Bento Corner

Mouse Bento

Last night I thought about making pancake sandwiches for bento next day. This was a grand idea, as the girl loves pancakes, but I needed to make them before heading to bed which was not such a great idea since I was so tired last night. So I scratched that idea and just decided to use mini-corndogs from the freezer and went to bed.

But for some reason I got up this morning, feeling energized (in rare form!) and made the banana pancakes this morning despite my tiredness last night. While kids ate fresh pancakes I made the mouse with a pancake sandwich face (cream cheese and blueberry jam spread), cut the corn dog in half to make the ears (notice part of blueberry jam on the edge of the left ear), secured nori parts with cream cheese and voila!

Ketchup in the red apple container with broccoli and extra corn dogs on the side. My daughter looked at the ketchup container and said she would rather have more broccoli than wasting her time trying to open the red container.

Ask and ye shall receive (so long as it's not too time consuming nor expensive):

Plain Bento

The upper kinder class had an open observation day where parents were invited to play New Year's Day games with the kids. New Year's games include spinning a top by wrapping a small rope around the bottom of the top and then throwing the string to get the top to spin (it's pretty tricky this way!), flying a kite, karuta, hanetsuki, sugoroku,and making a taketombo. Since this was an all day event for both kids and their parents, I made a plain bento for the girl since I didn't want to be embarrassed by being "that parent who makes cute lunches for her child".

Plain bento includes one onigiri with seaweed wakame mix and the other is umeboshi. There's also tamagoyaki with imitation crab, broccoli and wakame salad, and mini-katsu on a stick.

My son and I also enjoyed bento too:

Our bento is basically the same contents but we had the wakame onigiri and onigiri mixed with hijiki and added takuan (pickled daikon).

Crabby Bento

Two mini pork buns made to look like ... crabs -- can you see it? It was pretty tight to squeeze in all the leg parts and I think it would have been easier with one big pork bun set sideways instead of length-wise inside the box. Nonetheless is took a bit of time for the girl to figure it out but she eventually got it after looking at it for awhile.

Eyes are made of cheese and nori. Legs are of apples and mini-sausages. The only thing is that this bento is lacking in vegetables. I did add a side container of fruit -- which I've been doing with all the bentos, but I just don't post pictures.

This bento was actually eaten at home since I didn't realize that kinder let out early and lunch was not needed. The girl ate everything but didn't like the cheese eyes -- she is not a huge fan of cheese unless it's the yellow American processed cheese.

3 Little Pigs Bento

Bento of 3 little pigs.

My daughter has got some aversion to pigs and I have no idea why. The last time I made a pig bento she protested and  this time she caught me while I was packing the bento and said, "I don't like pigs, mama. They are not cute! Put the cats in the bento!" 

What. Did. She. Just. SAY?!?!?!? 

It is at times like this when my patience as a parent is seriously tested.  

I paused for a moment in a bit of shock and fluster. I explained that the pigs are indeed cute and not to worry since she would quickly eat them up anyway and continued to pack the bento despite the protest.

But seriously, can anyone clue me in on this phenomenon about kids and pigs? I must have missed this memo...

Pigs are mixed with sakura denbu to get the pink color. Bento also includes kabocha (pumpkin) mashed with butter and sugar (also got a bit of flack for this from the girl), tamagoyaki with imitation crab, shumai with sliced cheese on top and edamame and corn picks.

When the girl came home she had finished everything and said that even the kabocha mash tasted good.

Triumph.