It was tiring but we all had a great time during the event. Yes, the boys tagged along with us too though they were sick just because they didn’t want to miss the magic show which is part of the event.

These were the bentos I made during the demo.

A snowman onigiri bento and a pumpkin egg fried noodle bento.

I landed on these two themes simply because it was a Church event and I thought I shall make something that the audience can re-use the idea for the upcoming celebrations – Halloween and Christmas!

Just to make the bento demo session more interesting, I actually prepared some snacks for the audience. So instead of purely watching, the audience ate too.

I steamed some sausages and decorated them into baby octopuses and sweets.

Besides the sausages, I made some mini sandwiches too decorated with cute cheese bunnies.

I tried to make as much snacks as I could with the limited time I had, but the food still way to little to serve the huge number of people. They were all gone after a while the counter was opened! I wished I could have made more seeing those disappointed little faces (you are right, this counter attracted mostly kids)!

In fact I was glad that this demo actually attracted few really keen mothers and some youngsters too and I hope by then I can spread the culture of bento-ing.

By the way, remember to visit this blog tomorrow as I’ll be having a blog anniverssary giveaway!

Happy bento-ing to all!

I made a full copy of the article here from ParenThots (the parenting column of The Star Newspaper) for your viewing pleasure.

You can view the original post either in The Star newspaper parenting column, or online from The Star Online -> Lifestyle – > Parenting.

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Try Bento For Picky Eaters

Article from The Star-Parenting (ParenThots Features) – 12 July 2010

By ZIEMAN

Some of the bento lunch boxes prepared by Chef Ai Ping at the House of Ingredients.

It all started with friends asking Chef Ai Ping for food ideas for their picky children.

Sharing recipes with friends and family members soon became a routine in Ai Ping’s life. That was how she was inspired to come up with the bento box idea two years ago.

“I started blogging first (www.kidsdreamwork.com) with the intention of sharing everything about food and children. The blog was a platform for parents to exchange ideas,” says the soft-spoken Ai Ping who has two boys – Liew Jia Yu (JY), five, and Liew Jia Qi (JQ), two.

After starting her blog, Ai Ping discovered there were so many interesting things happening during a child’s growing phase. So, she decided to jot down everything as part of her diary for her kids.

Since Ai Ping and husband Liew Chee Wah, 36, share the same interest in creative and cute food presentation, they decided to include in their blog posts about “Kyaraben” or “Charaben” (Character Bento) food for children.

Bento, or boxed lunch, has a long history rooted in ancient Japan. It originally began as a simple meal but today it is a vibrant artform which has become a trend worldwide.

Ai Ping explains that Japanese art bento has its own set of guidelines. Traditional bento follows a couple of basic rules – part rice, protein, vegetable, and one part “treat” (usually either pickled vegetables or something sweet).

Chef Ai Ping uses her creativity to make her bento set look attractive and enticing to children.

“You can design your bento and personalise it. It’s not only fun but attractive, too. There is an art to packing bento boxes for adults and kids. Since I started coming up with bento box lunches and blogging about it, it’s been so much fun and a great creative outlet for me,” says the Penang-born IT consultant.

Before she knew it, Ai Ping was regarded as an expert in bento food for kids and she’s even been called on by the House Of Ingredients in Sri Damansara to conduct cooking classes and demonstrations. “Sometimes, readers share their own creative spin on one of my ideas. That is truly inspiring for me …,” says the creative bento maker.

“Encouraging my son JY to eat was a way of getting my creativity out. In a way, he inspired me to come up with more cute faces on buns, croissants, cakes and muffins for his bento.

“These days, JY works with me to create more bento ideas with rice, seaweed, raisins, cheese and other stuff,” says the bento expert whose full name is Goh Ai Ping, 33.

Ai Ping who learned the art of bento from Japanese cookbooks, videos and attending classes, loves creating new recipes for kids, too.

“JY loves suggesting new ideas and my hubby is most supportive. So I am geared to do my best. All four of us, including the little one JQ, are so involved when I’m doing my bento sets,” says Ai Ping.

According to her, to help kids have an appetite to eat, mothers have to be more creative with food presentation. And this where the bento boxes come in.

“I remember buying a croissant from a local bakery to make my son a croissant bento. So, I made a cheese teddy bear peeping out from the croissant bread.

“The facial details were cut from nori (edible seaweed), while the hands were from part of the croissant itself. I gave the bear a little crown, which I think made it look more like a lion.

“JY loves the croissant bentos I make. What I wanted to do was to show him how to have fun with meals,” recalls Ai Ping who has a stack of wonderful bento ideas for kids.

Ai Ping volunteered to give some pointers to help picky eaters:

“Perhaps you could incorporate some cartoon characters which your kids love like Hello Kitty, Bob the Builder, Tinkerbell or any other characters. It takes a while to make perfect bento. But as they say practice makes perfect,” says Ai Ping who turns to the Internet for inspiration on healthy bento ideas.

She believes you can tempt kids with a bento set packed in attractive and colourful bento-style boxes.

So what do you pack in a bento lunch for kids?

