Bent on Bento

My son Ethan is an extremely picky eater.  He doesn’t like meat, vegetables, fruits…he only likes rice with soy sauce or gravy.  I have had to sneak in pieces of meat just to make him eat some, but most of the time, he would insist on inspecting the food before putting it in his mouth.

It is my fervent hope that creating nice-to-look-at bentos for his meals would entice him to try new foods, and hopefully make him eat more nutritiously.

So yesterday evening, I decided to make him a nice bento dinner.  I frankly don’t have any tools to create cutesy shapes for kids so I had to create something from what little items I had.  So I whipped up this simple car bento (made from steamed rice) in about 30 minutes (took a little bit longer because I had to mould the car into shape without the use of a car mould!).  The wheels of the car are decorated with cheese slices and boiled carrot slices, whilst the windows are made from steamed minced pork and egg, which my Mom made.

I added some grapes with food picks to make it interesting, and I put some soy sauce in a mini bottle so my boy could have some fun pouring it over his rice. 

I used a Donald Duck bento box and Ethan was just so excited when he saw it!  He wanted to open it right away!

The first thing he did was to put one grape in his mouth!  But he did not eat it though – he merely played with it…

However, he enjoyed pouring the sauce on his rice, and although he still picked out the meat and did not touch the cheese and carrots, he at least finished most of the rice.  He was very distracted by the Donald Duck box though…do you think I should use something less distracting the next time?

Toddlers & Kids carrots, cheese, grapes, pork, rice

Today I prepared a bento jampacked with protein goodness for my hubby.  Not intentionally, of course, but only because we had some barbecued and roasted pork left over from last night’s dinner.  I had bought the pork from a local Asian grocer here.

Instead of the usual steamed rice, I made him some simple egg fried rice, seasoned with just soy sauce, sesame oil and dark soy sauce.  Vegetables were in the form of green lettuce and sliced cucumbers.  And yes, I didn’t forget the chilli sauce either!

It will certainly be a very filling lunch!

Adults egg, pork, rice

I made some homemade “char-siew” (baked pork slices) yesterday evening.  Of course I had the help from some Lee Kum Kee “char-siew” marinade.  I marinaded 1lb of pork slices with 5 tablespoons of sauce and left it in the refrigerator for a good 5 hours or so.  Then I baked the pork in the oven for about 45 minutes, sliced them up and voila… yummy “char siew”.

It was way too much for us to finish last night during dinner, so I packed some for my hubby’s lunch today.  His bento today is “char siew fun” with sliced cucumber.  For dessert, I threw in some seedless grapes.  The “char siew” looks a wee bit too dry, so I drizzled some of the marinade on it too.

Adults pork, rice