Using Bento Boxes for lunches.
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oh man, don't have time to read now, but i've always been interested in bento. premade bento are pricey to buy and it seems like with a bit of practice they shouldn't take me so much time to make.3
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I may have to look into these. I take my lunch in old plastic containers or baggies.2
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I love Daiso but there isn't one where I live - when I go on holdays to Melbourne I always make sure I stop past to check it out though :P
Well then fellow Aussie, I'm not sure where you're based, but if you'd like a slightly larger box, go to Officeworks. I was there not 30 minutes ago, and the "Brand called Ed" section (the one with all the bright coloured and sometimes rather odd looking stationary) had Bento boxes there for about $10. They also have a collapsible lunchbox thing which seemed kind of neat.0 -
I bought one from Walmart.. the EZ Freeze Collapsible Bento Box. I use it for my lunch and it motivates me to fill it with healthy stuff.
I usually have the main lunch in the bottom collapsible area, and then I have one rectangular box and two small square ones...use it for nuts, fruit, condiments etc etc2 -
I am also a fellow bento-er! Love how much you can have for the calories and how pretty it looks. A sort of newbie to the idea, but I love it! So far I have just been using the Just Bento cookbook (made the mini burgers and a couple of chicken stir-fry type dishes) but will definitely be looking at all those links.
Mangrothian - your boxes look amazing, you can be my inspiration!0 -
I use bentos for my son's lunch but never thought of doing it for myself. Great idea! Oh and I love Daiso!1
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chloeelizabethm wrote: »I am also a fellow bento-er! Love how much you can have for the calories and how pretty it looks. A sort of newbie to the idea, but I love it! So far I have just been using the Just Bento cookbook (made the mini burgers and a couple of chicken stir-fry type dishes) but will definitely be looking at all those links.
Mangrothian - your boxes look amazing, you can be my inspiration!
If you like the mini burgers, try the stewed chicken dumplings (tsukune) and the red wine vinegar sweet & sour chicken. I'm not sure if they're in Maki's book, but they're on the website. Either way, they're great in the Bento boxes, and are easily freezable.
I thought if people want more inspiration to make a bento-style lunch, I may start posting pictures of some of my lunches; some pretty, and some pretty lazy.
I have a feeling that tomorrow may be a hangry day (yay hormones! yay 35C weather!), so I made a bigger breakfast/lunch than normal:
This one equates to 915 calories total. It includes:
- Babybel light cheese (20g)
- Yellow peach
Main box (500mL container)
- 2 hard boiled eggs that have had a quick soak in a marinade (1 cup water, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 black tea bag)
- 1.5 cups mixed blanched veggies
- ricotta with ham and mustard
- seaweed flakes to add pretty (I found some heart shaped ones ages ago, and have never been able to find them since!)
Small blue container (120mL)
- 100g mix of strawberries and blueberries (the rest of the container I promptly decided to spill all over the floor
)
Small green container (70mL)
- 30g raspberries
- 100g natural yoghurt
2 Triangle containers
- Onigiri (rice balls) flavoured with a seaweed rice seasoning and filled with a pickled plum)
This lunch took longer since I had ran out of pre-cooked rice (5 mins prep, 20 mins dry, 1 hour soak and 25 mins cooking for about 10 servings) and needed to boil the eggs, but I prepped my salad and meat for dinner (and ice cream for dessert!) and promptly ate it whilst they were cooking. It also gave me a chance to dance around the kitchen to some tunes whilst I was cooking; I may be a horrible dancer, but my dogs don't judge. I guess my overall hands on time was about 25 minutes because of the rice. Everything you see fits into my wookie insulated bag behind it. The bag definitely isn't a Daiso purchase ^_^1 -
I do have some egg molds on my wish list now... hmm... bunny shaped hard boiled eggs sounds like an *excellent* lunch (and my kids would like them).
I aim for 4-600 calories for lunch right now... but other than size your lunch looks great! I can see where practice could come in handy. I plan on just measuring and arranging my leftovers lunches better for now. (And I've been thinking of adding hard eggs for a different protein than chicken).0 -
love the chewbacca bag!!!!0
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I do have some egg molds on my wish list now... hmm... bunny shaped hard boiled eggs sounds like an *excellent* lunch (and my kids would like them).
I aim for 4-600 calories for lunch right now... but other than size your lunch looks great! I can see where practice could come in handy. I plan on just measuring and arranging my leftovers lunches better for now. (And I've been thinking of adding hard eggs for a different protein than chicken).
The lunch itself is ~520 calories (you can see how I separated my meals out in my diary I guess) and is normally around or below the 500 mark. Since I'm gone for such long hours in the day my be to also includes breakfast and a 4pm snack.1 -
Oh, perfect then!
