Woohoo.. we survived the first day of school and the first lunch at school!! Going into the new school year, I was not worried about Lil’ C adapting to her school work but I was more worried about lunch time. Lil’ C is a pretty good eater but she is also a very slow eater. Their lunch time is only 20 minutes, so I have my doubts about her finishing her lunch. So for today, I prepared a very simple lunch but with lotsa love.

The bento contains heart-shaped ham and lingonberry sandwiches, checkered apples and carrot sticks. I confess, I sneaked into her lunchroom to check on her. She managed to finish 2 big heart sandwiches and some carrot sticks before time’s up. Sigh. . . . . I will really have to try to keep her bento simple and easy to eat this year.

So tell me, do your kids get a longer lunch hour or they have 20 minutes too?  Do they manage to finish their lunch?

I am sure that for those who are new to bento, you must have noticed that I use a lot of cookie cutters to cut out fun shapes of food. I am sure that it must have crossed your mind that I am wasting a lot of food with all the leftovers from the cutouts. Ah… on the contrary, I do not waste any food and here’s a post that wrote last year on what to do with bento leftovers.

In fact, since you only need a small amount of food to make bento , the leftovers from your regular meals also makes great bentos. One piece of dinner roll or a piece of ham or meatloaf goes a long way in a bento. Here’s some of the bentos that I have made using leftovers – Dim sum leftovers, leftover fried rice, or rotiserie chicken leftovers.

When we first moved here to the Pacific Northwest, we were not big fans of salmon. However we discovered that salmon is so easily available here. It seems such a waste if we don’t learn to enjoy this local product especially since salmon is known for their Omega-3 content. So now we are slowly growing to love salmon. Here’s one of the way that we cook salmon – Honey Mustard Salmon

The salmon was grilled on the BBQ grill and topped with a blend of honey mustard sauce and topped with toasted mustard seeds. Served on a bed of rice pilaf and a side salad, it makes a healthy and delicious meal.

On a side note, school starts next week!!! I can’t believe that summer vacation is almost over. We are trying to get back slowly into a routine this week and hopefully a normal sleep routine for Lil’ C otherwise it will be a very tiring first week next week.

As I mentioned before, a couple of cookie cutters will make a whole lot of difference towards making a bento  appealing. However, there are also different ways to enhance the bento too just like these 2 tutorials that I previously did:

1. How to make an octodog
2. How to make checkered apples

I will try to have tutorials coming up soon but hopefully for now, these tutorials will be come in handy. Have fun bentoing!

Before you can start bentoing (is there such a word??), the most important thing is to get some bento supplies. I get most of my supplies from Daiso but if you do not have a Daiso nearby, check out my previous post on a list of other places that you can find bento supplies.

If you feel a little overwhelmed by the all the bento supplies out there, don’t be because you don’t need all of them. To get started, some cookie cutters, baking cups and food picks will be just fine and dandy.

For this past week, I have been getting a lot of readers looking for lunchbox ideas. Our school here do not start till end of this month but I guess a lot of schools on the east coast has either already started or will be starting in the next couple of weeks. Since we are still on our summer vacation, I am also taking a bento break till next month. So in the meantime, check out all my previous bentos or my flickr page for some ideas.

* Click on any photos to see more. Happy bento-ing!!!

When the birthday boy requested for a Yellow Toad cake, I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought I knew all about Super Mario when I made the Super Mario cake but I guess I was wrong. There are so many new characters in the Super Mario world that I never knew existed! Anyway, I had to rely on the internet to check out what yellow toad looked like & here’s what I ended up with.

The cupcakes were the devils food chocolate cupcake filled with chocolate ganache. Recipe taken from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes

Yellow Toad and all the other characters were made from marshmallow fondant. Usually I would use sugar paste to make figurines but since I was only making one character, I decided to use marshmallow fondant. It worked out ok except that it didn’t dried as quickly as sugar paste, so it was a little hard to maintain the shape of the hat. But in the end, it held up and birthday boy was happy and that was the most important factor.

For the last couple of years especially this past year, there has been a whole influx of food trucks. I am not talking about just the taco truck which has been around for a while but these new fancy food trucks that sell gourmet food. Usually these food trucks can be found in different places every day and the best way to keep track of their locations is through twitter. Having grown up with street food, I love all these food trucks and I am on a mission to try out all of them and what better way to do that than at a Mobile Chowdown.

Mobile Chowdown is a gathering of all the food trucks in one place on one special day. The first one was held last October with less than 10 food trucks. It was so popular that the organizers started to organize one every couple of months and each time the number of food trucks increases. This time, there were almost 20 food trucks including some that drove all the way from Portland. We missed the first three but decided to finally check out the Mobile Chowdown No. 4. From word of mouth, we knew that there were going to long lines and lots of people, we went there just when it opened.

We found one of our favorite food truck, the pig – Maximus Minimus!!! Check out the cool shades on the pig! The fancy background is the Experience Music Project Building.

Side view of the pig

Guess what the pig sells? Pulled pork sandwiches, of course!  There are 2 versions of the pulled pork sandwich. One is .hot and spicy while the other sandwich is sweet and tangy. You can also add a side of coleslaw or chips or cheese

The pig is usually parked at 2nd and Pike St but sometimes the pig wanders around town. We first found him at a park last year. So check out their twitter or website for their current location.

Will continue with another food truck next.

I didn’t even realize it till today that this blog just turned 4!!! Happy Birthday, my dear blog! It has been 4 fun years. However lately I seem to be running out of steam. Could it be a blog burnout? Or maybe I am just running out of stuff to post. I will probably be slow in posting for the next 2 months while I take a little break from blogging. Hopefully I will be back with gusto in the fall when Lil’ C goes back to school. : )

Three weeks since the summer holidays began and we’ve already been on our second camping trip. I wished that the weather was a little warmer during those camping trips but alas, it has been a cold and wet summer so far. This week is supposed to be warming up, so hopefully we’ll be getting the real summer weather soon.
Anyway, back to camping. For us, camping is all about enjoying the nature and of course, food! We’re always on a lookout for more interesting camping food besides canned food. This previous camping trip, we discovered popcorn! We’ve done lots of microwave popcorn but campfire popcorn? it’s a first for us.

We brought along the Jiffy Pop Stovetop Popcorn and popped it over the campfire. Wished the handle was a little longer because it got quite hot holding it!

As it got heated up, it got bigger . . . . . . . .

and bigger . . . . . . . Looks kinda like an alien!!

Then let it cool a little before opening up the package.  Yummy buttery delicious popcorn! The kiddos loved it. I think it will be a staple on our camping shopping list.