“You can start by putting fruits like grapes, easy to eat finger foods, mini sandwiches, pasta, vegies or other treats,” she says.

Ai Ping suggests those who want to get started on bento kits to try and get cute bento boxes, bright picks with fun shapes and cookie cutters to create the fun shapes out of rice, cheese, meat, vegetables and fruits. The rest is up to your creativity ….

“You have to be creative and read up about bento boxes if you want to craft beautiful bento sets,” she adds.

According to Ai Ping, she gets more inspired when she gets a positive and encouraging comment or email from a reader in response to a bento recipe she made.

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Reading this article reminded me about some of my old bentos, I recalled these few bentos I made some time back, which JY loves so much. Just to share with all here.

• Bob The Builder
  

• Bear In Croissant
  

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The filming was totally a great experience for me and it was really fun!

I made a total of three bento as shown in the photo above for the half an hour show. Together with the host and the filming crew, it was a day full of excitement…

The filming took about 7 hours, and everything was so impromptu, no scripts, no preparation nor rehearsal. That was the main intention of the show as they wanted it to be as casual as possible since the targeted audiences are kids aged 7-12.

I managed to snap some photos while it was not my turn to go on the filming scene. LOL

This photo shows the crew shooting the host making the opening introduction. If you realized the small TV on the table, you can see the host 王雪晶there.

Following photos are the close-ups of the bento that I made – A bee in the flower garden, a burger teddy bear and a car spelling bento.

For this teddy bear burger bento, it was decided on the spot because I was planning to make a little piggy initially but due to the religious reason, I better don’t!

I had a great time during the filming with the friendly host and crew, just hope that I didn’t sound too bad in the show because I lost my voice two days before the filming and I just regained it the night before. In fact when the filming completed, I lost 90% of my voice again! LOL

This is again another great and unforgettable experience for me!

I was requested to make another three bentos for this session.

Since this session was not limited to sandwich bento like the Astro XTY show, I decided to make bentos with three different ingredients – an onigiri bento, a spaghetti bento, and lastly an egg sandwich bento.

For the Astro XTY 阳光列车 show, due to the age group of the target audience which is 7-12, I had to make something that a kid as young as age 7 can do on their own for the show, and it has to be sandwiches.

To show how much variety and fun we can have with making bento, I purposely chosen three types of different bento boxes – a sandwich bento box, a 2-tier bento box and a rectangle 1-tier bento box.

It was so happened that there was a children cupcake class on going when I was in the interview session, I had unexpected little spectators around too while I made the bentos.

I think the little chick on the spaghetti and the 2 rice balls faces catch their attention the most as some of them kept asking me if I can teach them how to make those.

These are some close-up photos of each of the bento I made.

For the first bento, I made meat floss onigiri decorated into a boy and a girl. There were also hash browns, endamame, grapes and cherry tomatoes in the bento.

I was trying to make a little chick sitting in her cozy nests which is the spaghetti for the second bento. There were steamed broccoli, hams and cherry tomato in this bento. In the other section of the bento box I included some strawberries, grapes and steamed carrots cut into sakura shapes.

The third bento consisted of 2 love shape sealed egg mayonnaise sandwiches with a cheese & ham My Melody on top (now looking at the photo, I realized that I forgot to include the ribbon for the My Melody!). In the other half of the sandwich bento box, there were endamame, grapes, strawberry and some steamed sausages.

All the 3 bentos were cleared by the kids once I was done with the session. Thanks for helping me to take care of the food, which I was having headache what should I do with it! LOL

I was told that the interview write-up will be published in the Star paper sometime this week, and it might go to star online, kuali.com and the Kuntum magazine. Looking forward for that! LOL

But before this let me share about the first children bento class that I conducted on 6^th June first. It was a very good experience for me as a first timer, and I hope that the kids enjoyed themselves too!

There were two bento made during the class. The following photos are the sample bento I made for viewing before the class commences.

The first bento was the cheese sandwich with ladybug.

The second bento was the cute little bunny buns.

Following photos were the bento boxes and the ingredients that I prepared for the bento class.

I captured also picture of the whole set of tools I used for the bento class.

There were a total of 25 kids attending the session, which I was quite surprised to see! With that many kids ranging from 5-12 years old at one go the class was actually quite hard to control, with only me to conduct and another helper to help around. There were some turned up on that morning of the class itself, and the ingredients & bento boxes I prepared were not really enough! Sorry for that folks! If there is next time, I’ll make sure I always prepared at least 20% more for everything.

Anyway, we managed to complete both bento within the session which is 1.5 hours. The funniest thing was, while I was already running short of the ingredients for everyone to fill up their bento, the kids were eating the food while preparing their bento! Some already finished up their first bento and started to eat the food which meant for second bento while we were preparing the second one! And some was running after me asking for cheese, seaweed, strawberry or grapes that they can eat. LOL

Following are some of the kids’ masterpiece. When I was downloading the photo from my camera, I realized that I didn’t take any photo of the second bento done by the kids, ooppsss!

Anyway, as you can see, the bento box was not really fully packed due to lack of ingredients. LOL