Singapore National Day SG50 Food Art

It's our nation's golden jubilee tomorrow. It's a big celebration this year throughout the long weekend from Friday all through to next Monday. And of course I had to come up with a food art for this very special occasion. I actually came up with two designs but I was not happy with one of the design, so I won't be posting it. Hopefully I can improvise on the other design and share it next year. :)


This is Singapore, four friends eating together at the same table, regardless of their race or religion.


To make the people, the rice were coloured using either dark soy sauce or ketchup. Other ingredients used were bell peppers, cheese, ham, nori, red cabbage, aburaage and egg sheet.


I also crafted out miniature food, from left to right clockwise, Prata, Burger, Nasi Lemak and Dim Sum. In choosing the food for each ethnic race, Prata for Indian and Nasi Lemak for Malay were a no-brainer. But I could not decide which food would be a good representation for Chinese and Malay, finally settled on Dim Sum and Burger respectively.


Can you guess what ingredient I used to create the miniature food? Everything is edible, quite fun making this.


This food art of our founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, which I made earlier this year, definitely deserve a repost on this special occasion. For this is also a day to remember our founding father. We would not have been able to celebrate the golden jubilee of Singapore, if he had not dedicate his whole life in building our nation.

The Little Prince Food Art

We just had a long weekend, there was no school last Friday. I just started watching Korean drama over the weekends, after a year hiatus. Found a new one to watch, watching Scholar Who Walks the Night now.  Love it so far, but I'm done with the existing episodes, maybe I should look for another one to watch, lol.


The Little Prince food art, which I made a few months ago, thought of making this because there was an exhibition in May-June of The Little Prince, as part of the French festival. And the animated movie is also coming out this year. This is not my first Little Prince creation, I actually made two different Little Prince bentos, way back in 2012. If you read my post then, the Little Prince book that I mentioned is missing, has not appeared yet, lol, maybe I should go and buy a new one. -_-


The Little Prince was made using rice coloured with ketchup, egg sheet, veggie (sorry, I forgot which type of veggie I used) and nori. The fox was made using mashed potato and the rose was made using veggie and tomato. There was Japanese pork curry and scrambled eggs to complete the meal. My boys love Japanese curry, especially LT. Whenever we go to the supermarket, he keeps pestering me to buy Japanese curry roux so that I can cook this for him.

My food art and bento photos are rather minimalist styled these days. The actual reason for this change is because I'm lazy to think of how to style the photo, lol. -_- But I do quite like the minimalist look too, so I think it should be here to stay. :)

Peppa Pig & Where's Wally

For today's post, I'm sharing two food art I did during the June school holiday. The characters are  Peppa Pig and Where's Wally, they aren't related in any way, except that they both happened to originate from UK, lol. Peppa Pig is a British cartoon series and Where's Wally is created by an English illustrator.


Peppa Pig and George splashing around in the mud. My boys have never watched any Peppa Pig cartoon before. Peppa Pig wasn't so popular here when they were toddlers, they grew up watching Barney, Elmo, Hi-5, Bob the builder, Little Einsteins, etc.


We have a habit of tuning in to YES 933, one of the chinese radio station here, wherever we are in the car. And the station happened to be playing snippets from the cartoon, which they both found hilarious. They were curious as to what Peppa Pig looks like, so instead of googling for the picture,  I ended up making this food art to show them instead.


Peppa Pig and George were both made using ingredients like ham, bell peppers, red cabbage, cheese and nori, and I placed them on a slice of bread.


And this food art is Where's Wally. I think some countries know him as Where's Waldo instead. This was a sandwich served with sausages, cauliflower and seafood soup. I just found the perfect way to serve cauliflower to my boys, bake them with some oil and salt, they taste really good, can sprinkle on some cheese too.


I remembered reading Where's Wally when I was younger but my boys have no idea who Wally is. Uniqlo had a Where's Wally T-shirt collection for both kids and ladies a few months back. I immediately grabbed two for my boys, and subsequently went back to get myself one too, lol. And that's how my boys came to learn about the existence of Wally.


Ingredients used to make Wally were bread, ham, bell pepper, cheese and nori.

