Seremban market

We went to Seremban market almost every weekend to have brunch with MIL (mother-in-law). Whenever we asked little girl what'd she like to eat, her answer was always "aunty beef mee".

This is the stall we frequented almost every Sunday, 發記牛腩粉.  This is not the well known stall but we just like the taste of its sauce and soup than the popular one.  Usually little girl would go order her own bowl of noodle by herself, she don allow me to follow her, I had to kept a close eyes on her when she walk there herself.

This was my bowl of noodle, I'd taken half of it.  The noodles was 瀨粉 "lai fan" soaked in black thick sauce with a few pieces of stewed beef, I know it didn't sound yummy, but trust me, it tasted really delicious.  

This was little girl's, she likes to add in some beef soup to her noodle. Sometimes, she may finish the whole bowl of noodle (not the beef, she don like it) herself!

We usually sit near this stall, 永香茶室, because it is more breezy here, and the aunty is always friendly.

This is little girl's second favorite stall.  She'd only eat the cuttle fish mee hoon here.  Again, this is not the popular stall (the popular cuttle fish mee hoon stall is just on the left side of this stall), MIL frequented this stall most of the time thus we followed.  

Little girl offered to take all the above photos for me.  All the aunties and uncles from the stalls too were happy to see little girl taking their photos.  Thanks, girl and well done!

Tic-tac-toe bento

I thought I'd skip making bento today as it was holiday this week, then my friend MY invited me and little girl to her house,  I volunteered to bring her lunch.  Thus made 4 bentos for 4 of us!  It took me almost 1 and a half hour to complete all the 4 bentos, from cooking, decorating then taking the photos, phew!  What a morning!

This was the bento I made for little girl.  Top tier containing some pear wedges on the left and nectarine wedges on the right.

As for the bottom tier, I fried flat noodles and made the tic-tac-toe using julienned mushrooms as the

 grids, julienned carrots as "X" and edamame as the "O".  The cute little container at the bottom right was a handkerchief and its container I bought a day ago at The Pavillion.

This bento is for J, MY's daughter, the contains were exactly the same as little girl's.

This bento box is a gift from MY to little girl, she bought it during her holiday at Hong Kong.  Thanks again, MY!

This belong to MY, it was quite a big portion, MY couldn't finish it, she kept half for her hubby  :)  Hope her hubby enjoyed the fried noodles too.

This was mine, a smaller box cos I knew I need to take care of little girl's as she had a heavy breakfast.

These were all the bentos, ready to go.

Miso cucumber and eggs

These were the ingredients I used to make the miso cucumber and eggs.

1. Cut cucumber, cook eggs to soft-boiled eggs

2. Marinate all cucumber and eggs into miso

3. Marinate for 5 to 6 hours

4. Scoop out from miso

5. give it a hot bath, done

After washing them with hot water, I put them into fridge and they tasted great, especially the eggs.

Note: Do not marinate for too long, the ingredients will turn extremely salty.

Miso Bento

Top tier (from left): Fish balls, UFO shaped fish cakes, miso cucumbers, miso quail eggs (I got both of this recipe from manga, will post the recipe soon), miso braised konnyaku and fried long snake beans (蛇豆) with roast pork (left over from last nite).

Bottom tier: Nectarine cubes, some raisins and a small bowl of vanilla yogurt with some colored sprinkles.

Little girl kept half of the nectarine cubes and raisins for snack later, and left 1 each of the fish cake and quail egg.

It is school holiday next week, there will not be any posting on bento next Thu.  Happy holiday!

Hijiki and katsuobushi rice

I got this recipe from a manga (漫畫), yes, you didn't read it wrong.  I love reading manga ever since I am a teenager, and lately I like manga on cooking.  The title of this manga is "天才廚師飯藏".  It is stories of a genius chef who operates an antique store.  He introduced lots of simple and money saving recipes.

Here is the recipe of Hijiki and katsuobushi (Dried bonito shavings) rice:

1. Wash rice and put in water  (use the usual water level for cooking rice)
   
2. Put in hijiki without soaking before hand (with the ratio of 1 cup of rice : 1 tsp hijiki), as for the katsuobushi you may place as many as you like
   
3. Add shoyu and mirin (1 tbs each, ratio of 1 cup rice : 1 tbs)
4. Cook or steam rice, and done

It tasted good and here is a pic of its looks, I made a few rice balls for little girl as dinner.  I thought of leaving some extra for little girl's bento tomorrow, but we finished all!

There are a few more recipes I wanna try out, will share with you soon.

ABC soup

Ok, this ABC soup is not those soup with alphabet pasta, it is potato and carrot soup.  I think it is widely known as ABC soup in S'pore and M'sia.  Of course everybody know how to cook this kids-friendly soup, what I would like to share today is cook with lots of onions and omit the meat or bone.  I heard from an uncle that it may help to prevent or cure cold.

