Bento 101

My love affair with bento started as an accident.  When I was still in art school, I’d often have long days of classes and/or work in which I’d be away from home for 10, 12, even 17 hours at a time.  I’d try to bring some breakfast and some filling snacks (not to mention some potent energy drinks), but I’d almost always end up purchasing at least one meal a day.  As anyone who’s ever been a college student knows, this adds up quickly, and it’s not like there’s much money to spare after tuition, fees, books, supplies, transportation, etc etc etc.  So I started looking online to see if I could find a way to bring more meals with me, but without adding a lot of bulk to my already heavy book bag.

I came across cooler bags, recipes for food that didn’t need to be heated or even kept cold during the day, and suggestions for pre-packaged food options that weren’t very expensive, but often rather unhealthy (ramen, anyone?).  Then I came across Ms. Bento.

I’d heard the term bento before, but I didn’t really know what it was.  Actually, the first thing that came to mind was that Sailor Jupiter, from the anime show Sailor Moon, used to make cute little bento boxes, but references to my favorite childhood show can be saved for another time.  Anyway.. Ms. Bento is not your typical bento lunch box, but it is in fact thermal, which is what I was looking for.  It’s a stainless steel lunch jar with three compartments (there’s also a two-level version , as well as the 4-level Mr. Bento).  The jar can keep food hot or cold (but not both at the same time) for several hours.  It’s around 45 bucks, which initially I thought seemed rather steep for a lunch box, but after reading reviews and also figuring I’d be using it almost every day, I decided it was worth it and made the purchase.

A lot of people tend to think that making nice meals is intrinsically expensive, and this is absolutely not the case.  Many times, it’s actually way cheaper to make things from scratch than to pay extra for things that are already made for you. Plus, homemade food is almost always tastier.  I do a lot of cooking, not only because I have to, but because I’m really passionate about it.  This results in a lot of delicious leftovers.  Making bento lunches gives me the opportunity to repurpose these leftovers.  I’ve found that since bentos typically have small compartments that are often divided into even smaller sections, I can save and reuse even tiny bits of food that in the past I would have just scraped into the trash at the end of a meal.  Plus, all those extra ingredients left over from the meals we originally bought them for can be used up.  I try to keep a running list of all those half bags, jars, bottles, and cans of food and try my best to use them in my bentos, when in the past they’d much too often end up going bad and being thrown away.  Not only is that a sad waste of food, but it’s not very economical if I paid for a whole bag of spinach but only used a fourth of it.

Before I got into bento, I rarely attempted Asian cooking of any kind.  It seemed very foreign and difficult to me, but once I got started, I realized it’s not hard at all!  The hardest part, really, is finding ingredients that aren’t too common in average American supermarkets, but I’ve figured out where I can go and now have a crazy amount of Japanese staples in my pantry and fridge.  One thing I should point out here is that bento does not by any means have to be just Japanese food, or even just Asian food.  As I said, I use a lot of leftovers in my lunches, and we certainly don’t cook Japanese food every single day.  I have been introduced to a lot of new Asian ingredients when reading about bento, but also, I notice all sorts of things when I’m grocery shopping that probably wouldn’t have caught my eye in the past.  Some of this is just the foodie in me, but lots of things stand out to me because of how perfect they’d be in a bento box.  Small things, colorful things, and things with cool shapes jump out at me, and usually jump right into my basket too.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and is more just a personal goal than something that is specific to my lunches.  I don’t achieve it in every lunch, but I’ve eaten much more healthily since I started making bento lunches.  Plus, the focus on color usually results in me using more fresh produce, which is always good in my opinion!

As much as I enjoy making my lunches, I don’t want to spend forever doing it.  Until recently, I’d try to prep all of my ingredients and have a plan the night before, and then wake up a bit early to assemble everything and take a photo.  However, I’m not too fond of waking up in the morning anyway, and already I tend to start work around 6am, so waking up even earlierwas not easy for me in the least.  I recently started making my lunches the night before, clicking a few photos, and keeping them in the fridge until I leave in the morning. This works wonders for me. I also speed things up by keeping a stash of bento goodies in the freezer.  This includes different kinds of rice, mini biscuits, agar jellies, gyoza, inarizushi, veggies, onigiri and sauces.  This is great when we don’t have a lot of leftovers, when I don’t have the time or energy to cook, or when I have some extra space in my bento to fill.