3 Colors Maki Bento (216)

Waked up 1/2 an hour earlier than usual, to prepare this bento in fast forward x 2 speed, then rushed over to mum's place with little girl to take care of the 2 nephews as mum & dad went to Hainan Island, whereas bro & SIL left to work.

I was still sleepy (slept late again last nite) & too lazy to use the stove, thus dig out those handy ingredients in the fridge to help prepare this bento.  Surprisingly the maki was rolled within 20 minutes, with no failure at all, rushing & speedy may have thing works sometimes :p

3 colors maki which r combination of cucumber, ham and cheese, 3 grape tomatoes and some cucumber sticks

Note of the day with Poke Ball

It is a holiday here 2moro, thus there won't be any bento posting, we r heading down to Seremban later, so Happy Wesak Day!

Read from the newspaper that Gordon Ramsay will be cooking a vegetarian meal for our PM, for those who wanna try his cooking or check him out, don forget to visit Buddhist Maha Vihara in KL, happy Wesak day!

Food from Night Market Bento (215)

All the food were bought from SS3 night market last nite.  I just reheat & packed into box this morning, ready in 5 minutes.

From top: loh mai kai, little girl's favorite lobster & cheese balls and some cucumber slices

Note of the day with Luvdisc from Pokemon

Baked Cheesy Alphabets Pasta & Broccoli Bento (214)

Don know what to cook for little girl, simply put together the cooked alphabets pasta & broccoli, mixed with some carbonara sauce, top with some cheddar & mozzarella cheese, bake for 10 minutes and wo-lah... got the bento & lunch ready.

Everything was completed in about 20 minutes.

2 chicken nuggets, a bowl of baked cheesy alphabets pasta with broccoli and some cubed pear

Note of the day with Marill from Pokemon

Hokkien Style Fried Udon Bento (213)

Waked up with an extremely tired and aching body this morning, as it was Ashtanga week last week, our teacher wanna us workout on it too yesterday in the yoga class.  If u r interested to see the poses, u may check out this video, we practiced on most of the basic poses:

After the class yesterday, my arms turned so weak til I could hardly raise them up, and my legs were like jelly, need to practice more loh.... :p

Back to bentoing, though waking up tire, but still need to cook and prepare bento, thus simply stir-fried this Hokkien style fried udon.  Bento & lunch were ready in about 1/2 hour.

Hokkien style fried udon garnished with shredded lettuce and 3 slices of orange

Note of the day with Dewgong from Pokemon

Nestum Cake & Sausage Rolls Bento (212)

Little girl said she wanna have the nestum cake for her bento snack, well, that make my life easy & turn me lazy, thus just halved 2 pieces of the cake, rolled 2 cheese cocktails with lettuce & seaweed, cut some watermelon, and done.

Took less than 10 minutes to get this bento ready.

4 small pieces of nestum cake, 4 sausage rolls, some watermelon cubes and 2 marshmallows

Note of the day with Phanpy from Pokemon

Lastly, showing u the art homework drew by little girl, with the theme 'sea creatures':

Nestum Family Cake

Plan to visit a friend 2moro, as I don wanna go there empty handed, plan to bake her something.  Then I remember having a tiny bag of Nestum cereal left in the pantry, as I'd started on eating oat cereal for breakfast now, I better use the nestum for some baking, and ta da... found the recipe here.

Ingredients

240g butter
200g sugar (cut it to 150g only)
1 tbsp honey
4 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
200g flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
50g Nestum cereal

For topping (optional, I didn't add in as the Nestum cereal I had was just enough for the cake)

1 tbsp almond flakes
1 tbsp Nestum cereal

1. Beat butter, sugar and honey til creamy and pale
2. Mix flour, salt, nestum and baking powder together.  Add into creamed mixture alternately with the milk
3. Beat til smooth
4. Greased a 9" cake tin (I used 2 loaf tin), pour batter into it and sprinkle almond flakes and nestum over the top and bake in preheated oven at 180C for 45 mins or til cake is done when toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool and serve.

