Prawn and crabstick pasta bento

Little girl demands a surprise everyday (she will get it only if she behaved well in school or other classes).  WhenI fetched her after her mental math class this morning,  this was what she told me: "I know what is my surprise, it's BENTO!"  She enjoyed having bento very much now, glad to see her little cheerful face too!

At the top were little girl's favorites, sliced nectarines and some apple and heart shaped chincao jelly.

I made little girl pasta today, she had selected the flower shaped pasta and Prego's cheese and herbs sauce.  Added some prawns, crabsticks and mushrooms to the sauce.  Next to it, there were 2 fish balls and some cherry tomatoes.

"Why the tomatoes are not in heart shaped, mummy?  I don want this."  Hence, she downed everything and left the tomatoes untouched.

The 'crazi berry' yogurt drink was a little treat to her, she couldn't finished it after eating the bento, thus I tricked her to play "scissor, paper, stone", the loser would have a sip of the drink.  We were playing quite loudly til some of her little friends came over to check out this commotion  ;)

At last it was empty too! 

Hubby offered to take the photos today, below are 2 more taken.  Thanks, darling!

Cheddar flavored popcorns

Went to Midvalley on Wed to get some groceries, found this Popcorn Seasoning at Cold Storage.  They have 3 flavors, Butter, Light Cheddar also Parmesan and Garlic.  I took the Light Cheddar, thought it would be safe as little girl like cheese.

Decided to try out at Thu for little girl's after school snack.  Here are the steps I cooked the popcorns, very simple:

1. Mixed a bit butter with oil in a pot

2. Threw in the corns after butter was melted 

3. Covered the pot immediately once the corns started popping 

4. When the popping sound was beginning to silence out, turned the heat off 

5. Sprinkled the cheddar seasoning over the popcorns 

6. Tossed them lightly until it coated on all the popcorns

Here was the end result, in 2 little buckets.  The taste?  Yummy, for me! As for little girl, she don really like it at the beginning, after munching more, she said it tasted ok.

Cold soba bento on 24 July 2008

Little girl loves cold soba.  Decided to include it in her bento since there is a pack of soba in cabinet. Cooked the soba and sauce last night, let them stayed cold in the fridge.  Hence, it was an easy morning for me, no rushing at all.

I bought her this Mickey and friends bento box last week at 100 yen shop.  The contains of the box were (from left): octopus and crab sausages with mask, soba with little bow shaped nori, tomatoes, broccoli, baby corns and a few drops of mayo.

On the right top was the jelly and iced grapes, and below was the soba sauce with lots of spring onions.

"Mummy, I don like this pink sausages!" and she started feeding me the 2 little sausages.  As for the rest, all went into her little tummy happily!

Fruit enzymes

My family is crazy with fruit enzymes lately.  After sampling the pineapple enzyme from neighbor at our Mother's day get-together, we started to do all kind of fruit enzymes ourselves too.

We started with the traditional way, which is layers of fruit, lemon, and sugar.  At the first attempt, we tried pineapple enzyme and star fruit enzyme.  We waited impatiently, made another batch of soursop and kiwi fruit enzyme, also the ginger and lemon-grass enzyme during the long waiting period.  

At last, after a long wait of 3 weeks, the first batch was ready to "harvest", the pineapple enzyme was marvelous but the star fruit was a bit bitter.  There was a strong alcohol taste in soursop and kiwi fruit enzyme, whereas ginger lemon-grass enzyme would triggle a loud burp after drinking it!  

Here is a sample on how I made the pineapple enzyme: 3 pineapples, 3 lemons and about 800g rocksugar.

Here is how it looks after placing them in layers: pineapples, lemons, rocksugar then repeat.

This is a 3 days old enzyme, full of liquid and bubbles.

These traditionally made enzymes are very sweet, we usually dilute it with water or ice, but it does not taste like sparkling juice after the diluting.

Due to the lack of bubbles, and we really tired of the long wait, sister-in-law bought a special enzyme bucket from neighbor, it only required 4 days to get the enzyme done and tasted just like sparkling juice!

This is the look of the bucket, and I was making dragon fruit enzyme with it.

