Bentolicious #130
My kids started their mid-test for the first semester yesterday. I didn't prepare any lunch bento for them as the school will dismiss at 12PM during the mid-test week. So the kids will have their lunch at home. This morning I only prepared snack bento for the 15 minutes break between the 2 tests. School will also provide snacks for the students but my daughter asked me yesterday to bring her own snack to school. My son didn't want to bring snack bento. He said that today's school snack was pizza and he wanted that :p  As much as I love to make bento, I never pushed my kids to bring bento if they don't want to. School catering also provides very healthy and balanced foods. And lately I let my son to have the school catering because they provide a lot of Indonesian foods that I don't normally cook at home so often. So I think it will be a good experience for my son to explore the taste from different kinds of foods. 
Inside the box : Pandan sandwich bread & regular white sandwich bread with pandan kaya jam, nectarine, orange, and mango.
Bentolicious #129
Made this cute raccoon from Sanrio character. His name is Landry, he is a raccoon boy who loves to wash anything that he can get his hands on. His best friend is the rubber ducky called Pea. I never make raccoon for the bento so I thought this one would be great to try. My egg sheet didn't come as smooth as usual because I left them in the pan too long. But I think the wrinkles from the egg sheet made a bit of the texture for the raccoon so I just left it like that.
Inside the green box : chicken pop corns, egg flowers, sweet soy sauce tofu, and green beans & red paprika stir fry. Chicken pop corns were made of chicken thigh fillet that I cut into the small pieces and dipped into the batter and deep fried them. Found this very convenience to eat especially for the younger kids because of the small size and fun to eat ... just like eating pop corns :)
Friday finally comes ... Hope everyone enjoy the weekend with friends and families! Kids will be sitting on the mid-test next week, so wish them luck. Hope they can get all the answers right.
Bentolicious #128
Today's quick and simple bento was just using food cups, food picks, baran and cutter. The food cups are very handy to use to make characters. No need to decorate the face parts, the food cups had already done it for me. I just needed to make onigiri molded by hand and used cutter to make hands.
I put everything on the top of the rice, layer by layer. I put rice at the bottom layer, and then stir fry cabbage, crunchy bacon and ikan bilis / anchovies. I added some sweet corn kernel too. We love to eat rice just with these ingredients on the top. The sweetness of cabbage and corn combined with the crunchy bacon and salty ikan bilis are just perfect.
Don't forget to link your bento to "What's For Lunch" at Shannon's blog.
You can still submit it, so please hurry share your bento with others!!
Book #005
We celebrate Mooncake Festival today. It's a harvest celebration and it is an important part in the Chinese culture. This festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunar calendar. The day where the moon is at its fullest. Unfortunately there is nothing big here to celebrate this festival, only a tradition to eat our mooncake. This year I bought snow skin mooncake to celebrate. They are beautiful with sweet filling inside. Sorry for the dull picture that I took this afternoon along with the kids' rabbit snack that I made. It was raining outside, all dark so the only choice was to take the picture in my dining room.
I remembered when I was a kid in my hometown, we would bring a colorful lantern and walked around with a group of kids during this festival. My kids never get a chance like me, perhaps next year I should buy some lanterns and let them know the whole thing about this festival which I also start to forget too except for the part of eating mooncake.
I got 2 new Akinoichigo's bento books in my shelf. I posted before about her bento books here. I like to collect her bento books. Great learning from her very inspiring bento. Both books contain a lot of tips and character patterns that we can copy from. And the newest bento book is even better because for every bento there is some pictures accompanied along on the side. Those pictures are very helpful especially for non-Japanese reader like me, so I can get the idea how she does it. I only wished that her books were in English, it would be more resourceful. You can get these books from buying online at Amazon.co.jp or you can find it at Kinokuniya Bookstore.
Bentolicious #127
Rainy day bento for today. I think I was kind of hoping today would be raining after a hot day yesterday. At least it is raining in my bento ... The green frog was made from green and yellow egg sheets, the eyes part  was from kamaboko, cheek from red part of crab stick, and nori. Rain drops were made of chayote and I used spinach leaf & spinach stem for the umbrella. I was about to use daikon for the rain drops but forgot I didn't have any left in my fridge. Since the only transparent veggie in my fridge was chayote, so I used it to make the rain drops.
Inside the other tier box :  strawberries, kumquats, sweet corns, spinach tamagoyaki, stir fry Chinese cabbage, and sauteed prawns with sweet soy sauce and onion. My spinach tamagoyaki was a little bit brownish instead of yellow because I put soy sauce when mixed the egg. I didn't put sugar and mirin this time but just soy sauce and a little bit of salt.
Bentolicious #126
Hope everyone had a good time on the weekend and is ready to start a new week! I have been offline for a few days to take care  of something. So many posts that I missed from all bento friends. I will hop from blog to blog after this. Nothing special for the weekend, only enjoying our time and relaxed a bit. And because my little brother will get married in January next year,  so we had a lunch yesterday with the whole families from both sides, just to get to know each others before the Big Day.
I didn't feel like to cook a lot this morning so Monday's bento was made and prepared as simple as it looks. It took only 30 minutes including the cooking time. The bears were made of egg tofu, nori, tiny jelly ball, and crab stick. Also included in this box : rice, grape tomatoes, carrots, sauteed pork sausages & green peas, and green paprika & egg.
Tips - How To Make Edamame Rice
As promised, I post this pictorial tips for making edamame rice. The steps are pretty simple and do not take a long time to turn your regular rice into green healthy rice. The ingredients are just rice, edamame, and salt. Edamame rice taste nice and no strong odor, it just like regular rice except we can taste the edamame at the same time.
(1) Lightly boiled the edamame in the water (you can choose to salt the water if you want) for about 5-6 minutes, after that drain and remove the edamame from the hulls. Then put them inside the cold water.

