Category Archives: bento

: : Bento #7 ~ Postmeal after returning from UK : :

Just got back last night from London and sent back home by Davin. Trip pictures will go up when I have time to put them up!

Anyway, here is tomorrow’s bento meal. This is bento #7.

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Most of the food were prepared by my Granny because I was too tired to do anything except for a few things. So I packed up leftovers.

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To the left is a seed-rice mix that was packed in silicon cups. To the right is a veggie mix of the traditional Hakka dish known as lui cha. It’s a stirfry combination of onions, cangkuk manis, long beans, bean sprouts and tauhu mixed with some grounded herbs which I have yet to check with Granny what’s inside it. This entire veggie mix was then poured into a pot of hot Chinese tea. I put the tauhu and grounded peanuts on the right side of the dish.

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On the top left is poached fish with tumeric, ginger, garlic and shallots. Half a piece of a mackerel steak. To the left is pak choy, a form of Chinese cabbage that was stir-fried with garlic. And the bottom is button mushrooms that were poached in rosemary and oregano.

This is bento #7 and now back to trying to lose weight. I put on 3 kg from my UK trip and now have to lose it all.

: : How long does it take to make a bento : :

6 bentos so far and not much difference in the timing because I don’t do much preparation before hand.

I usually try to start cooking around 8 pm and finish by 9:30 pm. This includes cutting the veggie and meat, cooking and then decoration.

I’m getting better at it but still needs a lot of work. Noodles are still an issue as I can taste the salt in them. Ah well.

Am bringing one bento box container with me when I go over to UK. At least got a small pre-packed lunch. 🙂

: : Bento 4 ~ Smiley Face with Dino Eggs : :

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Making faces with food. Does that count as playing with food?

See the things I do to keep myself occupied away from playing an online game?

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I was ready to stop when one of the quail eggs I did kind of cracked a bit when I started doing the dino eggs. But didn’t look too bad so moved ahead. See the nest of dino eggs amidst the jungle foliage (broccoli) against a starry night?

OK, I’m cracked up. 🙁

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Was trying to do a checkered board but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Haha! The terrine from the other day wasn’t browned enough to give the effect. Anyway, hid it with some of the carrots where I stuff the egg yolk circles in. Waste not, want not, even if it’s itty bitty little scraps of food.

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Mackerel poached with 1/2 teaspoon of tomyam paste and water and some garlic. Then made the smiley face. The moustache was leftover chai sim in the fridge.

The fish is sitting on a bed of cucumbers. I need to beef up my intake of vegetables and I still got the feeling it wasn’t quite enough.

Haven’t quite mastered the way of the artist but I can’t do much atm since I’m going to be away soon. So can’t stock up on any food else Granny nags me for buying too much and poor her has to eat it. Hee hee!

: : Bento #3 ~ Getting slightly easier but harder too : :

3rd bento box is done but some technical problems has arisen.

-Wilthering seaweed.
-Yolk in quail’s egg has settled on the bottom. Haha!
-Wasn’t easy to cut out the shapes in the quail. Haha!
-Make sure that nori sheets are oil free!
-Use something to completely level the noodles! It’s not flat enough
-Get some cherry tomatoes or something that is red to give it the red color.
-Don’t be lazy to cut cucumbers to fill in.
-Get a smaller food container.
-DON’T USE TOO MUCH HAM!!

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Red rice noodles stir-fried with long beans, yellow capsicum and onions. Seasoned with 2 teaspoon of Mirin and 1 teaspoon of Lea & Perrin’s Worcester sauce. Surprisingly, the veggies didn’t mix too well, or the noodles were perhaps a bit too long. Anyway, separated out the veggie into a smaller corner where I covered them with some cut-out shapes of ham and carrots.

The quail eggs were interesting to cut. The danger was that too much pressure and the egg may just burst. Also, I found that the egg yolk have all sunk to the bottom because the eggs were propped upright.

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This was neat to do. I cut the stars in the egg and stuffed in some star-shaped carrots. Used the same mould so it stuck together well. Haha! The idea came from this Japanese Bento Blogger. She’s amazing.

I also wrapped around sheets of nori seaweed around the eggs since these were leftovers from the flower cutting. It left a very nice color combination. Better than I thought.

Didn’t fill up the entire container because I thought it might have been too much eggs by then.

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The stir-fried veggie is underneath. Yes, ham. Ham. HAM!!! Very very salty and fatty. 🙁

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A garden full of flowers. Tried to make the green lawn but there’s more to bento making then what I had expected. Need to find a way to make the noodles more flat. It was too uneven so the flowers weren’t completely flat. Probably better to use rice.

Ok, now all I need to do in the future is think how to avoid the usage of ham. Also, to cook fish or meat for lunchbox. Been lazy the past few weeks so it’s either egg or beans for the protein source. Else, I’ll eat only a small protein portion during dinner and put the other half into my lunchbox.

: : Bento Box ~ Difficulty in Meal Preparation : :

The one thing I realised about the various bento recipes and pictures out there, is the high usage of forbidden ingredients in the low sodium diet i.e. cheese, ham, processed food. Plus, a lot of the Japanese bento recipes are currently using a lot of sugar in their meals.

I kinda cheated on using ham for tomorrow’s meal but have to seriously cut back on it. Same goes for the sugar. I have to see whether there are some alternatives or other more traditional Japanese-type of recipes that may help. Then, see if it can be combined with the usual Chinese home-cooking that my Granny does.

Although, I’m still trying to top the 5-7 servings of grains and veggies. Am rethinking how to deal with breakfast and slowly cut out milk from the diet. Not exactly that easy.