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and I've just realised that I'm a doofus. The Bento I posted above is 725, not 915 cal. I looked at the calories left over today when I logged everything rather than the calories consumed
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I love my bento box! Mine is a 2 tier box that I purchased off of Amazon from Japan (I didn't want an American sized container. Everything is bigger
) i typically stay within the 400-600 calorie range. On Sunday I had made onigiri that has a tuna filling which has been my lunch for the last 2 days and will be my lunch tomorrow. I usually boil eggs (using cute egg molds) and add some carrots in. My lunch today was 1/3 cup mixed frozen veggies, tuna onigiri, ((that was my big container)) 2 pineapple rings and 11 organic baby carrots. Oh and a section of nori for my onigiri. Typically I pack leftovers from the night before in the bigger container, and carrots (I always have carrots at my house), small fruit portion, and an egg sometimes in the small container. I think it helps with my portion sizes immensely and it's adorable. I love cute food. I personally think everyone who had issues with portion control should use a bento box. 0 -
I love my bento box! Mine is a 2 tier box that I purchased off of Amazon from Japan (I didn't want an American sized container. Everything is bigger) i typically stay within the 400-600 calorie range. On Sunday I had made onigiri that has a tuna filling which has been my lunch for the last 2 days and will be my lunch tomorrow. I usually boil eggs (using cute egg molds) and add some carrots in. My lunch today was 1/3 cup mixed frozen veggies, tuna onigiri, ((that was my big container)) 2 pineapple rings and 11 organic baby carrots. Oh and a section of nori for my onigiri. Typically I pack leftovers from the night before in the bigger container, and carrots (I always have carrots at my house), small fruit portion, and an egg sometimes in the small container. I think it helps with my portion sizes immensely and it's adorable. I love cute food. I personally think everyone who had issues with portion control should use a bento box.
Now I'm sitting here at my desk eating lunch wishing that my eggs were pretty shapes! I do have a heart and a star shaped egg mould, but I find my eggs just dont squish into shape Maybe my eggs aren't big enough, or my moulds needs to be smaller or something.
Can I ask how the frozen veggies stand up to the day? I usually find that frozen veggies usually go soggy once they've defrosted so I avoid them.
Missiontofitness - I do like the Bento and co ones, but have yet to make a purchase. A lot of my boxes definitely aren't dishwasher safe, buy my husband constantly forgets that. I've already threatened him with destruction of multiple novelty coffee mugs via the dishwasher if he doesn't pick up his game and stop destroying mine
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Tomorrows Bento is a leftovers meal! Never as "pretty", but delish nonetheless. I had planned to have a leftovers lunch tomorrow when planning my meals for this week so I knew I wouldn't have to worry about defrosting/prepping anything extra. This bento took me longer to log into MFP than it did to make - 5 minutes!
The total Bento for the day is 715cal, whilst the lunch section itself is 480cal. It contains:
- Yellow peach
- 160g light greek yoghurt tub
- small bottle of salad dressing - about 15mL (forgot to put in pic)
500mL Blue box:
- A garden salad (lettuce, tomatoes, carrot, capsicum, snow peas)
120mL pink box
- Taco mix from dinner (beef mince, taco spice, carrot, onion, mushroom capsicum)
70mL Green box (I guess its blue-green, but meh)
- 30g avocado
- 30g shredded tasty cheese
- sprinkle of Nando's peri peri salt
70mL Lime Green box:
- 80g mix of raspberries and blackberries
All of my Bento's also include a bottle of water, sometimes with a green or fruit teabag thrown in. I already drink lots of plain water, gave up soft drinks about 3 years ago, and am slowly dropping my coffee intake; so I find this a good alternative to have with lunch.1 -
This is inspiring me to cook on weekends as well as assemble bento breakfasts and lunches.. very nice!0
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Muhahahahaaaa.... My plan for Bento work domination is working.....
Excellent. Excellent.2 -
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I love your blog Noel - was having a read of it this morning. Many of the points you put forward about Bento are exactly why I do it as well.
On another note, I've just noticed that my trying-to-be-funny post about world domination was auto-corrected by my iPad. I'm a sad panda; work domination is the last thing I need 2 -
LOL. Naw, you wanna dominate at work, too, I bet.1
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Just got a nice bento box from monbento - they have a sale on you know... 0
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I like the monbento boxes, but they're all just so big. Even the snack box and childrens boxes are bigger than my normal Bento box! That, and Australian currency conversion means I'm paying $20 for a single layer box plus shipping
I'm still tempted though...0 -
@mangrothian i didn't want to be all creepy and pm you, so i hope you see this, but when you do your bento do you have a bunch of them to make more than one day's food, or do you make one every day? i try to make food that will last all 5 work days and pack it up at once so all i have to do in the morning is grab a container and go. i suppose i could buy several boxes but as i'm finding they are kind of expensive.
also, i agree with you about the star and heart shape egg molds. sometimes if you stand them up rather than lay them down, it works better. i've found that my bunny and car molds work best.0 -
@SpecialKitty7 I don't think I could find a pm creepy unless you were sending me pictures of Bento in rude shapes (trust me, it's been done) - I'd at least need to get to know you before that
Note: I apologise in advance, this post became much longer than I thought it would!
You know, I probably could make them in advance, but the thought of eating a 5 day old Bento just doesn't appeal to me. I'm never going to stick with a food plan if I'm not looking forward to eating it.
