bentos # 96 - Flossy Sandwiches

This was made for the second day of school. I had wanted to make potato salad only to find out that we're out of potatoes *kicking myself*. Asked Girlet what she wanted and she requested for meat floss sandwich. The only thing I could think of to cute-ify it is to make a cheese lion face. Added a sleepy baby quail egg, corn, brocolli & brocolli flower (so pretty rite?), and grapes under the egg and vege. So simple but still took me 30 mins to prepare..... how to be faster?


Also made hubby's breakfast bento, which took another 10 mins. Only he forgot to bring it with him. So I ate up the egg tart as it was already 2 days old and the brocolli flower. Kept the rest in the fridge for the next day.

Bento # 78 and # 79 - Out of fresh produce

I twisted my ankle last week while running down the stairs. I was carrying Babylet then. Thank God I fell back on the bum, so I didn't drop her. Though it did give her a big scare. I managed to turn it into a teaching session - "Don't run on the stairs or you'll fall down like mummy" *_* Can joke about it now that the pain is over. It wasn't so pleasant last week, hobbling around with a swollen and bruised ankle. As a result, I didn't manage to go shopping for groceries. And had to made do with staples in the fridge.


These two bentos were from early last week. Was contemplating not to post because not-up-to- standard. Haha... but they were among Girlet's favourites... I think it was the lack of vegies... LOL!

Bento # 78 had white bread with ham and two types of cheese - cheddar and gouda. Tried to roll into heart shapes, but not too successful. Quail eggs, which were too big for the various moulds, were fashioned into a hamster and chick. And pears were cut into simple rectangles. The next day, things got worse when we ran out of fruits too. Fortunately the breadman came right to the house so we had enough bread. Bento # 79 had white and wholemeal bread with cheese, Nutella and chicken floss/seaweed/sesame seed, respectively. I left the crusts intact since Girlet don't mind them. I then tried to cut the too-big quail eggs into a nice shape but ended up in a mess!

The positive note was: Girlet loved the bentos!

Bento # 76 - Halloween Spider Pizza

Following the previous post, girlet requested for another pizza bento. Lacking any original ideas, shamelessly copied another pizza idea from Gourmet Mom. However, as Girlet is not fond of olives, the spider is made from a gummy snake instead. My so-called pizza was made from white bread, beef bolognaise sauce and cheese. Included two pumpkin marshmallow and some grapes. And mindful of allthingspurple's advice in keeping the food intact, I placed a plastic sheet over the bento, and then plastic cutleries and damp towel on top so there would be no space for the food to move about. Other for the spider which appeared somewhat squashed, that worked quite well. Happy Halloween!

Bento # 75 - Halloween Snake Pizza

This is the first pizza I'm packing into a bento. Reason being I had always associated pizza with being piping hot with gooey cheese. But after seeing a few other mommies packing pizza with no complains from their kids, thought I should try out too. And what better time than a Halloween bento. I took the idea of the snake pizza from here. Love this blog, has all sorts of cutest ideas.

The original recipe used bagels. Not having any bagels, I cut out semi-circular shapes on white bread instead. Using some leftover beef bolognaise sauce topped with cheese, these snakes took no time to make at all. I put the pizza in the toaster oven for 5 minutes while I washed and cut the apple into Jack-o-Lantern.And while the pizza is cooling down, I packed the rest of the bento - a marshmallow ghost which BIL brought from Oz, and a Snickers o'Lantern. Unfortunately, being clumsy, I dislodged the snake while transferring into the bento box. See how the snake have gaps which was earlier held together by cheese. And the second snake was slightly too long so Girlet got to eat the tail first for breakfast. So the final bento had 1 and 2/3 snakes.

Verdict : Girlet cleaned the bento. First time she has so much treats, that she requested for another pizza bento for the next day. *_*

Bento # 71 - A Fishy Affair

This was yesterday's bento. Last week, Girlet had been having simple bentos. Thought to compensate and make her something that requires more effort. Since I had two more of the fish sausage in the freezer, ended up with another fishy bento. It would have been better with a coloured fish egg, but overall it's quite satisfactory.

Bottom tier: White and Red Fish Dragonfruit, Fish Pretzels with cream fillings, Fish container

Upper tier: Fish sausage, cheese & nutella sandwiches, egg, ham anemones, broccoli corals.

Bento # 68 - Hello Kitty's Photo Frame

This bento features a new cookie cutter from Daiso, which I bought recently during the Hari Raya break. When I saw it, my first thought was of a photo frame. So that's the background story of today's bento - photo frame with Hello Kitty's pic.

