Spaghetti Con Le Sarde Bento

My version though, cooked and tastes completely different from the authentic one. Ok essentially it's just canned Sardines with Tomato Sauce tweaked to my tastes and tossed with cooked spaghetti. I hope you weren't expecting anything fancy. Hahaha!

Planned over for RM's school meal tomorrow. This tastes really nice, surprisingly.

Sandwiches... boring...

But easy to prepare and pack when I am short of ingredients and mojo.

Sausage Salad?

Sounds weird, but tastes nice. After all, if you can have ham in a salad, why not sausage?

A very simple one for Takoyaki, who, due to "combined recess" does not like to queue up for a long time to buy food.

Clear Your Fridge and Pantry by making Bentos!

Here I am trying to use up all our planned overs and leftovers, so we have two different bentos for two kids.

A chicken liver pate sandwich, Babybel cheese and some salad for RM.

And chicken stew over rice and kimchi for Takoyaki. 

Snacks Bento for quick recess

Because RM has to go for song+dance practice during his recess (with me, haha) as we are all preparing for Teacher's Day concert.

Finish each other's... sandwiches

Tuna sandwiches with beancurd chicken and veggies on the side.

Steamboat Leftover Soup Bento

This soup is one of the most flavourful ones any family can cook up. Just prepare a huge pot of simple stock and begin cooking your favourite meats and veggies! We had a miso soup base (wrong choice, it did not pass on any flavour to the cooked meats and veggies at all), and shabu shabu beef, lamb and pork. The lamb really added some oomph to the soup!

Takoyaki really loves the slow braising of napa cabbage (aka wongbok aka Chinese cabbage aka kimchi cabbage) in this soup, so I cooked the last of it for her to bring to school. The soup looks super oily because of all the meats that were shabu shabu-ed in it.

To go with her rice, I added some leftover roast chicken (from another meal) and some salad. Love the bright colours!

Back to normal bentos

Rice, chicken, and tomatoes. Simple.

New Onigiri Wrapper!

Look what I found at Daiso!

I've previously seen it on some online bento store and wanted to get my hands on it. Here I have used it to wrap some round riceballs for Takoyaki and Roast Meat.

Love the cute animals! However, one wrapper can ideally hold only a small ball of rice to be effectively tied up, so to hold enough rice for my two big eaters, I will need to use two each. More work, hahaha.

Japchae Bento

For Takoyaki. I was so thankful I had these ingredients, because she threw a bomb at me late last evening that she had to stay back in school and I didn't have any planned overs. Cooking this took about 15 minutes excluding cooling time so I had, after Mouse had gone to bed, to whip it up.

The ingredients are sweet potato noodles, ground beef and baby bokchoy 小白菜. Not very authentic but at least the taste was near enough.

Sausage Don

Under request from RM, I found a little mojo to do some sausage art. It's been so long since I last did stuff like this!

Flowers for Takoyaki

Octopuses for RM

Other sides include pork jerky and blanched green beans.

Anyhowly Match Bento

A peanut butter sandwich (homemade bread), cold steamed chicken and cherry tomatoes. Whatever is available in a pinch.

French Toast is a great way to use up stale bread

Especially homemade bread, which, without all those additives in commercial bread, doesn't stay soft as long. I have some sourdough bread which is perfect for turning into French Toast to feed those hungry wolves of mine.

This is Takoyaki's box, which consists of French toast, cherry tomatoes, cuke sticks and some ham cones. RM has the exact same foods in the Lego box, but in my half asleep state, I accidentally deleted the image on my phone instead of uploading it. Boohoo!

Beat Summer with some Cool Noodle Salad!

June and July have been two months of oppressive heat and sudden, short downpours for Singapore this year. However, high temperatures are the norm so I decided to toss up some cold udon salad for both my critters. 

First, I cooked some dried udon, washed it well, then added julienned Japanese cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes, sesame oil, a dash of homemade mentsuyu (Japanese dipping sauce) and natto, and mixed them well into a big bowl of slime. Next, I portioned it out into each critter's box.

Takoyaki's has Japanese seasoned jellyfish (chuka kurage) on top.

While Roast Meat has shredded surimi crabsticks.

And hey! There's some slimy noodle salad left for me to devour today. Yay!

Old Cucumber Soup Makes One Feel Young

Nourishing and flavourful, this soup hits the spot whether it's high summer or coldest winter (not that we get winter here). Takoyaki was practically begging me to cook this last night so she could bring some to school today.

On the side are some naibai stir-fried with garlic and dried shrimps or 虾米 (planned over) and because even pickled vegetables can't keep forever, I added some of her favourite pickled takana to her rice.