Experience with my bento kits collection
Although I hardly do any bento now, I have almost completed my bento kits collection over the months.
Lunch boxes: Kitty Face & My Melody, Mickey & Friends.
So far, QQ only brought bread to school with her lunch boxes. Prefer bigger box as I can place more variety of foods into the container.
Egg mould shape: Kitty, Heart, Star. Egg Tulip cutter and Kitty& Bear Rice Mould
It is easy to shape rice using the rice mould. QQ loves could just eat her plain white rice like that. But for the egg mould, I only used it once as QQ dislike hard boiled egg. Maybe I can use the heart shape egg mould for my nasi lemak dish one of these days.
Cutter for bread, cookie and sausages: Mickey& MInnie, Pooh, Kitty.
Few days back, I made shaped Chinese pasta (”mien fen kau” in mandarin) with them! Shall use them again to bake my first badge of cookies very soon.
Silicon cups. Only used them for jelly. It is cute!
Dividers & Cute Picks
My doubts on bento-ing:
Although I have got an almost completed collection, I am still blur about using these stuffs. Hope to get tips from sifu out there on these:
1. Are bento that I see online mostly decorated for meals at home such as lunch, dinner. Otherwise how do I close them with the picks and stuffs?
2. Good one from Liz. I also find that by cutting out breads or fruits using the shape cutter, we are indirectly teaching our children to eat only the nice part, but discard or worst till, let parents eat the ugly unwanted parts. Therefore I find that cutting bread into shapes is not a good idea after all. Unlike for baking, we can use the pastry and reshape them again. Any tips to help deal with this issue?
3. Although imported from Japan, most of them are made in China. Haha….really can’t help but worry if the plastic can withstand the high temperature, such as making muffins with the silicon cups as on the packing instruction. Personally I think I only dare to use them for decor purposes.
*I got most of the items above from CP’s site (except the Mickey box is from 100Yen shop).
Wah lauuu…you have A LOT of bento stuff. I think I have not even half of that…hahahha. You are right, I won’t use the silicone cups to bake muffins…I will use them to put food. I think about the breads / fruits shaped cutting issue, it is all depends on the kids and the parents. I don’t think I will have problems them finishing the food even though I don’t prepare cute bentos for them. Maybe this question should ask Angeleyes…she’s the right person to ask :).
i also slowly collecting bento kits .. but somehow i m so lazy to prepared and not good at this too … but i just love those cute bento kits… hihihi
wah u have alot of collections… i dun even have 1
no wonder CP’s bento all finish, u r one of them who sapu from her ahhaha…. some mummies r reli hardworking in making cute food for their children n i was hoping to b one of them but abit lazy to do it hahaha..
i got most of the stuff except for lunch box…
Me ..a dummy in bento yet getting addicted oredi. Worse is when 100 Yen shop in in town now.Can really go bankrupt buying all thse bento gadgets. & moulds.
A lot for me to learn frm experts like you & other bento freaks!
wah so many stuffs… I like your kitty lunch box.
wahpiang, ur collection also keng wor. haha. senyap2… hehe! im still lazy to use mine. kekeke
I like that Melody lunch box, and I’m still thinking if I should get one too. LOL!
About the wasted part of the bread, I personally eat it, or bake it. Christene shared a recipe at her blog (http://allthingspurple.blogspot.com) and I think after that, the baked bread and leftovers can be packed as bento meal as well. For fruits, I love eating the leftovers as that might be the only time I have to snack on fruits! Oh ya, I have those silicon cups too, but I think they are not meant for oven bake. I read it somewhere…dunno which bento webstore, cannot bake with the silicon cups. For those picks, you can still use them and close the box. I do that woh, but of course, they will “lie down” a bit when the cover is closed.
Thanks for the mention, Amy. haha.
Chinnee, I usually packed them for school, so it has to be tightly packed to withstand jiggling during transport. But I think those jap mom’s ones for toddlers are for home lunch, unless there’s a way for the moms to stop the seaweed eyes and nose and cheese eyeballs from moving around during transport. For me, I use a plastic wrap to make them features stick together and then add on the food (sandwich) till the top of the lid so there isn’t space for jiggling, like in the car sandwich bento.
I usually pack the food with a little space in between, so that when I need to close the lid, I can gently push down the food to compress the food and close the lid. So when you open the lid, its just as goodlooking. If you use lettuce, it somewhat act as a “cushion” for the food arrangement before you press the food down to close the lid. The bottom of the lettuce will sink down together.
Hope that helps.
BTW, the recipe for leftovers is for bread pudding over at my dormant blog, http://www.christeneskitchen.blogspot.com. Used to keep that blog for ashley’s baby food.
Hi, just wanted to say hello, thinking of you, and sending lots of hugs over
Wow, that’s quite a substantial stash. I bought some stuff from the 100yen store but have yet to start using them. Maybe when YY starts to go to school next year…but I really doubt I have the patience and creativity to make nice ones.
lovely sets, not only QQ, me too love them very much once I saw the pics, I am a fan of all those disney, my melody, kitty, etc characters.
and u have such a good way for your girl to get them, creative thinking!
THAT’s A LOT OF BENTO STUFF!!!!! hahaha I only bought a few…that also most of the time no chance to use cos Bryan is too impatient for me to make his meals look nice!
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