Bento #4

There is a very painful story behind this Bento #4.... gastric pain that is.. hahaha. I know that most bento bloggers are normally so filled with joy and happiness whilst making their bentos.. of course, my favorite bento blogger Bento Pet did admit that she was feeling a bit frazzled whilst making her bento (but when you look at her bento, you would not have guessed it... it was still looking yummilicious)...haha but never in pain :p. If you want to know what happened, do drop in at my other blog.

Bento #4 consisted of only onigiris with chicken floss as fillings, some cherrie tomatoes and 2 kiwi fruits. It does look like a little bit too much but this bento went from being my lunch (which would have been only 3 onigiris) to a breakfast for 2 brothers :). I do hope they enjoyed it.

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Bento #3

Didn't need to take lunch to work on Monday and Tuesday as I had lunch appointments lined up but I knew that today, Wednesday will be a working lunch for me as I will need to do some final checks on my presentation materials for my meeting in the afternoon. Wanted to make a very simple, almost vegan bento lunch for myself as I reckon that I've been taking a bit too much meat lately.

So, last night, before I went to bed, I looked into the fridge to see what I have in there that are either leftovers or has to be eaten before it expires. Ha.. spotted a packet of Chuka Wakame (soft seaweed in vinegar sauce, with sesame seeds), some left over homemade terayaki chicken and some cherries with skins starting to look like my grand auntie's. That's what I decided to make as my bento lunch for tomorrow. Steamed some rice in the steamer before calling it a night.

This morning, preparing the bento was quite fast and easy. Just had to re-steam the rice ( and found that i do have rather a lot, enough to make 2 bentos) whilst preparing the rest food. Decided to do one for my friend Tobiyama, letting him have the teriyaki chicken pieces. This is my bento lunch, complete with some soup in a cup :)... I really needed the soup as it has been quite cold in the office lately.

Rice topped with some seaweed, bonito flakes and sesame seeds, Cucumbers, scrambled eggs which I fried this morning and wakame.

Cherries

Hot soup in a cup

This is the bento for my friend, Tobiyama. The only difference is the chicken pieces.

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Fresh Fruit Tarts & Tartlets

There was nothing for the food exchange today as I spent most of the weekend doing tarts for 2 friends. They both had their birthdays on the 24th July, which was last Thursday but I didn't have time to make anything special for them. Wanted to do cupcakes or a simple cake, but with all the work I had last week, I just didn't have any energy left by the time I got home.

Anyway, was deciding what to bake for these 2 friends of mine... when the punnets of blueberries and strawberries caught my eye at the usual fruit shop that I go to at Subang. Their Kiwi fruits also looks big and yummy. That kind of decided it for me... I shall make them fruit tarts and tartlets.

I have done this before but I didn't know how to make those fruits all shiny and nice. After surfing around the food blogs, I realized that it was just apricot glaze that did it. So simple but the effect is so nice. Just take 2 globs of apricot jam and 2 to 3 tablespoons of water and boil these (or microwave them). To play it safe, I double boiled the jam and the water. Have a look at the photos, it does make that little bit of difference.


Click here for the fruit tart recipe.

A belated Happy Birthday to my friends Melvin Kuo and Puay Aun. May this year be all fruity and sweet for you both :)

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Kitchen on Fire

I received this mail from my friend Simon this morning and I simply have to share it. A similar accident happened to me some time back but it was not in the kitchen. I did exactly what this video recommended not to do. Anyway, I reckon that most of you who visit here are likely to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

Read first, - then watch attachment !
I never realized that a wet dishcloth can be a one size fits all lid to cover a fire in a pan!
This is a dramatic video (30-second, very short) about how to deal with a common kitchen fire ... oil in a frying pan.

Read the following Introduction, then watch the show ....
It's a real eye-opener!!
At the Fire Fighting Training school they would demonstrate this with a deep fat fryer set on the fire field.
An instructor would don a fire suit and using an 8 oz cup at the end of a10 foot pole toss water onto the grease fire.
The result s got the attention of the students.

The water, being heavier than oil, sinks to the bottom where it instantly becomes superheated.
The explosive force of the steam blows the burning oil up and out.

On the open field, it became a thirty foot high fireball that resembled a nuclear blast.
Inside the confines of a kitchen, the fire ball hits the ceiling and fills the entire room.
Also, do not throw sugar or flour on a grease fire.
One cup creates the explosive force of two sticks of dynamite.

