Bentos (2009-)

[helenjp]

Moisture - this is more thqn just an aesthetic issue. Wet and not too salty = happy bacteria. In summer I'm really fanatical about this, but even in cooler weather, you can't really expect to tip stuff out of the frypan and into the bento box. I use either a small bamboo mat (for preference - it not only drains moisture like any sieve, it absorbs moisture) or a doubled layer of kitchen paper on a tray to soak up initial water-shedding.Japanese techniques like dressings with ground sesame, katsuo flakes, or kelp fluff are intended to absorb moisture that'as why they are such staples of bento cuisine. Ground nuts (even peanuts) and Chinese meat or fish flosses work well as an edible lining too. Failing that...yup, paper towels all the way!

[Kouign Aman]

At my kid's school, they had a shelf for their lunch bags (kindergarten). This year, they keep them in their backpacks, which are hung up outside. Keeping it upright in between is iffy, because what kid pays attention to the orientation of the backpack? We just pack the food snuggly in the containers and let it go. We pack lunches, ala FatGuy's photos, rather than those elegant bentos. Summer heat does play a role in what we choose to pack. A nicely sliced melon can get a good start on fermenting, if not chilled by the melting yogurt pop next to it.

[racerken]

Here is my 10 yen...

I have two kids 13 and 15 who attend American School during the week and Japanese School on Saturdays. During the week they want to eat sandwiches just like everyone else and we like it that way because it's alot easier to prepare. On Saturdays, we have to follow the typical Bento process or else we get scolded AND all Japanese school children compare everyone's Bento box. Just last weekend, I prepared rice and gyoza but I forgot to add the sliced cucumbers, nori, furikake... One boy in my son's class mentioned, 'kawai sou ne' when he looked at my son's Bento contents. it means, 'i feel bad for you'.

This is what survived our kids.

this is our inventory of bento boxes:

We have one with a vacuum valve, blue ice insert, dividers, multi-story w/hashi...

This will save anything that could spoil on a hot day:

I found these units at Tokyu Hands and they come in many sizes.

The units consist of a container, a lid, a rubber o-ring (hollow), a blue ice retaining clip, and the blue ice. We never had anything go bad. No leaks either. As a matter of fact, nothing with an o-ring leaks and if they do, it's probably because external heat caused the internal pressure to increase forcing liquid to escape the seal of the o-ring -> content is probably spoiled. (again, never happened to us)

Here is the lid with the cooling unit attached.

These are the different sizes.

Here is your basic Bento Box with fancy sentences. This one states, 'Leaflet tight, It is so wonderful to be able to maintain your dreams.'

I like the single and/or double divider inserts. It keeps gooey things apart. BTW, I forgot to bring our shoyu and ponzu containers which are tiny fish with a screw-on cap.

These are both too small to use today but for some reason we can't throw them away because they are sentimental? Or we are mental. Little of both.

This unit is great for keeping things pin-pin-pari-pari fresh because it has that vacuum seal. See the red button?

This the one I use for work.

The top has a enclosure that houses a pair of hashi. The sides have your typical clasps which by the way fly open so you have to have the bag.

You can see there are two containers in one so you can have your gohan in one level with your upper level with the main course. The discoloration is from repeated use in the microwave.

Miniature muffin foil cups are a necessity to keep everything separated until it's time to dine. I can't find them anywhere in the US but if you go to Japan, go to Tokyu Hands.

These dividers make you kids think they are at the train station in japan because every bento box at the train stations have these cool strips. Again, at Tokyu Hands.

Sorry to clutter this up with so many pictures but I'm proud of my lifetime search for the ultimate bento boxes.

[heidih]

Just curious about the soy sauce containers. When I was doing bento for my son's school lunches the local Marukai had both a fish and a pig shaped one. Is there a different usage for each?

[racerken]

I have the tiny fish one which only holds enough to want more...

I doubt there is any hidden zen meaning for fish vs. pig. If I were to take a wild guess, put tonkatsu sauce in the pig.

[Peter the eater]

The bento concept needs more exposure where I live in Atlantic Canada. I've got two in kindergarten who get subsidized milk every day and hot lunches at the school twice a week. On other days I make them a nutless sandwich or some other protein and carb combo. Last night we had a parent-teacher meeting and one message was clear: this class of 23 five-year-old's can fill a trash can every week with the packaging that comes from home. The mindset here, sadly, is plastic spoons and disposable Ziploc bags.

[nakji]

I'm not sure "other priorities" would explain the massive pile of backpacks to which Bebe adds hers by throwing it, rather ceremoniously I'll add, atop the table, lunchbox inside. But a massive pile it is.

Ha! No, I was under no illusions the kids worried about their lunch. It's just I thought somewhere earlier in the topic Steven mentioned that the lunches were collected, and I just assumed that it was then that they were jumbled about.