Very buttery, fragrant and moist cake

Little girl loves this cake, ate 2 pieces b4 dinner and kept begging for 1 right after dinner!

And so, Meng Yeng, this cake will b yours 2moro :p

Hainanese Chicken Rice Bento (211)

Cooked the chicken rice with my simplify method, u may check out the recipe here.  Took about an hour to cook the chicken rice (the rice cooker worked on this part), whereas the bento took only about 10 minutes.

5 Hainanese chicken rice balls, some de-boned chicken, cucumber slices and 2 grape tomatoes

Note of the day with Violetchi from Tamagotchi

Bentuk-bentuk (Shapes) Bento (210)

Little girl is going to sit her BM paper today, a language paper that she is not confident with.  We did plenty of revisions together over the weekend to get her prepared, hope she will do fine in the exam.

I thot of the theme of this bento last nite, as I plan to make her salmon onigiri using the triangle rice mold I had, and with the rest of the food I bought from the night market.

Used about 15 minutes to complete the bento.

When I took the pic of the bento, I wanna little girl to tell me the shapes in BM again:

Top - bulat, cheese fish ball

Bottom: bujur, lobster ball

Segi tiga, salmon onigiri

Segi empat tepat, steamed cake

Segi empat sama - grass jelly

Note of the day with Pichu from Pokemon

(Forgot to snap a pic of the note today, cropped it from the 1st pic)

Alphabets Pasta Bento (209)

Gave little girl a choice of onigiri and pasta for her bento, she chose pasta with miso, ok, made her this alphabets pasta salad mixed with chopped cucumber, ham and 1/2 tsp of miso paste.

Bento completed in 15 minutes.

Alphabets pasta salad, guava with diced sour plum and grass jelly flowers

Note of the day

Cat's Ear Noodle 貓耳朵 Bento (208)

I kept a small dough from the pan mee I cooked last Sat, for little girl's lunch and the bento today.  This morning, instead of making the usual flat & thin pieces of pan mee, I rolled tiny balls and pressed the balls with my thumb to form 'cat's ear', which resemble a kind of noodle - maoerduo 貓耳朵 in Beijing or the Orecchiette pasta of Italy.

The cooked cat's ear noodles r mixed with a dash of oyster sauce, soy sauce and garlic oil.  Bento was ready within 1/2 hour.

Cat's ear noodles on a bed of blanched Sabah potato leaves, 3 quail eggs with chick's expression, 2 fish ball and 5 pieces of watermelon

Note of the day

As the school is celebrating teacher's day today, little girl took a small bag to school for the 1st time, see:

Only the homework needed to pass-up, pencil box, color pencils, the bento, water tumbler and the gifts to teachers in the bag

Boy, how I wish little girl able to bring such a small bag to school everyday... really pity the kids in Malaysia, sigh....

3 Colors Milk Tea 三色奶茶 & Something to Teachers

Little girl has been busy doing her revisions for the past 2 days.   I let her studied & did her workbooks on Moral and Chinese Maths subjects on Sat.  As for the relaxing part, I let her had a bit of cartoons in between, cooked her the favorite Pan Mee and she got to enjoy the spa bath again after a hectic day.

As for Sun, let her studied on Malay & Chinese Science subjects, she is slightly better with the Malay this time, both of us were not struggling too much this round, phew!  I made her this drink to cheer her up - the 3 colors milk tea with grass jelly.

Able to see the 3 colors clearly b4 stirring

Ingredients (all rough estimate only, as I didn't measure the ingredients)
100ml hot tea
50ml cold milk
1 tbsp gula Melaka syrup
2 tbsp grass jelly, chopped
lot of ice cubes

1. Pour gula Melaka syrup to a tall glass
2. Scoop in lot of ice cubes and chopped grass jelly into the glass
3. Gently & slowly pour in cold milk, then follow with the tea.  Serve
4. Stir before drinking

The usual looking ice milk tea with grass jelly

In between of the revision, little girl decided to make her teachers something as the school is going to celebrate Teacher's day on Mon.