Dragon fruit enzyme is our favorite and we had consumed 3 buckets already (about 7 liters each bucket)!

Carrot

This was a little conversation during lunch on Friday:

mummy: Baby, do u like carrot?
little girl: No! Not nice!
mummy: Then, do u like flower carrots? (I made for her at the bento previous day)
little girl: Yes! I like it, nice!
mummy: ....

Garden Bento on 17 July 2008

Been thinking of this theme since Sunday after realizing little girl likes broccoli.

Top: cherry, grapes and heart shaped cincao jelly with honey.

Bottom:

Background  - fried meehoon (or rice noodle)

Sun                - fried quail egg

2 flying birds - mushrooms

Butterfly        - cherry tomato and crabstick

Flowers          - carrots

Bushes           - broccoli

Little girl liked it, attacked it one by one.  Firstly the birds, then flowers (She dislike carrots but she ate all without any complains today!).  

Then she ate the egg white, placed the yolk back, and told me "It is night time now, mummy, the moon is out!"

I tested her on the ingredient of each thing she ate and she able to tell me all correctly.  It is a fun game while eating too.

She left me the cherry, a bit of the fried meehoon, and broccoli.  She finished most of it, happy!!!

Bento competition

Came across Bento Pet's blog site when I tried to look see some bento ideas, it is hosting a bento competition!  I had submitted  a few pictures, do u think I stand a chance?  :b

柚子茶 / Grapefruit tea

I like 柚子茶 very much, however, those selling at supermarket (mostly imported from Korea) are very expensive, among RM20 - RM40.  Though it was in a big bottle, I still find it painful to pull out that amount of money from wallet.

I was searching for some recipes at the web one day, and found this recipe it.  Bought 2 grapefruits to try out the recipe.

I skinned the zest, sliced it thinly, peeled all the fresh.  Melted a packet of rock sugar with a bit of water, then threw in all of the fruit and zest.

It looked like this once cooked, delicious!  Tasted as good as bought.  I spent less than RM10 for all!

Children Idol Competition

There is a "Children Idol" competition at little girl's school, I never think of enrolling her but on the day of the competition, little girl insisted that she wanna go for it.  I questioned her on what she would perform, she said she would sing and she would sing the song she just learned from teacher - "茉莉花". She started practicing to me, I gave her a few suggestions like sing with some actions to made the song interesting, sing it loud so that everybody may hear it and sing with smile.  She thought of the movements herself and kept on practicing until she reached school.

The competition was canceled due to HFM disease, however, the children able to perform in their own classes.  Little girl's teacher commented that she performed very well, sing out loud and smiled thru out the performance.

Trying to post her song up but there was a problem with this site, thus will try again next time, to let u comment on her singing too.

Flowers bento on 10 July 2008

It is a simple bento today.

On top:  A garden of pear and slightly salted cucumber.

Bottom:  bacon wrapped with long beans and rice stuffed in squid.

Little girl liked this bento very much cos all of the ingredients are her favorites.  She left only 1 bacon wrap and 1 slice of the squid rice.

Zip-up your mouth

There was a night, tried to make little girl sleep, but she kept on talking and asking questions.  I told her "Girl!  Can you please zip your mouth and go to sleep now?"  On hearing this, she started giggling non-stop and said "Mummy!  I cannot zip my mouth, I don't have a zipper at my mouth!"  and giggled more. Does this make you laugh too?

Kitty bento on 3 July 2008

Today's bento:  Fried udon with prawns, sunflower sausage and quail egg and longans.

The moment little girl opened it up, "Eh!  A cat!", actually it is kitty-lah, dear.  Made the kitty with micro-waved egg sheet (which was a failure as it turned out hard like card board!) and seaweed for its whiskers, eyes and nose.

Little girl likes the udon, but couldn't finish all, left half of it for dinner.  She ate 1 of the sunflower, left 1 for dinner and shared the other with yong.

Mummy felt a bit shy when little girl's teachers saw her bento, all of them went "Wah!  so cute!".  Some of them asking how to make the sunflower.  And even 1 teacher came over to tell little girl that "You are a lucky girl!"