Many cooking competition shows are showing on the cable TV right now. Me and the kids love to watch cooking shows lately. And the kids' favorite cooking show is Junior Master Chef. I can say that the show is quite inspiring for the young kids and even for me. To see how they are so motivated to cook and to present it very well to the judges. At such young age, they can do all those amazing food styling. I'm not sure that I can cook and present the foods so nice like they do. So today's bento I made Junior Chef bento for the kids. I used various cutters to make the junior chef. Inside the other box : corn fritters, sauteed Chinese okra, cherry tomatoes, boiled egg, and tiny pork sausages. Tomato sauce was put in the different container (not in the picture).

I didn't plan to make any kyaraben bento for this morning. So I just did a simple and quick bento. I made this after dropping the kids to the school and sent the bento one hour before the lunch time started. I got my new food picks from J-Mama online store last week. I love her online store with a lot of cute stuffs that I can use for my bento making. I bought from her online store several time and the service never lets me down so far. If you are in South East Asia and looking for a cheaper shipping fee to your country, J-Mama is the best choice. The rabbit food picks are so cute that I decided to put it on the top of the rice for quick fixed bento. Inside the boxes : 2 big hand molded onigiri, tamagoyaki, sauteed chicken & mushroom, cherry tomatoes, and stir fry cabbage & carrot.

Yellow bug for today's bento because this morning started with a cloudy day again and we miss Mr. Sun somehow. The weather like this it just made us wanted to tuck under our blanket and have a few more hours of sleep. We will probably do that tomorrow since the weekend is coming (yeay!). We still have a lot of rain pouring over this week and probably next week too. So the temperature has been nice, not too hot and too stuffy. No special plan for our weekend but we will enjoy it and I wish for all of you too ... Have a great weekend with friends and family!

Yesterday was a public holiday here, so no bento was made. I cooked a big pot of Indonesian chicken curry this morning. And packed the curry for today's bento, added some bok choy & egg tofu stir fry along with the steamed rice. I put the little monkey on the top of the rice and banana picks all around. It looks like the little monkey is juggling the bananas :)

Both kids were chosen from school to participate in a spelling bee competition  for international curriculum school on March, 5. So they are starting to practice at home. And their English teacher gives them a special training as their preparation. My girl didn't make it to the Top 3 last year. This year she seems to be more motivated. For Andrew, this will be his first time to join. He is usually very shy in front of public, so we keep encouraging him to be brave and to try. We also keep telling them that it doesn't matter whether they win or loose, the imporant is that they should try do their best for this competition. But we also want them to learn about always giving their best, not only for this competition, but for everything their do in life.

Happy Valentine's Day all!

I packed this bento as the last Valentine theme bento. I made the little birds flying around. Only used small cutters to make this bento and pretty quick to prepare. Inside the box :rice, strawberries, tamagoyaki, garlic prawn & carrot-cucumber salad (sauce on separated box).

Project cookies pops has been failed. It was my idea to make that for kids' classmates but then my kids said it was too big to decorate. And they wanted to make heart shaped cookies instead. So we started baking the cookies on Saturday and kids decorated the cookies on Sunday. I took some of kids' pictures in the kitchen with my mobile phone before they 'banned' me from the kitchen. Funny though because my kitchen was separated with the big glass door so I could still see what they were doing with the cookies LOL :D I posted the pictures on my twitter (you can follow me here). They had a lot of fun decorating the cookies for 3 hours. They decorated 150 cookies by themselves. So each of them brought 75 cookies to share with their classmates, teachers, and they said they wanted to give it to security and cleaning service staffs too at the school. Each one of the cookies had a different design on the top with the icings that I made. Didn't know how they could do that, they just kept floating the cookies with the icings. They had a lot of fun and I was happy to see their exciting face holding a box full of their homemade cookies. We always teach the kids to share and to care. This is just a simple thing that they successfully did. I'm very proud of them.

How fast the time is...today is already Friday again. Wish everyone a great weekend ahead! Today I just made a simple snack bento for the kids. Kids will have lunch from school catering today. Mainly used cutters to decorate this bento. Inside the box : egg fried rice, oranges, cucumber, lap cheong Chinese sausage), asparagus, and strawberries. I should put more efforts to decorate the face details but I wasn't really inspired today, so I just used puncher for the details with nori. I separated the egg yolk and the egg white to make the white and yellow egg sheets. I cut it with X-Acto knife and made it in 3 layers this time. Love my tiny heart cutter but actually I made some cut by hand at the top of the heart so you can see the heart shape clearly. Oh well, maybe this bento will be the last Valentine's theme bento if I can't manage to make one more on Monday. Tuesday will be a public holiday here, so I'm planning to have dinner out with the kids on Monday night because hubby will be on the company trip from tonight until Tuesday night.

Cupid is something that we often see around Valentine. A lot of stores, Valentine's cards, flyer, etc. are picturing Cupid. So I tried to make Cupid for today's bento as he is one of the popular icon for Valentine. I used heart food picks for the arrows and glad to have those wing picks for easy use to create this Cupid. And I have to mention that I forgot to create the bow for the Cupid. In the other box : beef onion meat balls, green beans and carrots stir fry, and sweet orange slices.

Yesterday, the area around my house had a black out for 8 hours since the morning. It put me in no mood to prepare bento, so I went to a baking supplies shop instead. I just received the new Wilton's Pops book and wanna try baking some cookies pops this Friday and decorate it on the weekend. Hope everything is ready by Sunday night so the kids can take them to school and share it with their classmates. Wish me luck! That's the plan, don't know whether I just give up half way before even the baking starts LOL :D

Little purple bear with the pink heart was made for today's bento. I used deco furikake or rice seasoning mix for my green, purple, and pink rice. I wanted to make the bear and everything with colored egg sheet but then I changed my mind this morning. I bought the green pack from Daiso and  pink pack from iSetan supermarket from my last trip to Singapore. I took the deco furikake pack picture, so you can see the packaging. It is a great use to make bento. Inside the other box : chicken wings cooked with Chinese cooking wine and ginger, stir fry bok choy, mini oranges, and strawberries.

This morning is a bit quite at home. Kids are in the school and hubby in the office, so practically home alone. Got some old cooking magazines, browsed through it and found some interesting recipes that I could try this week. Put post it to bookmark it. I am actually thinking to type all the interesting recipes from the magazines, so I can store it digitally and easier to find next time I need it. Or perhaps scan them is a lot easier to do.

Happy Monday all!!

I'm back to my regular bento making now after all the busy family business finished. My sister and her family flew back to Melbourne last night. So my routines around the house are pretty much back to normal. Chinese New Year was celebrated simple with the whole family. Had a great time with all the family members.

One more week to Valentine's Day. And I'm thinking to make some of Valentine's theme for this week bento. Although we don't celebrate it big here but Valentine is still something that people love to celebrate. Our family doesn't really celebrate it in a big way either. My kids has been asking me from last week to bake some cookies or cake that they can bring to school and share with their classmates. Let's see what can I bake this weekend for them. Today's love bug was made from rice (body and head), red cabbage (wings), facial details (nori and fish cake), heart food pick (antenna).  And added star fruits, strawberry, Chinese spinach, fried fish cake, and five-spice pork in the other box.