Bento Lunches

Hello there, the fabulous Stumble Upon has introduced me to yet another hobby I never knew I missed. Bento boxed lunches are easily the cutest culinary habit since the invention of Peeps.

Popular in Japan, the idea is to make adorable your packed lunch, not only the container, but actually the food inside it. I found a few Bento Blogs that showed me all sorts of cute ideas. My favorite is easily http://www.cookingcute.com/, but for some reason the owner of the site doesn’t post anymore. (I think she had a baby.) I also like http://bentoanarchy.blogspot.com/ and http://ss-biggie.livejournal.com/ and especially http://www.bentoyum.com/.

I saw all of these and I had to buy a bento box and try it out myself. I’ll admit when I got my box I was shocked at how small it is. I insist on getting a microwavable box even though the traditional way to eat them is at room temperature, because you do not refrigerate them at work or school. (The food safety issues here are obvious.) But my box looked about the size of my fists closed together. I couldn’t imagine how this would fill me, and it doesn’t entirely, but I usually bring something along on the side. I also realized how this could better help me with portion control. Here's a picture of my little Bento Box. Ooooh the cuteness! Oh and it's microwavable.

This bento is not my first, I will try to post that one later, but this is my most recent one. I made a little wrap of spinach, turkey, cheese and humus. Those little balls are wasabi dried green peas. In the top level is a little wedge of Laughing Cow Lite cheese and Triskets.

My first bento was a cheese, onion and green pepper quesadilla cut into little animals using a Noah’s Ark animal cookie cutters. The excess I ate for breakfast. The little piggy of sauce has hot pepper sauce from Trader Joes. (If anyone has a non-wasteful way of getting sauce into pig please enlighten me, I had to put it in a bowl and then squeeze the container to suck up the sauce leaving lots of leftover sauce in the bowl.) The bottom level is my baked ziti. Eh it could be cuter. I'll try harder next time, I have a few cool ideas.

And here's another attempt , a humus smiley with celery sticks and spaghetti.