Hello......Love Valentines Bento

Valentine's Day is almost here. I'll be sharing my last Valentines bento tomorrow. This post is part of a blog hop with my fellow Bento Bloggers & Friends. So after you have seen my post, please click on the image at the end to go onto the next blog to check out more Valentines lunches. :)


I first saw this cute boy calling girl stick figures on a set of pillow cases. Subsequently saw them on cupcakes as well. I thought they were perfect for a Valentines themed lunch, so I tried to recreate the design on onigiri.


The side dishes packed in the bentos were pork cutlets, fried prawns, broccoli and peaches.


Ingredients used to make the stick figures were nori, heart sprinkler and a strand of ume soba noodle. :)

Now, please click the image above and hop over to Licious Lunches to check out Rebecca's awesome Valentine's day creations. :)

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post:

Lee Kum Kee Ketchup Bento

Lee Kum Kee has just launched 3 products in major supermarkets like Giant and Cold storage. The 3 products are tomato ketchup, pure sesame oil and Chu Hou paste. The bentos I'm sharing for the next few days will be made using these products.


Here are the 3 sauces I received from Lee Kum Kee. You will be happy to know that Lee Kum Kee also printed some recipe cards which you can pick up from the supermarkets.


Here's my bento, inspired by Lee Kum Kee tomato ketchup. Ketchup is quite useful in charaben, as shown in my bento above, it can be used to colour the rice and as blusher for your characters' cheeks.


I also cooked ketchup meatballs for this bento and I'm sharing the recipe below. :)

KETCHUP MEATBALLS RECIPE

Ingredients:
1/4 chopped onions
2 tbsp bread crumbs
3 tbsp milk
400g minced pork
1 tsp salt and black pepper
1 egg
1 tbsp ketchup
meatball sauce ( 50ml chicken broth, 2 tbsp ketchup, 2 tsp soya sauce)

Method:

1. Heat up oil, stir fry onions till soft. Leave aside to cool.
2. Pour milk over bread crumbs and leave for 10 minutes.
3. Add in onions, salt, black pepper, ketchup, egg and the mixture in step 2 to minced pork. Mix well.
4. Oil palms and shape meatballs, pan fry them with some oil over medium heat. Remove and set aside.
5. Heat up the meatball sauce, add in meatballs and coat well in the sauce.

Where to get same or similar items used in today's post:

Bread Car Bento

I've always wanted to make cars from bread buns, but somehow never got to it till now. I did a step by step photos on how to do these bread cars in today's post. :)


I made a boy and girl driving bear cars. :P The bun is filled with tuna. :)


My boys also had croquettes, broccoli and strawberries for lunch. :)


I packed a slightly different version for School, bears driving bear cars instead. :)


They fit in well in these sandwich boxes. :)


I've been lazy to pack myself a lunch box these days, preferring to just spend whatever extra time I have to catch up on my dramas. -_- Here's a dinner I managed to snap a photo of, dinner that day was taiwanese minced pork stew, chicken cutlet and fish soup. :)

Sharing the steps to make the bread cars below.


Slice off a portion of the bread as shown above. Fill your bun with whatever fillings you prefer.


Boil sausage and slice out 8 small sections, 4 for the wheels and 2 for the bear's ears. If you find the sausages too big for the bear's ears, you can cut it with a smaller round cutter.


Attach on the car's wheels and bear's ears with pasta. I'm using a thicker pasta here so it will hold better. Cut out ovals for bear's eyes and circle for bear's nose from cheese.


Punch out blusher for bear's cheeks from ham. You can also use a straw if you do not have a small round cutter. I used the mutli-shoe puncher for the bear's features.


For the steering wheel, cut out cheese with a circle. Then, cut the circle in half and use a toothpick to cut out the shape of the wheel. Lay the cheese on nori and cut nori following the cheese outline.


I used the above cutters and puncher to make the bear.


Assemble the steering wheel and bear on the car and you are done. :) I should have done these earlier, they are cute and easy to make! I will probably be doing lots of variations of these, like Hello Kitty driving a Hello Kitty car, Rilakkuma driving a Rilakkuma car, etc.

One more thing before I end my post. It's Star Wars Day tomorrow, and I will be joining a Star Wars bento hop. I will be posting my Star Wars bentos after midnight, please check back to see what I did and to visit other blogs to check out what my bento friends have done. :)

Where to get same or similar items seen in today's post: