Bento #186

Our neighbour was baking pineapple tarts and the aroma filled OUR house!! Jaimie actually stood at the door to enjoy the smell! My very generous and kind neighbour, Pauline, packed a tin for us (yipee!! No, she didn't notice Jaimie at the door...) and the greedy little pig immediately asked for a piece.

With the pineapple tart still in her mouth, she asked me, "Mommy! Do you know how to make pineapple tarts?" "No~~ I don't! Aunty Pauline is so good at making the tarts, isn't she?"

She swallowed her mouthful of pastry and said, "How come you do not know how to make pineapple tarts? And you do not know how to bake cake. And you do not know how to sew. You only know how to make bento."

ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

*wipe tears off the corners of my eyes*

Bento #185

I put in 2 candies in Jaimie's bento as a little treat but they were "robbed" by her classmates. Yesterday, she told me that her classmates "robbed" her strawberries... I have to teach her the art of defence for her bento...

Bento #182, #183 #184

3 ultra simple and quick yet nutritious meal ideas!

Basil chicken with fusilli -- inspired by Pasta Mania. Marinate your chicken and leave in the fridge. Takes only 7mins to cook in the morning, including the pasta!

Yoghurt with berries breakfast. Power!

Baked salmon, ham and onion omelette.

HappyCall Pan- Muah Chee

My Christmas present from Clement this year is a HappyCall pan! I have been thinking about this toy for quite some time but was hesitant to make a purchase because I hardly do any proper cooking. And to be honest, my cooking sucks. So when I unwrapped the present and saw a HappyCall pan, I was thrilled!

The package comes with a handbook with a few recipes. Unfortunately, it was all written in Korean. Ajuma doesn't know Korean... so I shall have to figure out what makes the HappyPan happy and what makes it angry...

Delicious looking food with recipe. But sorry, I do not understand a single thing.
Since Clement bought this for me, I must try to make something for him too. My blogger friend Mamabliss is a superb cook and has posted quite a few recipes using HappyCall pan. I looked through them and decided to try making muah chee, which looks relatively easy.

I have nothing in my kitchen so I went to get all the ingredients I needed. Today is not exactly a good day to make something with grounded peanuts because today is 冬至. All the grounded peanuts in the supermarkets were grabbed up to make glutinuous rice balls for the festival! I walked to several places before I found my grounded peanuts! Yippeeee!

And so I did as Pauline demonstrated in her video. First, toast the sesame seeds.

Next, prepare the shallots.

Prepare the coating-- sugar, grounded peanut and sesame seeds.

Here comes the exciting part-- preparing the batter. 1 cup of glutinuous rice flour to 3/4 cup of water. Add the water gradually and mix well.

Brown the shallots.

Then, I scooped up 3/4 of the shallots (another recipe suggested doing so) and poured in the batter evenly into the HappyCall pan. Pauline's recipe says cover and cook for 30sec but another recipe says 3mins. So I opened up at 30sec, not sure, cover up, and cook for 3mins.

Roll the mixture into a dough.

Alright, I know this looks successful and good but in fact, I threw this away. That was because I didn't mix the flour well and when I poured the batter into the pan, I realised there was a lot of undissolved flour at the bottom of the measuring cup. I added more water to get them out and I knew it was not going to be successful. Indeed, it was too soft and sticky. Not nice.

It's ok!! I quickly did everything from step one again, this time extremely careful with the batter.

Mistake number 2: I overcooked the dough. I was washing up some of the utensils while waiting for it to be done and overshot the suggested cooking time. The side of the dough which was in contact with the pan became cripsy!!!! ALAMAK! I quickly rolled it up (actually, it was flapping it since it became crispy...) and removed it from the pan. The crispy side of the dough wouldn't stick much of the coating but generally, it was an OK attempt. At least, the texture was nice.

Phew~~~~~

Definitely not an easy task for an idiot like me. But not a bad try too! *gives myself a pat on the back*

Not a bad bento idea, huh!!! We can prepare the coating the night before. In the morning, we only need about 5mins to prepare the dough. Nice and easy!!

Parent-Child Bento Making Workshop

When Rosalind from Mad about Kids left me a message to ask about the possibility of conducting a parent-child bento making workshop, I wasn't optimistic because I had to turn down a few of such invitations due to logistic problems. But Rosalind went all the way out to help me with my constraints and I was able to do this workshop with 14 pairs of parent-child workshop today.




The workshop was held at the Family Lounge at Plaza Singapura. I was quite nervous because I wasn't too sure if I was able to manage a class of adults and children. Will the children be engaged? Will the adults find the workshop lack of useful information? ... and I was quite pleased that it turned out quite well.

Quite an experience for me!! I hope the participants had fun too!

Bento #181

Same old boring combination. Jaimie prefers to eat familar food. The meatballs in the bento made her very happy.

Bento #180

I love this! Prata with nutella! Yummy yummy yummy!