I visited the Lock n'Lock shop, and while they had several bento boxes on display, only one was directly aimed at kids. It was called "Animal Kingdom", and it was a flat tray-style affair that had molded compartments on the bottom, covered by one continuous top. Looks like it would give you trouble with compartments mixing. There was a "Slim Box" series that had two smaller boxes, stacked on each other, with smaller individual containers in each that were covered by one top - they seemed a bit more like what you were looking for.

[Peter the eater]

From an online mag:

A single school child taking a disposable packed lunch to school can generate 45-90 pounds of garbage each year, according to the New York Sate Department of Environmental Conservation. Kids carrying the Laptop Lunches system or other bento box style container could make little to no trash that same year.

Read more at Suite101: Pack an Easy, Healthy Bento Box School Lunch: Laptop Lunches Kits Include Recipes and Ideas for Fun Kids' Meals http://www.suite101.com/content/pack-an-easy-healthy-bento-box-school-lunch-a153700#ixzz10XfAgIuB

[nakji]

That's an awful lot of trash! I guess most people like the convenience of not having to worry that their kids won't bring their containers home or not having to wash anything up each night before making the lunch as well. The washing up is my least-favourite part of bento-making.

I usually pack a wet-wipe to clean up the worst mess at work, but it's still grim to pick out of the bag in the evening before doing dishes.

[Peter the eater]

Nakji, my kids love their bentos. They've evolved from living room picnics with cartoon animals to bus-worthy school meals. Here's what I made my two for lunch tomorrow: 4 pieces of veg roll (veg = carrot, yellow zuke & leek) with cute soy and plum sauces, cheese& grapes, yogurt and a spectacular Annapolis Valley apple.

[heidih]

Peter those sauce containers are quite cute. Where did you get them? Nice overall bento as well.

[Peter the eater]

Peter those sauce containers are quite cute. Where did you get them? Nice overall bento as well.

Thanks Heidi, Erin sent me a pile of kid-friendly bento accessories from Japan a couple of years ago. This stuff is absolutely unavailable where I live -- unless I travel or buy online there's really nowhere to get it. It's really a shame, parents here want healthy portable meals from home without throw-away packaging.

I took a close-up of the words on the tops because they always make me laugh when I pack them up. The boys blue cover has a typo and the girl's cover has a rather mature message . . .

[heidih]

Hah- I have seen those strange garbled sayings on lots of things in the Japanese discount market. I had access to lots of things here in Los Angeles but had not seen more than the little fish and pig sauce containers.

[Fat Guy]

This past weekend I did some reconnaissance on available containers in Northern New Jersey but, thanks to traffic, didn't get to close the deal. I'm hoping to upgrade my collection soon, though. The real bummer is that they had a great sale on Lock & Lock containers at a store in Teaneck called Amazing Savings, but they only had larger sizes -- for a dollar.

The whole process of making lunches has been enlightening for me, in large part because it's a study in working against inertia. While it's theoretically possible to come up with amazing lunches, several realities work against. First, there are some issues I think are probably universal:

- A lot of kids (mine included) favor repetition of items over trying new items. All the creative meal ideas in the world don't mean anything if your kid doesn't actually eat the lunch you pack.

- It's challenging to shop in such a way as to provide diversity without being wasteful. The small quantities involved mean that even a small batch of something provides enough product to make five days worth of lunches.

- Unless you want to get up at 4am (and I say this fully aware that is is at the moment 4am) every day, you either have to abbreviate the project time or you have to make lunch the night before. Both approaches present limitations.

And then there are some problems we have here in the US that don't seem to exist in Japan. I'm not sure where other countries come out on all this:

- The procedures for storing lunches in most US schools are not conducive to packing anything that needs to stay flat.

- The available inventory of containers in the West is much more limited than in the East. It's possible to acquire a good range of items but it's a project to do so.

- Allergy policies, now the norm in US schools, limit the available palette of ingredients.

- The impoverished US school-lunch scene means your kid is the outlier if he or she has a non-crappy lunch, or anything that smells, etc.

I also keep thinking about definitions of "bento" and whether anything I make for lunch approaches any conceivable definition of the term. Certainly there is a narrow, traditional definition out there that excludes not only my son's lunches but also many of the lunches that have been posted on this topic. I guess the broader definition is "any portable lunch where some care in packaging and presentation has been taken." I don't know.

Anyway . . . let me catch up on recent lunches.

At some point I have really got to up my game in terms of my own sushi making, so I don't have to rely so heavily on restaurants. At the moment I live across the street from a place that makes decent sushi cheap, but eventually I won't. At this point I can make rudimentary maki but not well enough to create a consistently attractive result that holds together well for travel. (No I did not make the sushi items pictured here.)

I recently started experimenting with adding meat items to PJ's lunches (as you may recall last year's school had a no-meat policy). In our first discussion of the possibilities he asked me to make a brisket. This created two issues: First, a brisket of beef, even in its smallest subdivided supermarket incarnation, is a fairly large piece of meat that generates enough product for about 25 school lunches. Second, it's hard to think of a way to package it that isn't a sandwich. I was also not completely convinced that he'd enjoy cold brisket, so for our first brisket outing I made half a brisket sandwich and half a turkey sandwich.

