Rainbow happiness

I came across two rainbow cakes online today and since birthday cakes are on my mind I thought I'd link to both of them.  One is a rather straightforward cake - I'm strongly in favour of these.  The other is more complex, but would probably be worth it for the look of surprise on the children's faces!

I then moved to Rainbow biscuits.  This was a really fun search.

While I liked the shape of the above biscuits for some reason I prefer the straight lines of these biscuits.  Add an extra egg if you try that recipe, the comments indicate that it was a very dry mixture.  On the same website I then found a further recipe for rainbow cubes, based on a cake recipe I've been searching for nearly two years!!  Then I began searching further and found some rainbow party theme ideas (including fruit kebab sticks).  I also loved this rainbow bento lunch.  It is a visually attractive and would be really adaptable as a party platter as well. For drinks I think it would be very impressive to have a giant clear jug of watered down juice with a rainbow of ice cubes.  You could even use different coloured fruit inside the ice like blueberries or strawberries. ------------------- The reason for all this searching?  My daughter has received two birthday invitations in the last week.  I've just realised that, due to the makeup of her class, all the class birthdays take place in the last half of the year.  By the time we get to her birthday there is a good chance that we will have been to a crazy amount of birthday parties and I will be desperate for ideas!  That being said, in January this year my daughter decided she wanted a sun and moon theme. I noted it down on the calendar to see if it changed.  Last I hear it was a 'pony princess in space' theme.  We'll see. ------------------ Rainbow photo credit

Home days and bento fun

We are having 'home days.' This is what the Sweetheart calls non-creche days. She is at home because she broke her collarbone and is a miserable wee thing.  Although the break is small 'trivial' as the doctor referred to it - probably because he was surprised that it was broken - it is quite painful and it has been a quiet few days.  Luckily her sleep has improved a bit, I didn't need to get up to give her panadol in the middle of the night and a visit with a wee friend who had a similar injury earlier in the year really improved her spirits.

In addition to being sleepy, moany and weepy she has been off her food a bit.  I guess the pain, lack of sleep and perhaps the pain medication have all combined to put her off.  So today I decided a food intervention was required.

Luckily Giffy lent me this amazing book, The Just Bento Cookbook.  We decided to make the bunny themed meal, with sausage and cucumber tulips.  It is a little hard to see below, but there is rice underneath, with cos lettuce 'grass,' grape 'rocks,' the tulips, bread bunnies and some field mushrooms.  The Sweetheart actually said 'Thank you Mummy for my lovely bento dinner' (a manners achievement for sure) and I heard her talking to herself while eating 'this is the best dinner ever.'  She ate a fair amount of it, then inexplicably put the box on the ground.  When I turned around from sewing to see why the baby was being so quiet it was to a scene of bento leftover destruction: rice everywhere.  Sigh.  I swear I have to vacuum every day at the moment.  Still, glad that the meal was appealing to both of them.  I'll be remembering this.

For those concerned about the waste from the elaborate food prep:  I had a 'bits' sandwich and the Poppet dealt with the rest!






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'Sushi' sandwiches

I was randomly clicking from link to link today and found this sandwich idea.  It reminded me of cheese rolls.  I guess rolling sandwiches works best when the filling is very sticky - like the mixture in cheese rolls or peanut butter.  A jam (cranberry sauce)/cream cheese mixture might also work, as well as cream cheese and savoury flavours.  Marmite should also work nicely, but the great Kiwi flavour of 'Marmite and chip sandwiches' might just take things a bit too far from the orignial bento concept!

Bento madness

A great friend challenged herself to make one amazing bento-style lunch for her daughter each week Maire's blog and the pictures show lunches of some beauty.

We love Japanese food in this family, and our favourite family takeaway is to get bento boxes from Japanese Kitchen.  My daughter can eat her own weight in sashimi and edamame, so it is definitely a great child pleaser.  After looking at Maire's Blog, then a couple of bento sites I decided on a bento style dinner.  As many of my rather crazy ideas go, it started simply, then got a bit crazy.  But it was a nice change, and a top quality family dinner!