If I were more artistic, it would be cool to draw Girlet's pic on cheese with food markers instead. But then that'll take me 2 hours instead of 10 mins to make this bento ^_^. I had wanted to cut out little cheese & ham flowers to decorate the frame, and roll the ham into matching flowers. But was tired (read - lazy), so she ended up with a plain frame and a simple ham 'fold'. As the ham was Garlic Ham, packed a Mentos mint to prevent garlicky breath. Also included her current favourite champagne grapes.

Been packing a lot of Nutella sandwiches for Girlet recently. Reason being Nutella is cheaper in Singapore, even after currency conversion. The kiasu me, of course bought the biggest bottle the last couple of times there (which has been quite frequent since the advent of bento mania). Now, the kids have to finish the bottles before the expiry date....hehe.. Although I do have a mind to make this delicious looking Nutella Frosted Cupcakes by Kookyculinary. Next week then, after exams.

Bento # 65 and # 66 - Tigger sandwich and Piglet sandwich

This was yesterday bento - for the first day of Girlet's test in Mandarin. Just a quick bento- cheese sandwich & Nutella sandwich, all cut with Tigger cookie mould; chicken nuggets, strawberry and champagne grapes. The kids couldn't stop eating the champagne grapes, all the while competing on who can find the smallest grape.

This was today's bento: Piglet sandwich with Nutella, two types of dragonfruit, and fish wrapped with seaweed topped with mayonnaise and tomato sauce.

The Tigger and Piglet imprints turned out rather nice, didn't it? The kids love these Disney cookie moulds. You can get them from NST and Market Place.

Bentos # 62, 63 & 64 : Slapdash Bentos

I haven’t been online most of this week. Girlet is having her school assessment next week, and I've been busy studying, ahem, helping Girlet revising for her tests.

Here are the bentos for the past few days. Quoting Blessed Mom, the mommy is rather brain dead now, hence lack creativity. All bentos here met my speed bento criterion of 15 minutes and less.


Bento # 62 : Bread with kaya, cheese and Nutella, SiuPao, ham shaped as anemone, cube cheese, heart shaped dragon fruit, and Strawberry fruit snack.

Bento # 63 : Star shaped nuggets, onigiri, sandwich, golden kiwi, and crackers; two sticks of satay, and a strawberry gummy sweet. Not shown are tomato sauce and soy sauce. Basically just a slapdash bento. I ran out of bread, so packed the crust (which Girlet doesn't mind eating). And made do with the frozen onigiri for more carbs. Now I wonder how the food tasted like together. Girlet didn't complain and came back with an empty box. Couldn't tell if she threw anything away.

Bento # 64 : Heart & Flower shaped sandwich with Nutella, candy coated sunflower seeds, breaded prawns and fish, banana, dried raisins & apricot, and a cranberry fruit snack. Surprisingly, she didn't like the candy coated sunflower seeds. Boylet finished that for her.

Girlet loves the Kettle Valley Organic Fruit Snack. It has one apple in every bar, with an assortment of flavours, and she loves all of them. I like to think of it as a serving of fruit to meet the 7 vegies & fruits a day quota. *_^

Bento # 61 - all about cars

Found a picture of a bento, languishing away in another camera. You reckon it's the early signs of Alzheimer? From the picture, it was easy to tell that the bento was made about three weeks ago, during puasa period and mid-autumn festival. Contents: Car shaped sandwiches, three layers with nutella and cheese; two car shaped quail eggs; car shaped cup with dates, raisins and apricot. And the jelly mooncake which was given by someone.

The car shaped cutter is actually for vegetables, but I found it to be the perfect size for the 2 and 4 year old. The 2 year old can eat a whole bunch of these bread cutouts, which she would otherwise reject. She likes her bread plain, with the cheese at the side.

By the way, the raisins and apricots are organic. The non-organic dried fruits are usually preserved with sulfur to maintain the colour. Unfortunately sulfur triggers boylet's eczema and gives me puffed up lips, which is sexy but super itchy... hehe.... For more info on dried apricots, check this link.

Bento # 55 - Dumpling Sandwich

Another bread bento, this time copying Lisa's dumpling sandwich. Unfortunately mine is without the cute food markers. Nevertheless, girlet enjoyed making the dumpling using the dumpling mould from 100 yen shop. Take two slices of bread, cut into a circle (according to the mould), fill the middle and press the mould. Easy enough for a 6-yr old. Without the mould, I would just press the edges with a fork. From left : white and red dragonfruit cut in bear shape. Two bread dumplings, one buttered and filled with meat floss, the other with Nutella. Four quail eggs in animal shapes, and chocolate alphabet cookies spelling out girlet's name. Staked two bear silicon cups on top of each other as they are too shallow individually. Also a fish sauce bottle containing soy sauce.

Bento # 54 - Mickey / Minnie sandwiches

Girlet requested for sandwiches, and I was glad to comply. Sandwiches = a fast and easy bento to make.

Mickey Mouse sandwich with Nutella, Minni Mouse with kaya (coconut jam).