He ate the brisket with gusto and rejected the turkey, and asked for brisket in his next two lunches (until the week thankfully ended).

(In the above photo there's also a pasta salad made with pesto and a medley of pasta shapes utilizing excess from the previous night's dinner.)

The profusion of brisket with which I was faced could have provided lunches for a month, but I eventually made chili with the remaining meat and took brisket out of the rotation. I'll do another round of brisket at some point, though.

Yesterday I utilized leftovers from some noodles (bun xao) and fried rice (com chien) from our local Vietnamese place.

PJ was a fan of the fried rice consumed at room temperature. The noodles didn't work for him, though.

I think I'm now all caught up. Time to figure out today's lunch.

[Kerry Beal]

This past weekend I did some reconnaissance on available containers in Northern New Jersey but, thanks to traffic, didn't get to close the deal. I'm hoping to upgrade my collection soon, though. The real bummer is that they had a great sale on Lock & Lock containers at a store in Teaneck called Amazing Savings, but they only had larger sizes -- for a dollar.

Great looking lunches Steven - where did you get that great stainless container with the locking lid? Love to find something like that for my rug rats lunches.

Edited October 5, 2010 by Kerry Beal (log)

[Fat Guy]

Somewhere way back on the topic you can see a photo of the lid for that container. It shows some Korean cartoon penguin named Pororo. The fork-and-spoon set has the same character on it. I got both items at H-Mart, the Korean-American megastore chain.

[Fat Guy]

Here it is:

The container has served us well. It operates smoothly, just like the Lock & Lock products, and makes a tight seal. I should add, though, that two of the other containers I purchased at H-Mart are still -- more than a year later -- too tight for PJ to open.

[Kerry Beal]

Here it is:

The container has served us well. It operates smoothly, just like the Lock & Lock products, and makes a tight seal. I should add, though, that two of the other containers I purchased at H-Mart are still -- more than a year later -- too tight for PJ to open.

I shall check at our local asian market - my rug rat doesn't open containers anyway - so as long as her school peeps can open it everything is golden.

[Fat Guy]

The latest ruling from on high at the school is that we're supposed to strive for "waste-free lunches." In other words no zipper bags or other disposable packaging. I took a crack at it this morning but realized I will need more (and mostly smaller) containers to pull that off consistently.

I also noticed that Amazon has those little plastic soy-sauce bottles cheap, so I ordered some.

[Chris Amirault]

The latest ruling from on high at the school is that we're supposed to strive for "waste-free lunches." In other words no zipper bags or other disposable packaging.

Jeepers. The regulatory arrogance at that place is astonishing.

[prasantrin]

Why is it arrogance to encourage consideration for the environment?

The use of bento boxes is amongst the most environmentally friendly option, and although most of the lunches being posted in this topic would hardly qualify as "bento" in the traditional sense, I appreciate the attempts to reduce waste (even if those attempts may be a side-effect rather than an intention). I'd much rather have a school tell me not to use disposable plastic bags than tell me not to have peanut butter in my lunches.

Oh, those plastic soy sauce bottles are disposable, so they're not entirely "waste free"

[Chris Amirault]

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Steven, are you including ice packs in your bento? I wonder what the temp is in there throughout the day.

[Fat Guy]

I haven't really been worrying about temperature, because we haven't had any hot days, I haven't packed anything that has caused me serious concern about food safety, and a lot of the lunch components start off at refrigerator temperature (or, in the case of bread, freezer temperature) and everything goes in an insulated carrier. But I should probably pay more attention to that. I have several gel ice packs in the freezer that could easily be deployed. I have to do some experiments and measuring.

The product description for those little sauce containers says "reusable or disposable." I take that to mean they can be washed out and reused if you don't want to throw them out.

[Kouign Aman]

Are rubbermaid containers too hard to open? They work well for us.

Empty food dye bottles can be washed and used for soysauce. While not being as cute as fish, they hold more.

At my local grocery, they're about $1 each (box of 4 colors, $4.29), but the bottles are really just a side benefit - I paid for the dye.

Slice up extra brisket, separate the slices w wax paper or something, and freeze. Then PJ can have brisket sandwiches whenever he wants, but not in such a continuous stream he gets sick of them forever.

[nakji]

PJ was a fan of the fried rice consumed at room temperature.

My husband is a huge fan of fried rice in his bento, too. Some cold blanched broccoli florets and a boiled egg make it a fairly well-rounded meal, too. When I pack cold rice, I like to add a squeezy tube of thinned gochujang to jazz things up. It really pops broccoli.

If that's too spicy for PJ, you can cut it with mayonnaise, or simmer some soy, sugar, mirin and ginger together for a rice-pouring sauce. That really makes the rice a lot more interesting to eat, rather than just plain soy. I usually put it in a salad dressing container.