A Prayer for Baby Amelia

This is my niece Amelia born prematurely at 24 weeks 3 days. I'm thankful that she's receiving the best medical care in USA, and thank God that all her major organs are fine. Pray that she continues to do well, and ask everyone to pray along.

Look at that tiny foot!!

We love you, sweetie, and look forward to seeing you end of this year. Hopefully all round and plump by then.

I WON!! Thank you Javapot!!

Thanks Javapot for a fun challenge, and thanks to all who voted for me. While I didn't get the highest votes, a big thanks goes to Master Prince who gave me a good placing in the lucky draw, thus putting me in the first place in the challenge, as seen here.

Javapot was very efficient and personally hand delivered the prize right after posting the results on her blog. Here are the lovely prizes, pix taken from Javapot's blog.

I just love this bento set by Thermos. My first 'keep warm' set.
Many cute accessories, which got the kids very excited and happy.

And here are all the bento entries.

Edit: 4 months later - I found this languishing in the draft section, waiting for the pix. Am backdating this post, just to complete the blog. Yeah, I'm anal that way.

VOTE FOR ME - Javapot's Bento Challenge

This was my entry for Javapot's very interesting Bento Challenge - a self-descriptive bento for myself. I found this tough and scratched my head for 2 weeks before the dateline forced me into action. Nothing like a burst of adrenaline to get the creative juices flowing.

The bottom tier consisted of my all time favourite food, nasi lemak, which I moulded into a face, with sambal in the middle. I added nori details to represent yours truly. The hairstyle is something that I have been sporting my whole life, with bangs, to cover my wide forehead *_*.

Japanese and Korean food are my other favourites, represented by inarizushi topped with ebbiko and seaweed, and kimchi. Also can't live without meat, and wasn't impressed that I couldn't fit in more than 1 piece of chicken into this small box. This was how the bento looked like without embellishments.

Unfortunately I am currently trying to lose post baby weight - the question "how many months pregnant are you?" by complete strangers is getting to me!!! I am now more likely to be eating salad for lunch, as depicted in the top tier. The salad consisted of lettuce, red / yellow cherry tomatoes, raw carrots and pine nuts (another fav). Would have added capsicum if I had planned better and restocked the fridge. For the dressing, I used Sesame Seed dressing from Jusco, which was recommended by Bentopet. Thanks! It's super yummy.

Being a SAHM, my whole life revolves around my 3 kids, which I blogged about here. Hence this bento couldn't be complete without their presence. The three figures were cut out of fishcake (for faces, arms and wings). I hope everyone noticed that I even varied the sizes of the figures to match their real life sizes. I added some colour with kanikama (imitation crabstick) for the girls' dresses and eggsheet for the the boy's shirt. Fortunately, I called them angels. I had initially wanted to call them little monkeys, but didn't want to be 3lilmonkeys myself... hehe ..... otherwise would have ended up figuring how to make monkeys for this bento.

I also added some fun pasta shapes, with three types of flower pastas, and three figures, 1 boy and 2 girls, again for the 3 kiddos. Those who had been frequenting my blog would know that I'm a 'collector' of fun pasta. In fact, in my cupboard now, I have about 20 packs of pasta sourced from as far as Australia and USA. I admit to going a bit crazy there *_*. But am still buying whenever I come across new pasta shapes *incorrigible grin*.

The time taken to complete this bento is about 1 hour. I usually take 15 - 30 minutes, but for the purpose of this challenge, of course had to put in more effort and time *_*. The pasta was an afterthought, as was frying up the egg sheet for the boy's shirt, all adding to the prep time.

Thanks Heaps, Javapot, for organising this fun challenge and including me in the event. And everybody else, please go vote for me (No. 11) now at this link. Polls closes at 5pm (Malaysian time) on Wednesday, 22 April 2009. Thanks!!

And you can view all the other very beautiful shortlisted bentos here. Happy Bento-ing!!!

Bentos # 131 - 133

I made more bentos than I expected in Feb since I'm still unearthing unposted pics. How do I know these bentos were from Feb? Well.... each pic has a clue. Let's see who can guess the answer. *_*

Bento # 131 - Two sleepy brown bears made of ricepot chicken rice, with bite size chicken thigh meat stuffed inside. This was an easy bento. Skewered the grapes with picks, cut some sweet peas at an angle, and placed the fishball and strawberry as they were in the box. Had some place, so added in a piece of chicken for more protein. All in took less than 20 mins.

Bento #132 was even easier - fried rice with carrots, frenchbeans and egg, with two pieces of sweet n sour pork - all leftovers from previous night. Thought it was too plain, so made a mandarin orange man, surrounded with grapes. Fifteen mins including steaming time.

For Bento # 133, I attempted a flower garden again. This time white rice was moulded into a flower, with the side dish of sweet n sour fishcake in a tulip cup, and leaves from sweet snap peas. Added egg sheet flower and grapes for colour, and also to fill up the gaps. I believe this didn't take more than 20 mins, though I wish I could be faster with easy bentos like this.

(A hint : ChooiPeng's customers may find it easier to guess) *_*

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

More backdated bentos #123 - 125

Can't believe it's already April. I'm getting quite desperate to finish posting on Feb's stuff.

On a good note, I started my exercise program and had lost 1 kg in two weeks. Another 1 kg to go to pre-Christmas/CNY binge and then 3kg to pre-Babylet weight. I've given up trying to get to pre-babies /wedding weight. *_*

Bento #123 - Bear onigiri with lunch sheet cutouts, sausage, kanikama (artificial crabstick) & edamame, green grapes & strawberries.
Bento # 124 - contained chinese style inarizushi - aburaage stuffed with rice and charsiew (just making use of leftovers). While all four have the same contents, for visual interest, I covered some charsiew cutups with rice and top with stars (from orange lunchsheets). Also had stuffed chikuwa (tube shape fishcake) with baby asparagus, lunchsheet flowers and strawberries. Bento # 125 - Dog onigiri with lunchsheet feature, chick (moulded quail egg), stewed soy sauce drumnets, watermelon and grapes, with a dog fork pick (you can get this at 100 yen shop -Tmn Desa & Kuchai- for RM4.90).

GIVEAWAY - by Maisie Eats Bento

Lisa, in conjunction with her 100th bento for daughter, Maisie, is giving away this fantastic set of bento things. So hop over here for more details of the giveaway.