Well, we'd a terrible cold over the weekend, luckily little girl recover fast with the help of medicines I'd always standby in the cabinet.  However, me and hubby were so sick that we'd to visit doctor. After taking medicines for 2 days, it is slightly better, but the sore-throat turned to bad coughing! Hubby and I didn't have appetite to eat, thus I decided to make this soup.  

The ingredients was 6 potatoes, 6 onions, a carrot and 3 tomatoes, peeled the skins off, cut them into big chunks and here was how I cooked the soup:

1. Boiled water in a pot, put in onions, let it boiled for 5 minutes

2. Threw in everything except tomatoes, turned fire to low and let it boiled for 15 min

3. Put in tomatoes, boiled for another 15 min

4. Add in pepper and salt to taste and done!

Yes, fast and simple.  This soup is clear and has it own natural sweetness from all the root vegetables and a hint of sourness from the tomatoes.

Believe it or not, after taking a bowl of the soup, I was sweated all over, and gave a few loud burps.  As for little girl, she dislike onion but she likes this soup, she even told me this: 

LG: I ate onion, mummy!

M: Good, do u like it?

LG: Yeah, but I want onion for this only ah, not other dish, ok?

M: Ok.

Isn't she sweet?

I found this information on goodness of onions thru the web.  It mentioned under the title of "Anti-Inflammatory and anti-bacterial activity" that it helps to prevent colds and flu and is beneficial to asthmatics.  It also mentioned that onion soups are good during cold seasons and when you are threatened with flu.

Thank you!

Thank you, to all of you!

I still couldn't believe it, I was voted as the winner?!  Lots of thanks to u who voted me, really appreciate your supports.

As I said, I'm an amateur on everything, both on bentoing and blogging, by seeing the number of peoples checking out my blog really boosted my ego (still feeling a bit shy though), especially seeing those of you from another part of the world!  Still gotta learn a lot from all of you "sifu" or master out there.

The reason I started blogging was, I wanna kept a copy of what I did, and the special moments I shared with little girl, she will be able to look back those she had or enjoyed thru out her childhood. Another reason was hubby has been out of the country (for a few months) when I started bentoing, I had to "report" to him (my boss mah! :) ) too.  Also, some of my friends too wanna me to share what I usually prepare for little girl to get her into eating more, instead of sending them emails one by one, I decided to let them read here.

For the past 1 week, I'd been going in and out of Bento Pet's blog so often til hubby complained "Eh, don act yourself like stock market watch!"  Can u imagined how often I checked now?  :)  Hehehe ....

Thanks Bento Pet, for hosting this amazing competition!

P/s   Told little girl this morning about the result, and she's going to get some new bento boxes and candies, she asked "the Pooh bear-bear?"  After seeing me nodded my head, she smiled happily!  I can't wait to see her expression when the prize is in front of her.

Sushi sandwiches and Sunflower bento

Little girl had fever last nite, I allowed her to skip the mental arithmetic class this morning, so that means I don have to prepare her bento for lunch in school.

However, I decided to make her a surprise lunch to cheer her up.  My MIL (mother in law) always says that do not eat rice during fever (afraid it may maintain the temperature), thus I made little girl a sandwich, a sushi sandwich.

I had a few sausages, cheddar slices, lettuces, breads on a nori, squeezed in some tomato sauce and mayo and rolled it to form a sushi roll.

I have 5 slices of the sushi sandwich for little girl.  Also, made her a little sunflower sausage egg with some snow peas as its stem.  

While she was attacking the sunflower, little girl told me she wanna have the same sunflower for her snack in school again.  Therefore, I made her a very simple and small bento as she need to eat the snack from school as well.

Here is the little sunflower, with some lettuces as grass and a small container of mayo.

Nectarine smiles bento

Do you like these smiles?  Hahaha...  

I found the recipe at familycorner.com.  Made this quick snack for little girl as a little surprise after school.  I changed it slightly, used nectarine instead of apple.  

To me, they looked incredibly ugly, the peanut butter was all over the smile on the left, and the teeth were not placed neatly.  However, little girl liked it and she said she wanna it again for her bento on coming Thu.  :)

I'm shortlisted!

* Applaud!  Applaud! *

I was browsing Bento Pet's yesterday to check out the competition result and was thrilled to find myself was shortlisted with my bento titled "Cold soba bento on 24 july 2008".

As a beginner,  this mean a lot to me and it really cheered up my bentoing spirit.  

Oh my!  Just couldn't stop myself smiling from ear to ear :)  Eiya!  Feeling a bit shy too!  :">

Bento Pet had put in the voting board at her blog, remember to vote for my bento after reading my blog ya!