I made shrimp on kebab sticks, sticky rice, potato korroke, soba and edamame.  The rice, shrimp, soba and edamame were easy.  There was a failed attempt at home-pickling chinese cabbage (don't try to make up this process).

The potato korokke were interesting, and not at all something I will be cooking again when I am the only parent at home.  Korokke (potato croquettes) are a common bento box item, and one of my favourite fried vegetarian snacks.  However, I learned that the truth was that korokke have a secret ingredient: mince.  Explains the deliciousness, and provides a nice texture to the korokke.

This is the recipe: Potato Korokke   You can shape however you like.  I made both logs and squashed balls.  Because the filling is already cooked, you do not need to cook for very long.  I shallow fried, as I don't have a deep fryer and just can't quite bring myself to use that much oil in one go.  The recipe made heaps by the way.  We all had a couple, and they formed part of our lunches for the next couple of days.  The house has only just lost that 'fried' smell.

The next day my four year old took a 'bento' to school.  She has a lunchbox with a lot of segments and so she had: grapes, soba with soy sauce, edamame, rice and shrimp on a kebab stick, potato korokke and a biscuit (the kiwi element).  According to the teachers she had a great time explaining all the different items to her friends.

So sad about Japan/ Sukiyaki

My very first favourite Japanese food was sukiyaki.  On the first night that I was in Japan Yoshie made this for me.  Just super delicious, but very hard to replicate with the ingredients available in Timaru in 1995.

Luckily though it is now 2011 and I live in Wellington.  There are three or four places within a ten minute walk of my house where I can get all the ingredients for sukiyaki.  When I returned to Japan in 2009 Yoshie cooked it for my whole family one night.  There were eight adults and two eighteen month olds.  It was a great dinner for picking at, and I loved the bento box takeaway Yoshie made up for me to take back to the hotel that night.  It was the most relaxed night of our trip, and probably one of my favourite memories.

Incidentally, apart from 'Meri-san no hitsuji (Mary had a little lamb)' the Sukiyaki song is the only Japanese song I know Acoustic version of Sukiyaki song

Sukiyaki is an awesome meal to make when you have heaps of people over and want a nice social meal.  It is typically cooked at the table, an electric frying pan is a good choice.  I can't be bothered with my electric fry pan, so tend to cook it in my le creuset large pan, then bring the whole thing over to the table. You can mess with the quantities depending on the preferences and number of people eating.  The jelly noodles are the most popular item in my house, so we tend to have a lot of those.  Leftovers are fought over!


Sukiyaki

500g Thinly sliced beef (often found in the freezer sections at Asian grocery stores - you want it to be paper thin)
One packet tofu (firm tofu holds up better for dicing)
One or two packets of jelly noodles, well rinsed (these are cool, they are called shirataki noodles, sometimes konnyaku).  They come in a bag of liquid so are delightfully squishy.  If you can't get them, use some kind of cellophane noodle.
Handful of mushrooms (shitake or enoki are the ususal choice)
One diced leek (save the green tops for making katsudon)
Half a diced chinese cabbage
Sukiyaki sauce (you can quite easily find this in the Japanese section at supermarkets or Asian grocers).  Otherwise google a recipe for making up the quantities.
Water
Four eggs
Knob of butter


Cut up all the ingredients into roughly equal sizes then place on a chopping board ready for cooking.  Put knob of butter in the pan and fry the beef until nicely coloured.  Add in the tofu and swish around.  Add the sukiyaki sauce (you may need to add extra water if there isn't enough liquid once the remainder of the ingredients are added).  You want enough liquid that the food is cooking, not frying, and not poaching.  Maybe half a centimetre across the surface of your pan.  Bring the liquid to the boil and add all other ingredients except the eggs.  Everything cooks very quickly, so just help yourself.

What do you do with the eggs?

Break an egg into a little bowl and mix up.  You dip the cooked sukiyaki into the egg then eat.  The sukiyaki slightly cooks the egg, but it is a little raw, and does freak some people out.

I like to serve this with a small bowl of egg, and a larger bowl filled with Japanese rice, onto which I put the dipped sukiyaki.  The rice then gets deliciously flavoured.

The leftovers for this also make delicious rice balls/ sushi for the next day.