Bento Picnic

(Singing) For the first time since forever.... that I've made a bento box. 

This time, I decided to be inspired by the kawaii Japanese bentos that I have seen. I got all that I needed from Daiso yesterday and used two hours in the morning to prepare them. Cooking the normal meals in 30-45 min daily is difficult enough with young kids. Making something which requires precision and artistic arrangement under the same conditions is a performance at a totally different level. 

Jaide kept talking to me while I was doing the egg omelette which was supposed to be cut, using cookie cutters, into various designs. As you can see from the picture below, it didn't turn out very well.

Can you spot the airplane?

I also over-boiled the hotdog octopuses, causing their heads to burst open. Gruesome... (0_o)

A friend from BSF taught me the trick of putting preserved sweet plums into cherry tomatoes to bring out the flavors. However, nobody else could appreciate the taste and so I ended up eating them all by myself. *sobz*

I saw this rice seasoning with 5 different colours in Daiso and I thought that it would be perfect for the rice balls that I would be making. Sadly, there was no blue coloured seasoning so I used green for Joash. Yellow was for Jaide, of course, and pink for Jayna. I used the purple to make little hats for the smiley faces too. The eyes were made of raisins and the mouths were cranberries. The girls didn't fancy either of them though. Oh well...

Here's the completed work! I tried to follow the Japanese cuisine concept of goshiki, or five colors: red (tomato), yellow (omelette), green (cucumber), white (rice, although it was coloured) and brown/black (hotdog). The adorable picks and food dividers also added to the design.

Jaide's Bento

Joash's Bento

Jayna's Bento

All packed and ready!

I actually bought these really cute sauce containers with animal caps but the lunch box is flavourful enough not to need further seasoning so I'll keep them for another occasion.

We took the kids down to a nice scenic place next to our block and spread out a comforter on the ground for the picnic. It was nice and sunny and strangely peaceful on a school holiday. Even then, the kids were rather disturbed by the presence of insects and complained that it was hot out there. Granted, they were all very impressed with the presentation of the food but the ingredients used did not appeal to the girls' taste buds. Jaide hardly ate anything while Jayna only ate the omelette and hotdogs. Only Joash seemed to appreciate the food and ambience sufficiently. Perhaps my kids are only ready for such things when they start going primary school.

The girls especially enjoyed carrying
their own lunch box around.