Babybel cheese, Grapes, and Ham chunks on lettuce.

Bento # 50 & # 51

For bento # 50, tried to create a flower basket. The ham and chicken slice were too think and the resulting flower couldn't fit into the bread basket. Note to self, get the deli to slice the ham thinner next time. The bread was Farmer's Rolls from Delifrance. Boylet loves it heated up with just butter slathered on. The fillings here were egg mayo, ham cut with flower cutter and baby corn. Tried to make a flower with the sausage, but another failure as the sausage broke when folded. Aiyah! I want delicate and dextrous fingers like LZmommy's. And the fruits were the last of the strawberries and blueberries from Oz.The flower basket from another angle. Can make it out or not?
The second week of school (last week), and I finally got my act together. Bought groceries and spent an afternoon cooking dinner and making extra to stash in freezer. Basically just took a variety of minced meat & fishpaste and shaped, stuffed and covered in various ways.

The easiest was minced beef mixed with finely chopped onion & parsley flakes and turned into mini burgers. Mashed potato was turned into potato croquet, some stuffed with sweetmeat/bakwa. Fishpaste were either rolled with crabstick for steaming, or wrapped with seaweed, or covered with bread squares for deep frying. Also deep fried some chicken nuggets from Ayamas. The maid did all the deep frying. Was supposed to make wonton, but became too lazy in the end.

Bento # 51 contained the fruits of the labour : Nuggets, fish with seaweed, mini hamburger and round potato croquet. Tomato ketchup was in the pig container. Wanted to make onigiri for girlet, but she requested for mini croissant instead. Fruits were watermelon and papaya. Had to cut heart shape again because the heart shape silicon cups are the only small yet tall ones I have. The other small silicon cups are too shallow, resulting in the fruits falling all over the box during transportation. Whereas the other taller silicon cups are too big for this bento box.

A week's worth of Bentos # 45 - # 49

All the bentos here are from last week - end of August. Didn't have the chance to buy groceries after the trip, so had to rely on the bakery shop.

Bento #45 : consisted of mini croissants with egg mayo & parsley, strawberry, blueberries and a fruit roll.
Bento # 46 : Charsiew Pau, fried prawn ball, crab on stick, tiara shaped watermelon, honeymelon & papaya and blueberry. This was the bento box purchased in Oz, and actually too big for everyday use. But just the nice size for a pau. Couldn't fit it into any of girlet's bento boxes. The cover is not flat, hence there is a gap between the cover and box. I had to put a cling wrap before putting on the cover to prevent the fruits from spilling over the divider. And the box costed RM21 after conversion, which I thought was a very reasonable price.Bento #47 : Chicken nuggets, portugese egg tart, round doughnut, and pulasan – girlet’s current favourite fruit. Taste better than rambutan. My mum brought it along from Johor. Missed my granddad’s award winning pulasan. Since he passed away, his orchard had been neglected and now we have to buy ‘inferior’ pulasan from others.
Bento # 48 : Another all storebought bento, in this case, from Breadstory. A trio of colourful swiss roll, with pandan kaya, chocolate and strawberry jam. Bread 'dimsum' with cheese & sausage, and grapes.
After so many days of bread, finally had a chance to go to Pasar Besar in TTDI for fresh supplies. Bento # 49 had fried noodles with sawi, carrots, beansprouts, fishcake, egg and fish tofu (arranged alternatedly at the bottom) and half an orange.

Bento # 42 and # 43- More leftovers

Had another mini celebration for babylet at her music class. Bought Dunkin Donuts' munchkins and mini shaped jellies to distribute to her classmates. Had a few leftover, which went into girlet's bento on Wed. On the left, 3 pieces of munchkins, car egg, and 2 pieces of nuggets. On the right were bear jelly, steamed corn with butter, cereals and tomato sauce. This is the first and last time she would be getting those coloured cereals. Although the kids loved them, I'm not too keen on the colouring.

Since school hols is next week, I'm not cooking anything new for bento. Instead focusing on clearing leftovers and frozen stash. So, dare I say this - another leftover bento. Poor girlet, she's getting leftovers all week.

Top container : Munchkins, squirrel shaped jelly and golden kiwi. Bottom container : Hello Kitty onigiri, but didn't want to open new packet of nori, so no face, just scattered with sakura denbu. Stewed soy sauce drumstick (I was thinking of you, Emily, when I packed this, hehe), and stir fried mixed vegies made up of carrots, sweetpeas, cauliflower and young lotus root.

Girlet had been having lotus root & peanut soup since young but didn't like the lotus root itself. When I saw some young lotus root at the wet market, decided to get that for stir frying. And girlet loved it, said it was crunchy and sweet. Yay! Another option for bento! Unfortunately, boylet and babylet refused to try it.