She made 5 of these for each of the teachers who teach her

For the form teacher who teaches her Chinese, English Math, Chinese Math, English Science and Moral subjects

For the teacher who teaches Chinese Science 

For her Malay and PE subject teacher

For her English, Music and Art class teacher

Lastly, for the computer class teacher

After all her revisions, I was feeling a bit relief, hope she'll do fine for the exams in next 3 days.

Nugget & Lettuce Stuffed Mantou Bento (207)

Little girl requested chicken nuggets for bento last nite, I told her I would make her nugget burger with mantou and she was thrilled to hear that.

In the morning, while I get the 2 mantou steamed in the rice cooker and 3 chicken nuggets toasted in the toaster oven, I shredded the lettuce thinly.  It is pretty easy to prepare the mantou burger, just halve the mantou and nugget, cut an opening at the halved mantou but not to cut it thru, stuffed halved nugget, shredded lettuce and squeeze in the mayo.

Bento was ready in about 20 minutes, inclusive of steaming and toasting time.

After breakfast, little girl was busy doing her mental arithmetic exercises and I was preparing questions for her revision (to get her ready for the exam coming next week), I had totally forgotten the time and gotta rush out from home in order to send her to school in time.  Don worry, I did feed her lunch b4 we were rushing out :p

Shanghai Veggie Rice

I had seen the recipe at Carol's but I didn't follow it, just playing with the ingredients I had on hand.

Ingredients
1 cup rice & pearl barley
enough water to cook rice according to the rice cooker suggestion
5 stalks pak choys, chopped
1 handful char siew, chopped
1 shallot, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced

Seasoning
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
a dash fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
50ml chicken stock

1. Put enough water into rice & pearl barley, cook in rice cooker
2. Loosen the rice when it is cooked, set aside
3. Heat pan with a bit of oil, lightly fry shallot and garlic til fragrant
4. Put in char siew, stir fry til fragrant
5. Put in chopped pak choy, stir fry til soft
6. Add in seasonings, sauteed for a minute
7. Stir in cooked rice, mix it evenly with veggie mixture, cover the lid, heat for 2 - 3 minutes.  Serve.

As I am having yoga class at 8pm tonite, it was advisable not to eat (heavily til full) 2 hours before it, thus I gotta have a heavy lunch in order to last me til 9.30pm.  The rice, egg & some chili belacan are good to last me til the class over :)

This rice is easy to cook and still tasty when eating cold, it is ideal to pack into bento as well.

Flower Plant Bento (206)

Oops... waked up an hour late than usual today, gotta fast forward x 2 this morning.... :p

I decided on cooking this Shanghai veggie rice (recipe will be updated on next posting) last nite and had visualized the making of the bento b4 I slept.  My rice cooker need 50 minutes to cook the rice, thus I used the time to chopped the pak choy, char siew, shallots and garlics, also, cut the sausages, shaped and fried it with the quail eggs.

The time used for the bento took not more than 1 1/2 hour.

Background - Shanghai style veggie rice

Flower plant - sausage & quail egg (flower), cucumbers (for stem, leaves and grass)

Fruit - plum marinated with sour plum bits

Note of the day with Mocha

I am submitting this to the BOMB for May.

Food from Pasar Malam & Grandma Bento (205)

Let little girl tried out this reddish fried lobster balls last Tue (bought from SS3 nite market), she loves it so much that she wanna 2 sticks with 6 balls this Tue, ate a stick on the journey home (after school) and kept the other for the bento.

I bought the veggie gao zhi 餃子 from the same night market as little girl likes the skin very much.  The wantons were fried by mum last nite, kept a few for the bento.  Thus, u may imagine how much time I used in the bento since they r none cooking involved at all :p

2 fried lobster balls, 3 fried wantons, 1 gao zhi, a few cucumber slices and some ketchup & mayo in the container

Note of the day with Chiffon

Lately, little girl would pull her little Sanrio characters book and pointed to me which character she wanna appears on the note, sigh... it is getting tougher to write the note now...