Simple Easter themed bentos that I made for the girl last week…
#36: Easter Rabbit
Snack box: Rabbit shaped nutella sandwich, grapes and blackberries.
Lunchbox: Roti Prata with Egg and blackberries
Time to prepare: <15mins
#37: Easter Chick
Snack box: Chick shaped cheese sandwich, kiwi and blackberries.
Lunch box: Egg and Ham pinwheel sandwich, grapes, blackberries and mandarin orange.
Time to prepare: <15mins
This morning as I was packing the glutinous sticky rice lunch for the family, I casually told the girl that I will be making sandwich lunch for her instead because I was worried that the Chinese sticky rice kind of smells and may cause her embarrassment or make her a target of teasing at lunch. Upon hearing what I said, she told me,”Mama, It’s ok for people to say whatever they want to. I love sticky rice and I do not think it smells. If anyone says anything about my food smells, I will tell them that my food smells good and it is nutritious and very yummy and that they are just being rude.” Wah…. U can’t imagine how happy I was and how proud I am of my daughter! Seriously, i never expected those words from her!
I never mentioned it before here, but since beginning of the school year, my little second grader has been a target of bully at school. A girl from school always give her unexpected hostile or mean treatment. There are many instances where the girl just walked up to my daughter with a very crossed look (when my daughter did not do anything to/with her) and said to her something along the line “I’m so angry with you now but I don’t know why. Go away. ” And of course, my sensitive girl who sees friendship as a very important part of her life, would often come home crying about it.
We have been working with the teachers and also taking the opportunity to teach the girl how to deal with such kind of situations. For a while, the bullying did stop but these few weeks, we started to hear stories about that girl, passing teasing remarks about my daughter’s bento smells at lunch time. Like the recent case, she complained about my girl’s lunch smells when all my girl had was just plain chicken nuggets with fruits. -_-” Sigh.
As we know, kids typically don’t discover their self-identity until much older, they would simply want to blend in with groups, well… my daughter is no different too. Because of that, I try to make a conscious effort in packing food that do not smell too strong so that she will not be teased at lunch time. I also try to encourage my girl to be more confident in speaking up for what she believes.
That’s why when she said those things to me this morning, I feel so happy and proud of her because she has finally learn to stand up for herself! 
Ah… Just by typing this post, I feel so good again. Maybe I should go and look at the recipes in “MyDish” and find something to bake for her tomorrow! 
Today is Dr. Seuss’ Birthday, the girl requested a special Dr. Seuss’ snack box, so I made this simple “The Lorax” bento for her.
Content: Cream Cheese and Strawberry Jam sandwich, Grapes
This bento only took me less than 15mins to make. The sandwich is just plain old strawberry cream cheese sandwich. I used two toned american cheese for the lorax cutout and applied more cream cheese to “glue” it to the sandwich. Since I don’t have any other materials (except the grapes) that I could use to make the pretty truffula trees, I added some flowers (using Picnik software) around the border of this bento.
Now this bento look more “The Lorax”-like, right?
Woo hoo!! I just realized that I can actually use some of my old craft ideas on my bento too!! This is such a great time saver for a lazy person like me who do not like to plan ahead of time.
#32: Froggy Love! Idea from thumb print froggy craft (I really love how happy those froggies looked!! )
Content: Cream cheese & Ham sandwich with Strawberries
Time used to make this bento: <15mins
#33: Heart-y Mice! Idea from the Heart-y Animals (2010) craft
Content: Cream cheese & Ham sandwich with Strawberries
Time used to make this bento: <15mins
When laziness strikes, this is kind of bento I would pack for the man…
Egg and Ham sandwich with fruits.
Because the man doesn’t like his sandwich to turn too soggy at lunch, I always pack his bread separately in another box. He will assemble his own sandwich when he is ready to eat them.
Since this morning the kids were really cooperative by finishing their breakfast early, they get to draw something on the hard boiled eggs for their daddy. The boy drew a smiley face and a heart and the girl drew a flower. Hopefully the man felt our love for him when he had his bento lunch today.
As for the girl’s bento… Since Friday is “get Pizza lunch from school” day for the girl, I just packed a simple snack box for her.
Content: Strawberries, Raspberries, Blackberries and a fortune cookie (to give her some luck with her friend who has been very difficult with her lately … Sigh.) and an origami heart lunch box note.
To cheer her up, this is the note I wrote for her to read at snack time…
I’m pretty sure this note will help lighten up her mood when she gets to read it later! 
Here are two thanksgiving themed lunch and snack boxes that I made for the girl.
