I made a terrible mistake with this bento. I was supposed to make a panda but instead of using white egg omelet layer, I replaced it with cheese ... and what happened can you guess?? The panda was not white-black panda but yellow-black panda hahaha ... :o) I used twin boxes for the bento. The pink one filled with the onigiri yellow-black panda. And the blue one filled with some veggies (flower carrots, corns, purple cabbages, cherry tomatoes, snow peas) and meats (chicken nuggets, flower ham). After posting this bento, I will meet some friends at Starbucks and have a little chit chat there. And after picking up the kids from the school, I will have to go to take some twilight photos with the other group of friends. Busy day ... have to run now.

I made the soup this afternoon for the kids' dinner. It has been raining in the afternoon, so I think the hot soup will be nice for them. I like to cook simple & quick meal, just love the simplicity on preparing the foods. This soup only took about 45 minutes to prepare and the ingredients are very easy to find.

1/2 kg of Boneless Chicken Thighs, chopped in dice shapes
1-2 litre of Chicken Stock
10-12 of Quail Eggs, boiled
Leeks, sliced diagonally
2 Corns, peeled
2-3 Carrots, chopped in dice shapes
1/2 Onion, chopped in dice shapes
Salt
Pepper

HAPPY COOKING !!

This morning, there was a lot of things to do and I needed to make a quick bento. So I decided to use quail egg to make a ghost from it. This is very easy, just use 1 quail egg and fried it on the pan, don't turn the egg so we can get that golden yellow egg yolk. I made the ghost's hand from white egg with my cutter and some decorations for the bento. Hat and eyes are from nori for edamame and I also made pumpkin carrot. I put snow peas and tomato-basket filled with corns for the veggies. Pull out ebi katsu from the freezer and fried it until brown for the meat. Tada ... another simple Halloween bento for today.

Though we never celebrate Halloween in Jakarta, but I tried to prepare simple Halloween's bento. I made the wizard boy bento last Friday which I thought the boy didn't look like a wizard at all :o) For this bento, I put some edamame, flower shapes potatoes, tofu sandwiches, candy shapes sausages and star shapes carrots. The wizard boy was made with rice which I molded by hand and I used nori to make the hat and dress.

For this busy Monday morning, I decided to make the pumpkin & ghost theme for the bento. I used sweet potato to make the pumpkin and white egg to make the ghost. Put some strawberries, white & purple cabbages for the veggies and sliced pork & celery for the meat. The color yellow rice is an egg rice. I will try another one tomorrow ...

This bento was made yesterday morning. I couldn't upload it because the internet connection was very slow. I had try several times complaining about this matter to the internet service provider but nothing improved. It seems sometimes I can get fast connection and sometimes nobody knows what happened.

Anyway, for the bento I made two rice balls decorated with nori. I put two flowers ham (one big and one small) on the top of each rice ball and used my new panda food picks as an ornament. I put a boiled chicken egg that molded with my egg mold into a square shape picturing of 2 little ducks. The meat was 'beef rendang', left over from dinner. And the veggies were carrots & snack beans that I tied with dried Tuberose Flower a.k.a the Queen of the Night or Scent of the Night. I often put this dried Tuberose Flower (we called it Bunga Sedap Malam in Indonesia) into the chicken soup. They are yummy to eat :o)

Do an experiment!! I use food coloring to make different colors for my omelet. By using only one drop of green food coloring into the egg mixture, it creates color effects other than the usual yellow. Some of my friends don't really like using food coloring on their kids' food but I'm not that extreme as for me food coloring is safe as long as we don't use it too much and too often. I put some flower shape carrots on the top of the vegetarian meats and sprinkled it with furikake. Also put some chikuya fish rolls (it is usually available at frozen food section for shabu-shabu). Decorate the rice with green omelet and small flowers from crab stick. Then the mint leaves as the food divider / baran. I don't think the kids will eat the red radish hehehehe ... well just consider it as the accessories then :o)


If you don't like to use food coloring, you can still make the green omelet using green tea powder. In Indonesia, people are using 'daun suji' to get the green color for food coloring. Many Indonesian's traditional cakes are using this leaf.

Today I did not prepare lunch bento for the kids, because they ate school's catering. So I just made a small size bento snack for them. Snack bento contains fried noodle with pork sausage and lap-chiong (Chinese pork sausage). Then added some bean sprouts, carrots, peas, corns and thinly sliced omelete. I divided the noodle into 4 color medium size food cups. Put some smiley face sausages and mint leaves on the top of each food cup.