This is a powerful Message----watch the video and don't forget what you see.-

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Taiwanese Mooncakes

Believe it or not.. but more than half the year has pass and Chinese people normally measure the passing of the year by its festivals. Actually, there is the Ghost Festival to go through before the Mooncake festival but looking at the many shopping centres in Kuala Lumpur, the mooncakes have already made their appearance. I love mooncakes and the prices of the yummy cakes have been going up and up each year. I can still remember that they were only about RM3.50 each and my dad would already be complaining how expensive they were. These days, the going price is about RM10 plus minus, depending on the fillings. Of course there are some with more exotic fillings costing way beyond that RM10 price tag.

As a result of that, I decided to sign up for Melinda's Taiwanese Mooncake (of Apple Bakings)class together with my gal pal Sue so that perhaps I can make my own mooncakes. We spent almost the entire day at Melinda's and as usual, class was really fun. There was so much chatting and laughing. Actually, it was a rather great way to loose weight too.. haha.. as we were all so engrossed in making and baking these mooncakes, that by the time we were all done and seated, it was close to 4:30pm. Well, to reward ourselves, we wolfed (actually it just me) down a few of these little yummy cakes...but I had enough to pass around to some friends later.

These are some of the mooncakes made.. there were others but I didn't do that great a job with the phone camera. They turned out rather blur so did not post them. If you are interested to have a look, I do believe Melinda would have plenty to show you :)... perhaps if you are nice, she might have some tasty samples left :D

This one has soft mashed yam as fillings .... super yummy :)

This lovely flower is filled with bean paste and half an egg yolk (salted ducky egg yolk)

There are several varieties here.. some with red bean paste, some with lotus paste, salted duck egg yolk, century eggs.

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Fondant & Gumpaste Toppers

Yesterday was Thursday and when I woke up, it had seemed like it would be just like any other day until I hit the roads. OMG.. the traffic had almost come to a standstill. What is happening? It seemed like a repeat of Monday 's traffic when there were police road blocks going into the city. Did not managed to get very far after about 1/2 hour and my petrol was running low. Sigh.. decided to ask the boss for an Emergency Leave and made a u-turn and headed back for home. That was the bad part of the day.

When I got home, was still in a sore kind of mood. Went to switch on the TV to see if there were any news as to what's happening.. but trust the TV news... which is like no news. All I saw was the ticker which read (translated) "Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as been released from jail... yada yada yada". Channel surfed for a while but there was nothing much to watch.. not even on my favorite Asian Food Channel (AFC) on Astro. Switched off the telly and went into the kitchen (ahhhh.. one of my favorite place to be). Saw the left over gum paste and fondant that I have from the last cuppie session. Mmmm.. now, why don't I do some gumpaste and fondant toppers. If you need the recipe for gumpaste, please hope over to Min's blog "Baking Projects".

Cleaned some of the cutters and other equipment that I needed. The time was around 11am.

Did I have fun... as my mood meter turned from sore.. to sour... to easy...to happy and smiling. Oh yes, playing with gumpaste and fondant is definitely therapeutic for me. Started off with the normal flowers and leaves cutters. These are easy and fun.


Cut out a couple of butterflies just to a variety.


After having done about a few dozens of them, decided to put away these cutters and tried some free-hand stuff. I remember seeing these in some magazines in MPH some time back. Recalled that they look vaguely like these.. but without having the image in front of me, I must say that these are really very crude models of what they should really have looked like. Ha Ha.. just like software applications.. these are definitely versions 1... have to wait for another day off to do versions 2.

You may have to use a little of your imaginations to picture in your mid what I really wanted them to look like..

A basket (alamak.. must have been from the rejected pile)

The rabbit's supposed to be inside a flower pot.. please use imagination

If I didn't tell you that this is supposed to be a frog... would you have thought that it was a lizard.... buahahaha

Hoped that by putting 2 little flowers atop the lotus leaf made this frog look more like a frog... No?? ...sigh..back to the drawing board....

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Bento #2

Some of the food that I used for my #2 bento are in fact leftovers from yesterday's dinner. Ha Ha.. is it about non-wastage or just being lazy to really make fresh food for the bento ;).

Woke up a little earlier today as I knew that I had to boil the egg and roll up the cheese and chicken ham rolls. Found out that using the toothpicks to hold up the cheese & chicken ham rolls served 2 purposes. One, it prevented the rolls from unfurling and two, the top few can be held intact by piercing them against those at the bottom :). It is also great for holding onto the cucumber pieces and cherry tomatoes.

The black pepper chicken sausages were from last night's dinner. What a great way of getting rid of left over food. And also great for stuffing between a bit of corn on the cob (also left over from yesterday's dinner) and the sliced kiwi fruits.

Luckily I decided to pack lunch today as it is raining now. I am sure that the rain will carry on for a bit as the entire sky is covered in dark stormy clouds. Lucky lucky me :D

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