#28: Gobble, gobble, gobble!
I made this strawberry & ham sandwich turkey with slices of kiwi fruits snack for the girl last Friday. The sandwich design comes from “Cute Food for Kids“. This is really easy to create, using very few tools and ingredients.
#29: Count our blessings.
The turkeys are made of quail eggs and pieces of carrot and celery strips. They were all last min creation that I made this morning. I wish i had planned a head and had enough time to trim the carrot and celery to correct proportion, these turkeys look like they are malnourished with those fans! LOL.
—
For the past few months, we have been talking to the kids about counting our blessings. We hope the kids (and ourselves too!) learn to be more grateful and appreciative of the people and things around us, learn to embrace a less-is-more philosophy and continue to develop empathy and gain a better appreciation of other people’s needs. This is year I especially want to focus on what is special about our lives that we often take for granted and try to count my blessings at a more regular basis.
I’m ending this post with a few quotes that I like…
“Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” ~ Bob Talbert
“Life holds so many simple blessings, each day bringing its own individual wonder.” ~ John McLeod
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. ” ~ Willie Nelson
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Angry Birds, the popular mobile game, has taken the world by storm. I must be “IN” too to make Angry Birds themed bentos, just like the other bento moms did. LOL.
Content: Babybel Cheese Angry Bird, strawberries and grapes.
The angry bird in this snack box is made using Babybel Cheese. I saw the design from Cute Food For Kids. What I like about this design is that it uses very few ingredients and takes less than 5mins to create the bird. The babybel cheese is very easy to work with and with just some imagination, u can transform the babybel cheese into anything! But too bad, the girl isn’t very fond of the taste of this cheese, so I don’t think I will be getting any more. 
Content :
Top : Cream cheese sandwich in White Angry bird design, grapes and blueberries
Bottom : Cream cheese sandwich, half hard boiled egg, grapes
For the white Angry bird, I created it using American White Cheese, nori and dried mango strips.
The bentos that I made for the girl for the past two weeks were all Halloween or Autumn themed. I remember taking photo of all of them but I could only find these two in the folder.
Anyway…
Here’s the lunch and snack box that I made for the girl yesterday.
Both lunch and snack boxes are identical. We have simple egg omelette sandwich, orange slices and apples. I’m happy with how the carved apples turned out. The carving was done with just a carving knife without any templates. Ya, I’m quite proud of myself! LOL
These supposed to be “Mummies” bento. Some friends of the girl said they looked like “ninja”!! LOL
Content of the lunch and snack box:
Cheese and strawberry jam sandwich, orange slices, grapes.
For moms who are into packing lunchnotes for your kids like me, here are some links to Halloween jokes that you can use!
Squigly’s Jokes & Riddles for Kids (LINK)
Halloween Jokes from Kaboose (LINK)
I know I have been away from blogging for way too long! It is as if this blog was on hiatus! LOL.
Honestly, when I try to think of why I’ve been away from blogging for so long, I don’t really have a good reason. At first, it was due to my laziness (what’s new?) but as I procastinate more and more, I suddenly lost the inspiration and motivation to blog! I’m not sure if I am suffering from “blog burnout” or I have finally lost interest in blogging (*gasp*), but since I *still* love my blog, I’m going to give myself and this blog another chance.
So, here I am! A short post about the bento that I made for my little second grader on her first day of school, early September this year.
For my long time readers (if you are still around!), you would know that my girl has some kind of insecurity issues since young. She was a little nervous about the first day of school and so to welcome a new school year and calm her anxiety, I made her a special snack and lunch boxes (see below) and wrote her a little lunchbox note.
Snack box (top) : hard boiled egg (half), slices of oranges, Cheese and Ham sandwich
Lunch box (btm): Baked terriyaki chicken, broccoli florets with rice and slices of orange
And of course, she had a great start of the new school year and is totally enjoying school now!
We love pasta. All kinds of pasta. If I run out of ideas to cook for the family or running out of time, I would usually just cook simple pasta dish like this fried Angel Hair pasta with beef and peas and carrots. It is so easy that it only took me less than 30mins to cook, assemble and pack into all our lunch bags.
Do you see some patterns imprinted on the bun? My friend, LilyAnette, gave me some baking tools a few weeks ago and one of them is the fondant mould. After filling and shaping the dough of the buns, I pressed the mould with some pressure onto the buns to create the patterns. It was really fun, easy and make the buns look more interesting, don’t you think?
Contents:
Lunch bento : stir-fry angel hair pasta
Snack bento: homemade bean paste bun and apple.
Total time used : 30mins
by Ange (Earthember)