I got my first award from Tata that made me very surprised and very happy too. Thanks a lot Tata for the award :o) Anyway this blog is still baby but I will keep posting my bento regularly to share it with everyone .... Now is the time to choose another 15 new-to-me blogs to pass on this award. I put the list below the award icons and had notified the 15 blog owners to pick up the award here.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING BLOG OWNERS :

1. Ellena on CUISINE PARADISE
2. Cindy on PLAIN JANE
3. Larryina on CONFESSION OF THE BORNEO COFFEE JUNKIES
4. Gina on DUA MATA SAYA
5. Sheri on HAPPY LITTLE BENTO
6. Ratri on HANA CUPCAKES
7. MY MEALBOX
8. MOTHERING CORNER
9. Riana on FOR THE LOVE OF BAKING
10. Dwiana on THE ADVENTURE OF MY COOKING DIARY
11. BENTO BIRD
12. Elsye on DARI DAPUR SAYA
13. HAPA BENTO
14. Tati on KITCHEN CORNER
15. Sue on THE MOMSTER'S KITCHEN

Monday is always a very busy day. Maybe because all the activities stopped at the end of the week and start again on Monday. I have a terrible tummy ache in the morning after I drop my kids at school. It takes about 25 minutes from the school to my home ... luckily the tummy ache is very friendly. The tummy ache gets better on the way home :o)

Today, I run out of veggies in the refrigerator so I make bento using cheese as a rabbit-shaped decoration on the top of the white rice. I put fried breaded crab claw and make a chives omelet. In addition, I also put the cherry tomatoes and use carrots and cucumbers for garnish.

Today I use my small bear cutter to make the frog's head from the skin of the zucchini. I prepare the steam baby corns and green beans which I have add some salt on the top for the veggie. I make cheese-ham ball mixed with potato. And put some cherry tomatoes and tamago furikake too.

I really want to make a frog family in the beginning, after cutting the cucumber skin then I realized that the lunch box is too small to fit the whole family. So mom and dad's frog ... maybe next time :o)


If you don't have any tools to make the small circle for the eyes, you can use a small straw instead. Just cut the straw around 2cm and press it to cheese, ham, kamaboko, etc. (something that it's not too hard). And then use a tooth pick to push it from inside the straw.

Fried rice is always our family's favorite. When time is limited to prepare food in the morning, fried rice is always a good choice to pick for the menu :o) Today's bento is using ham-fried rice but I wrap it with omelet and tie it with Chinese Chives 韭菜 ( it's called 'kucai' in Indonesia). However I think the omelet is too thick. Put a boiled quail egg on the top and decorate with a smiling face from nori. Put zucchini for veggie and crab stick & salami for meat in the bento. I also make these small flowers from kamaboko かまぼこ (take the pink part only).


When you wrap the rice, don't put the rice too much. Remember that you have to spare some space on the top. And you have to be careful for not to tie the omelet too hard or else the omelet will torn out.




Got some new friends from blogging ... very happy!! I hope we can share our passions, ideas and tips on doing bento :o)

I made a quick bento for today. I put some soy sauce chicken chunks with sesame seeds on the top which is very quick to prepare. Just sliced the chicken thinly, put some sweet soy sauce, add some salt and white pepper ... quick and easy. Put some cherry tomatoes, carrots and fried potato. Cut the omelet into a rabbit shape and decorate the eyes and mouth with nori.

Actually my kids had a school catering for today's lunch. But suddenly I got a call from school that one of their teachers just passed away this morning (our deep condolences to Ms. Ayu's family), so the school was dismissed earlier at 10.00am instead of 02.00pm as usual. We got home around 10.30 and my son asked me to make a small portion of bento before lunch time. Nothing to do until lunch time, I then agreed to make him this quick bento.

This afternoon was very cloudy and the wind was a little bit cool. After picking up the kids from their school and had a little time before cooking for dinner ... I enjoyed my hot Japanese Green Tea with pineapple bread (called 'roti unyil' because it is a very small bread). I bought the bread from Bogor, apparently this roti unyil is very famous. Many visitors from outside Bogor will always stop by to buy this type of bread. Because of the small size and the variations of the bread, many people including me are consider this bread as a good type of snacks.

You can buy this bread at the store called 'VENUS'
Address : Jl. Pajajaran Komp. V Point No. 1, Bogor
Phone : (0251) 8364008

Besides pineapple bread, the store also makes chocolate bread, cheese bread, sausage and cheese bread, omelet bread, ham bread, banana choco bread, choco peanut bread, and many more ... all of them come in very small size of course. The kids are really like it. It's a good option to put into the kids' snack box.