(2) Remove the soft skin so you can get the smooth edamame paste later by pinching the edamame softly with your thumb and point finger. As shown on the picture above, you can see the floating ones are the soft skin.

(3) After that throw away the hulls and drain the clean edamame. Use stone mortar and pestle to grind the edamame until smooth and even. I use stone mortar and pestle because is electricity saving and easy to clean. If you don't have it, you can just use the blender / food processor too. But you might need to add a little bit of water if you use blender / food processor.

(4) The picture above show the edamame paste, looks like wasabi.

(5) Mixed the rice with edamame paste with a small amount first, you can add some more later if you like in the process. And you can sprinkle some salt too when mixing the rice and edamame, so the edamame rice has a little bit of salty taste.

Hope this tips is useful for everyone!
Bentolicious #125
Tomorrow will be the last day of the kids' school break. So soon, I will be back to bento again. Today, I post 2 bento that I made for my Guest Post at Ann's blog {PigPig's Corner}. Ann is one of the non-bento food blogger who always gives kind comments in this blog. I am happy that she gives me the opportunity to introduce bento in her blog. You can read my short Guest Post here. And if you want to add some of your experience which sometimes people around you are being skeptical about bento, please do share your thought in the comment box.
3 Wise Monkeys | First tier box : fresh berries, chicken karaage, stir fry ham and celery, pan fry corn cake, and lettuce. Second tier box : steamed rice decorated with 3 wise monkeys on the top. 3 wise monkeys were made of egg sheets, crab stick, nori and food picks.
Non-Cute Bento | First tier box : stir fry bean sprouts with anchovy, curry tofu, sunny side up, grape tomatoes, sauteed pork & cucumber with lemon grass, and lettuce. Second tier box : steamed rice decorated with flowers. Flowers were made from carrots, daikon, and green peas.
Bentolicious #124
Everyone in the house is completely in the holiday mood now. The school break will start on Thursday and hubby will be off from the office tomorrow afternoon. Some of the friends who celebrate Idul Fitri have go back to their hometown for family gathering. Usually Jakarta will be a bit quite and no traffic jam during this time... woohoo! Something that I am looking forward to. We don't have any plan to leave the town for the holiday. So we will just have fun with friends and family. Sadly, kids will have their mid-test right after the school break ... so I think they will need to review their lessons too during the school break.
Today's bento was inspired by a pack of new chopsticks that I bought from Daiso yesterday. Little green doggies were made of edamame mixed rice. I will put the tutorial on how to made them during the school break when I don't have any bento to make. I used food picks for the ears, easy and quick. I remember reading one book in Kinokuniya bookstore long time ago with this dog had a leaf shaped ears but I can't recall the name of the character. Inside the box : steamed egg tofu with garlic oil, stir fry carrots & snow peas, grape tomatoes, and lemongrass stir fry pork.
Bentolicious #123
Friday is here! Kids are looking forward for the weekend because they will learn how to ride their bicycle. Oh yah! My girl learned before and was just too scared to ride by herself without someone holding the bicycle at the back. We decide that riding bicycle is also a basic skill they have to learn and master. With the upcoming school break next week, they will have a lot of time to practice since hubby will also be on 1-week leave at the same time the kids having their the school break.
Today's bento was simple to prepare and simple to decorate. I made 2 chickens from heart shapes chicken nugget and decorated with food picks, fish ball, nori, carrot, and red part from crab stick. Inside the box : chicken nuggets, stir fry chayote, potatoes in sweet soy sauce, grape tomatoes, flower egg, and noodle & green peas.
Enjoy your weekend with your family!
Bentolicious #122
The twins bears for today's bento were made from steamed rice, nori and crab stick. Filled the other side of the box with fish tofu, carrots & green peas, flat beef ball, and grape tomatoes. My girl loves to eat spicy foods and chili sambal now. She asked me to put some chili sambal in the small container for her lunch. Chili sambal is one thing in our house that can be found easily in the fridge. No chili in the house is like something missing. I prepared 2 big water bottles for each of my kids to bring to school just wanna make sure that they will have enough water to drink during this hot and sunny day. Hope they will study well today at school and stay healthy :)

What's For Lunch every Wednesday is on.
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