Lesson learnt this morning while I was frying the prata -- do not multi-task when you are pan frying your food. Concentrate on the fire. This morning, I burnt 3 pieces of prata. After the 3rd prata turned into charcoal then I learnt my lesson. How clever.

Bento #179

This "garden" themed bento is for Jaimie. "Mushroom" bread, carrot flowers and a giant, sleepy caterpillar.

My original idea was to put the "umbrella hook" food pick on the bread so that they became umbrellas. However, the food pick could not support the weight of the bread and took up some space in the bento box. So I put in the fish tofu cubes and chuck my "umbrellas" upside down.

Bento #177, Bento #178 and Exchanging Bentos With Students

I shared with my students about bento making during class last week and it got them so excited. They kept bugging me to make bentos for them but it was just impossible to make so many! Hence, I told them we could do a exchange bento! Those of them who wanted to try their hands on bento-making can bring one to school and we would do an exchange.

This morning, I woke up at 5.15am to make 3 bentos. This oven-baked crispy chicken bun was for Clement. The chicken pieces were too chunky so I cut them into halves and they fit nicely.

This was for Jaimie.

I made this for the bento exchange.

After the lesson time, we put our bentos together and took some photos. The students were both shy and proud to show the very FIRST bento they made!
To decide who would take whose bento, we played the "choot hoh beh" game. :D

These bentos may not be the most beautifully ones but they were definitely filled with love. I hope this simple exchange would add some more fond memories to their secondary school life!

Bento #176

Clement said it's "Mister Angry". Jaimie said "His crown is upside down".

That's the difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic person.

In-House Bento-making Workshop

After I conducted the bento making workshop organised by Health Promotion Board (HPB), I received quite a few invitations from several organisations, asking if I could do something similar. I would love to say YES to all of them but it was unfortunate that due to time contraints or logistics problems, I had to turn them down.

Hence,when my colleague, SW, approached me and asked me if I could do a in-house bento making workshop with her Girl Guides, I said yes immediately! :)

After some discussion with SW, we decided to keep it simpler by just doing bread bento. I listed down the stuff needed and SW settled that with the girls. We used the school's cookery room for the workshop. Quite simple logistic!

We began with workshop with a 45mins "theory" lesson. After that, the girls couldn't wait to start the hands-on.

They were more creative than I thought! They had very simple tools to play with compared to the participants at the HPB workshop but their creations were just as exciting!




Some colleagues came to attend the workshop too!

The girls had a lot of fun for 2 hours! They were so proud of their own creation and they were excited about presenting their bento to their parents. Awwww... this is why I like to conduct workshops!

As my morning routine has changed, I haven't been able to make "presentable" bentos which I can blog about but I still make simple ones for Jaimie and Clement. The happy faces on the students gave me a glimpse of how Jaimie looked when she brought her bento to school.

What is bento? Bento is LOVE. :)

Bento #174, #175

Clement's Old Chang Kee curry puff bento.

Jaimie's noodle bento.

Bento #173

When you asked your daughter "Do you like today's bento?" and the reply was an very happy "YES!!! MY MOMMY IS THE BEST!!!", this will motivate you to wake up early to prepare bento for her even though you are on mc. :) This is the 2nd bento I made for Jaimie on my second day of mc. She requested for the honey stars. The agar-agar is a bonus because she had been really sweet to me when I was unwell.

Bento #172

横眉冷对千夫指，抱病仍在做便当。

Bento #171

Jaimie's bento for today. Everything is packed according to her highness's request.

Bento #170

Jaimie's breakfast. I still make bento everyday but they are too repetitive and simple to be blogged. This is another simple bento which could be done in 10mins. I sliced the swiss roll the night before, put them in the bento box and keep in the refrigerator. In the morning, I just need to prepare the fruits and shell the quail's eggs.

Jae says yum yum yum. :)

Bento #169

亲爱的媛媛：

等你长大了，妈妈就教你玩一种游戏。这种游戏呢，有好多的方块，上面有汉字啦，圆点啦，线条啦，还有一些小动物。如果你收集到公鸡，蜈蚣，小猫和老鼠，那是很了不起的哦！

先在你的便当上放四只小动物，让你对这个游戏有个概念。

“碰”食物之前记得先洗手。吃草莓的时候不要乱乱“摸”。也不要吃得嘴巴都“糊糊”的。

Bento #168

Jaimie's has a scarily huge appetite now. Look, she has a crossiant, a slice of swiss roll, 2 quail eggs and fruits for breakfast. She doesn't finish them all at one go, though. She polishes them off during her breakfast and morning tea break time.

Wow.

She eats more than me.

Bento #167

Jaimie's bento. Char siew bao, fruits and hello panda biscuits.

My favourite question to ask Jaimie nowadays: "Do you like your bento today?"

The answer is a real morale booster! *BEAMING PROUDLY*