I still try to make the kids bento as often as I can. They are still not eating much and remain as picky as ever. But I am a persistent mother who would very much like to win this long drawn battle of wills at mealtimes.

These were prepped during Christmas. I taught them the song “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” one day and made them a little Rudolph with a cherry tomato nose. I used fried wantons (meat and shrimp dumplings) as his antlers.

I made these when my goddaughter came over for dinner some evenings ago. I used a little ketchup to make the rice a little orangey in colour and cut nori (seaweed) to make the tiger cubs’ stripes and ears. I used a craft punch for the mouth. The cubs sit on some baked chicken wings, tomato-scrambled eggs and broccoli.

And this was how I shaped rice just to get them to eat when we had some roast duck. The brownish black bit is the roast duck sauce.

The kids always prefer pasta to rice. For pasta meals, I would usually cookie-cut some cheddar cheese slices to add to their pasta. I tried to make the shape of a bone using flying fish roe some time ago but it was an epic failure.

Kids: Wow, look! Dogs! Mama, erm, but what’s that thing? (referring to the roe)

Me: It’s roe. The stuff you love in your sushi.

Kids: Oh yay! Pok pok pok! We like! (they refer to roe as that cos’ of the fun they have trying to bite into each one)

Didn’t connect to any “bone”.