Bento # 70 - My beehoon bento

This was my bento from last week. Fried beehoon with chicken, topped with egg, fishcake, and vegies. And side dishes of Johor style otak-otak, and fish kimchi. D'hubby laughed at me for making bento to eat at home. But I realise I eat better when I make bento for myself, otherwise it'll be nasi lemak or Korean instant noodles *_*

Bento # 69 - Spinach Noodles and coloured eggs

Girlet's bento for today consisted of spinach noodles (thanks to Emily for introducing it to me), various steamed fishball/fishpaste/filament stick, and coloured quail eggs.

I read with interest on how Blessed Mom coloured eggs with blueberry juice here, and tried with Ribena blackcurrant juice. The egg turned nicely purple, though it was slightly too big for the bunny mould and the face broke somewhat. The yellow chick was soaked in turmeric/curry, and turned out very well.

Girlet was very happy to have her favourite colour purple in the bento.

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 # 39 and # 40

Bento # 39 consisted of tri-coloured spirals with ham, carrots, button mushrooms and cheese sauce, decorated with baby corn. For protein, baked honey chicken drumstick from the frozen stash. The top container had apples cut with a Winnie the Pooh cookie cutter, Pooh cookies made by girlet herself, and steamed baby carrots, baby corn and broccoli.

And I made cheese sauce for her pasta because thought she might be bored with tomato based sauces. But girlet only ate half of the pasta, and requested for tomato sauce the next time. Girlet said that the first thing she ate was the pooh biscuit because she made it. Maybe next time I'll get her to make cheese sauce herself so she'll eat it all up.

Bento # 40 is very simple. Udon with Hello Kitty fishcake, and steamed vegies. While I went to get the camera to take a shot of this bento, girlet and babylet 'stole' some of the fishcake and left only one piece. I took the pic anyway, which turned out to be a good move because after I cut more fishcake, and filled a sauce container with thousand island, girlet's transport to kindy arrived early. So stuffed everything into the bento bag together with a banana. I packed more vegies, and less of everything else as I thought she might be more inclined to eat vegies with fewer options. But the plan backfired with girlet eating barely half of the vegies. She'd rather go hungry. Sigh.....

Bento # 31 and # 32

Still posting about last week's bento.

Left : Fruits - red dragonfruit and ciku cut into star shape, with papaya (triangles) to fill in the empty spaces.
Middle : Egg noodles tossed with tomato sauce and sesame oil, topped with asparagus, sweetmeat & cheese cut into star shape.
Right : 2 pieces of star shaped nuggets, and 2 fish + vegie ball. Put a divider between the nuggets and fishballs to keep the nuggets dry, and girlet insisted to decorate with more dividers.



For bento # 32, I was inspired by my sis's futomaki, and Bento pet's very fancy futomaki. But those were beyond me. Confession - can't make maki with more than 1 filling yet. Hehe... And those in the pic below were the nicer ones. The messier lopsided ones became my lunch.


Main box at bottom : Maki with egg and crabstick. Baked honey chicken drumstick - not exactly leftovers, as I cooked extra for girlet's bento. There's another stashed in the freezer. Can expect to see that making an appearance soon. The stirfried vegies were leftovers from dinner, consisting of broccoli, sugarpeas, babycorn, red and yellow capsicum. Another confession - the capsicums were included purely for decor /colour. Girlet has yet to learn to like them.


Smaller box on top : Watermelon cut into ice cream cone shape, and half a chocolate muffin.

Bento # 29 and # 30

Trying to catch up with my backlogs, seems like back at work all over again..hehe....

Bento # 29 : On the right of the bento was wanton noodles topped with boiled wanton, stirfried baby french beans with keichi/wolfberry, chick quail egg, and fishpaste, spinach & egg rollups. On the left was part of a buttered steamed corn, grapes, breaded fish/prawn ball and a container of ketchup.
For Bento # 30, I tried out the metal cookie cutter whether can be used as mould for frying egg. Worked out alright. The flowover was minimal and was easily cut off and popped into my mouth... hehe.... And the metal cutter doesn't warp, unlike the silicon moulds which I have read a few complains of. Of course can just fry the egg and then cut with the cutter, but that means more wastage / more egg into my mouth... hehe...

Main box at bottom : Animal pasta and mixed vegies tossed with a little milk, cream cheese and powdered parmesan cheese. Packed extra in case girlet decided to share with her friends again.
Smaller box on top : Animal shaped egg & ham 'sandwich', and papaya cut into rectangles - thought already had enough animals. Of course with animal picks and divider too.

Bento # 26 - Johor style wonton noodles

Wonton noodles. Yes, KLites, this is how Johoreans eat their wonton noodles. For kids, with tomato sauce. While adults get chili sauce. Took me a long while to get used to brown noodles when I first moved to KL. Hehe....still not my first choice. Fortunately the kids are fine with both versions.

The toppings are fancy fishcakes and crabstick wrapped with egg. It is obvious which are store bought and which are homemade. Also added sweetpeas, cut diagonally, and cherries, which girlet loves but is getting quite bored with. Gotta buy different variety of fruits for next week.

And this is how the final package looked like.

Bento # 18

Two weeks ago, a fellow blogger, Angeline informed me about the Hello Kitty kamaboko in Jusco Midvalley. Since then, I had been dropping in Midvalley periodically to no avail. Anyway, I was in 1U to buy a present and on a whim, checked out the Jusco there. To my delight, they had two packs left. Very clear sign that I'm meant to buy them, right? RM12 price tag regardless. Hehe.... can you hear me clapping my hands with glee..... Thanks Angeline (Sorry, can't access your blog to thank you directly).

So yesterday's bento was wonton noodles topped with Hello Kitty kamaboko and carrots. Fried wonton, boiled wonton and sweet peas on the left. (Both type of wontons are part of my stash in the freezer.)

For dessert, Girlet got a custard tart and cherries. Notice the teeth mark on the tart? Girlet couldn't resist having a taste first. It ended up as a Hello Kitty day with all Hello Kitty boxes, sauce container, wet cloth, cutleries and bag.

Bento # 14 and # 15 - quick bentos

I usually plan girlet's bentos around the carbohydrate - rice, riceball/onigiri, noodles, pasta and bread - and try not to duplicate the carb within the week for variety sake. But due to popular demand, the egg mayo sandwich made another appearance this week. This time used different cutters - butterfly, flower and Hello Kitty. Threw in some grapes, cream cheese and a mini pack of biscuit (not shown), it took only 20 minutes to make, and that involved waiting for girlet to slowly mash up the egg. Girlet, you can have this whenever you want.
Friday mornings are a busy time because babylet has her Shichida classes in Bandar Utama. So needed another quick-to-pack bento. Just heated up the frozen leftover noodles and charsiew, leftover egg, ham and spinach pinwheel, and edamame and left to cool, during which I sent boylet to his nursery. Then as I packed the cooled food into the bento box, enlisted girlet to punch star shapes on nori. You can tell from the number of stars punched that she enjoyed the task. Babylet also enjoyed her task of munching on the leftover nori. Added custard swiss roll and sliced apple (dipped in salted water), this bento took less than 15 minutes to assemble. All that was required was a little planning at night.
Most importantly, girlet finished up the food in both bentos, which to me is the actual measure of success.

Bento # 6 - lion head noodles

This was my first attempt at making lion head, last month. Saw it in Bento Corner. Was in a rush and forgot about the whiskers. Also didn't have the animal face puncher yet, and the animal mouth that I cut freehand turned out so cacat, decided to make a smiling mouth instead.

Contents : Leftover wonton noodles, boiled wonton, fried wonton, edamame on picks, a boy fishball, tomato ketchup in Hello Kitty container and grapes.

Girlet loved this and requested to the same everytime I packed noodles for her. The lion's face can be made from eggs or hanpen fishcake. In this bento, I used cheese but now think the blend of tastes might be strange. A cute friend thought that the edamame was petai..... haha. If I packed petai, I think the girlet will run a mile away.