Wednesday 30 March 2011

My First Bento Box.


I got the Yum-Yum Bento Box book by Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa for my birthday from the boys.  Prior to that I had bought The Just Bento Cookbook by Makiko Itoh (see her blog here).  I have been itching to try making these cute little packed lunches for myself.  I am frankly amazed, however, at the lengths some Mums go to to make beautiful looking lunches for their kids.  When my two go to school, they will be getting a cheese sandwich and an apple like everyone else!




You may have seen my beautiful totoro bento boxes in a previous post.  We are totoro daft in this family.  In fact, Kei introduced us to My Neighbour Totoro and we now have a cupboard full of Studio Ghibli films and loads of toys, T-shirts, whatever we can get our hands on!  

I also got to treat myself to a few bits and pieces for making fun Bento boxes as part of my birthday present.  I got a few things from J-List.


Of course, I started off with a very basic Bento box to let me dip my toe in the water.  I basically just made some onigiri into the shape of fishes.  Here is a great page from the basics section on Just Bento.  Beware, though, I can spend days and days looking through this blog.




I simply served the onigiri with cucumber and carrot sticks and Jumbo prawns.  I also included a wee bottle of soy sauce and a little tub of Marie Rose sauce.  The boys definitely loved the novelty of the way the lunch was packed for them.  We ate them at the kitchen table, though - ha ha - not hugely adventurous!


Now, as this post is relevant to Japan, if you want to help the people on Japan rebuild their lives following the earthquake and tsunami, have a look at Bento 4 Japan.  There are auctions where you can get great items if you want to start having a go at making your own Bento boxes or for us in the UK, you can donate to Justgiving which gives you a chance of winning the raffle to win some lovely Bento stuff.

19 comments:

  1. adorable... so you get up at 3am to prepare... but adorable! x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love bento and really want this book, I have some adorable Bento tools that cut veg into pooh bear and hello kitty shapes and I have liitle face hole punchy things like yours!

    Your bento box looks fantastic and I love your bento boxes. x

    ReplyDelete
  3. So cute! Love the fish and you box of bento making tricks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dom - the books say to make the rice fresh in the morning but I made the fishes the night before and kept them in the fridge - they were absolutely fine. I'm not a morning person!

    Perfect - Oh now I want to get vegetable cutters! I could just go very OTT with this!

    Hanna - thanks - I'm delighted with them too. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awesome. Those look like great fun but a lot of work.

    A fellow Scottish food blog has been doing a year of the bento, you might want to check it out:
    http://rocksaltuk.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh my goodness - I've never seen anything like this before!! My kids might even eat it :) XOL

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chris - thanks for the link - really fascinating!

    Happy Homemaker - Hi, nice to meet you. The children's book is great for kids' food ideas. Have you also seen this blog - http://www.cutefoodforkids.com/
    How old are your kids?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you for joining Post Of The Month Club - I hope you will link up in April too (I was secretly hoping this is the post you'd choose!). XOL

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ha ha - yes, this post probably best represents me - doing silly things for the kids. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. This is so inspiring. I don't know about the children...I want one of these for my lunch!

    ReplyDelete
  11. That couldn't be any cuter if it tried! I think this is a terrific idea and I'm so glad I read your post via Happy Homemaker. x

    ReplyDelete
  12. I just popped over from Laura's linky party to have a nosey. Are you mad! I know my daughter would adore that book, but I would get pestered to make more and more exotic creations. I once bought a book called "Felties" really cute little animals made from felt. I ended up doing almost every single one in the book!! I'll stay away from Bento I think! Have a lovely weekend love Linda x

    ReplyDelete
  13. Sally - I had one too and I made one with the smiley face balls for Steve to take to his work. His colleagues probably wondered what on earth?

    Maxabella - thank you - I think al the ideas for Bento boxes are really cute!

    Linda - Yes, mad! At least in this one all I did was shape some rice and kept everything else really simple - you should see some of the elaborate creations! I like the sound of your felties!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I've never seen anything like these before either. They're lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Calling by from Happy Homemaker UK as participating in Post of the Month and really enjoying meeting everyone else and reading their favourite posts. What fun these food ideas look.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thankyou so much for stopping by and leaving such lovely comments, it is much appreciated. Those brownies look mighty good! Have a great week, love Linda x

    ReplyDelete
  17. Oooh look at your box of tricks, I'm going to have to have a look about online! Your bento lunch looks great. I'm really tempted to buy the book...

    ReplyDelete
  18. Very intereresting reading. thx

    paxil

    ReplyDelete