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

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  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

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

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  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. :-)

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  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/

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

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  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?

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  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

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

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

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  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

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  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

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  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!

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

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  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.

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  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

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  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...

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  18. Very intereresting reading. thx

    paxil

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