Anya and I attended a bento-making workshop hosted by Dettol and taught by bento artist Shirley. I have always been fascinated by the amazing bento creations that I see online so I was really excited to have the opportunity to make one of my own.

Before we started any food preparation, we were taken through some basic hand hygiene facts and the importance of proper hand washing. I’m actually quite obsessed about hand washing because of diseases like HFMD which are so common among kids of Anya’s age. The kids know that they have to wash their hands, especially after going to the toilet! What I didn’t know was that our usual hand washing is not thorough enough and we miss out quite a few areas that are covered with all manner of harmful bacteria.

After we washed our hands with the 8-step hand washing process, we started our bento preparation! We also washed our hands in between after handling meat, raw vegetables, etc.

Anya was quite helpful during the bento-making session. She did a lot of the cutting with the shaped cutters and helped me with the arrangement. But she was also busy making her own special salad on the side with all my leftover ingredients. We had a lot of fun during this bento-making workshop and I was very proud of our final product! I think it looked pretty good and it tasted very yummy too.

More importantly, we learnt about good hand hygiene and the need for proper hand washing. In fact, when we got home, Anya used one of the posters that we got from Dettol to teach her father the 8-step process of hand washing. I’m glad she takes it so seriously and hope she follows the steps even when she’s in school and I’m not there to remind her!

Disclaimer: We were invited by Dettol to attend this bento-making workshop. All opinions are my own.