This doesn't mean I do it in the morning though. I mean, I'm up at 5:30 and out of the house about 40 mins later, so there's no way I have time to prep my bento and let it cool, feed my dogs, do all the girly things girls do and spend 10 minutes searching for my car keys. The pictures I post are from after dinner when my Bento has cooled in the box and I'm about to put it in the fridge for the next day.
I make some things ahead, and some things each night. I make my Japanese rice in large batches, enough for 10-12 servings, then weigh it and freeze them in separate bags. 2 mins in the microwave to defrost, and mix with a small amount of salt or furikake (Japanese rice seasoning), and it's ready to pop in the box. I also cook a lot of my meat in advance, and wrap it up in portions and freeze it. It means that no matter what I planned to have on any given day, if I change my mind, I'll just pull some different meat out. My staples are: mini meatballs, chicken drummettes, mini quiches, prawn dumplings, gyuudon (a relatively dry beef stew), curry, and a selection of leftover meat from dinners we've had. The only protein I'll never freeze and reheat is eggs.
The only thing I'm guaranteed to do make fresh every time is my vegetables. Old cooked vegetables SOOOOOO don't make an appealing lunch IMO, but it depends on the time and resources available to you I guess. It takes 10 mins for the vegetables to be done. Put water in the saucepan, set it on the stove to boil. Cut up your vegetables into bite size (if you can't handle the hole thing with a pair of chopsticks, it's too big!) pieces. By the time you're done with that, the water should be boiling. Pop in the veggies, cook for 3 minutes (you don't want them soft or you'll get squished veggies with watery muck at the bottom of your box). I quite often run out of vegetables, so I make do with what I have. If you have the portioned frozen vegetable steambags available, you can always microwave one of those and add it to your Bento, but I would suggest letting them cool before you add them as they tend to have a high water content. The only veg that I find doesn't blanch well is mushrooms and tomatoes. They go icky.
You can find really cheap Bento boxes - a lot of the online Bento specific sites aren't cheap, but there are exceptions. For example, try jbox.com. At the moment, they have a Glit and Brilla 2-teir bento box for $4.20. Some of their stuff is anime-themed, some is expensive, and some items are fantastically cheap. Just check if the stock is coming from their US rather than JP warehouse before purchasing to keep the shipping price low.0 -
@mangrothian thank you so much for your reply! i do have one small bento box (didn't even know that's what it was when i bought it, i just liked the hello kitty picture!) so, maybe i'll just start small. the methods you give for what to make ahead and what not to sound doable for me. i can just save some veggies from dinner for my bento and that should cut down on time. i'm going to try and give it a go this next week, i'll let you know how it goes down!
eta: i also checked out a book from the library from the justbento.com lady. should come in in a few days.0 -
woot, another potential convert! starting small is how it happened for me, and besides, going all out would just doom yourself. The justbento website has loads of low calorie options for lunches on the website. I've never bought Maki's book myself, but I'm assuming the website recipes are similar.1
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Bentos are the best!
I have a couple that I use on a regular basis including an orange one (my favorite color) and a panda one (my nickname is panda). I also bought theJust Bento Cookbook which rocks. I use All Things For Sale to get most of my bento supplies and just watch and wait (as patiently as possible) for sales and whatnot. My friends and family tend to give me things as stocking stuffers or little gifts throughout the year as well.
My hubby is not a huge fan of taking them as he's a software engineer and some of the guys on his team are bullies. It makes him easier to just take his in a regular container, but I still bento-ify it a bit.
1. Pan-fried tofu nuggets, white rice with furikake, bell pepper kinpira, and garlickly greens.
2. Pan-seared seitan, white rice with furikake and steamed, shelled edamame, carrot kinpira, and Thai sprout salad.
3. Easy veggie stir fry, white rice with toasted sesame seeds, grape tomatoes, and garlicky greens.
4. For the Mister: Veggie green curry, brown jasmine rice, white bean salad and steamed, shelled edamame.
5. For the Mister: Indian red lentil curry, brown basmati rice, grapes and fresh radishes.
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@colejkeene They're so pretty! I have the same box as your orange one, but in pink. It was my first Bento box, and even if it cracks I don't think I could bring myself to throw it out. You've also made me want to make kinpira again.
I'm sure your husbands workmates are just jelly if the best thing they can pick on is your husbands lunchbox. My husband likes my Bentos, but he and his co workers actually work from an office in our garage, so I don't make him one.
Also, do you you make your own furikake, or do you buy it? There's only a few pre-packaged ones I can eat since I'm msg sensitive (lips swelling up like you've have collagen for a few hours is NOT a look I go for).
I also had a look through the allthingsforsale site, and I might do some ordering from there, but I'll have to be careful not to get carried away. Quite a few of the things that I've seen there I can get for less in my local Daiso store. Those moustache picks though...
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I have a Laptop Lunch box too - I love mine! I generally put a fruit in one box (stuff in season when possible, otherwise thawed frozen berries), eggs in another (cold scrambled, tea eggs, shoyu tamago, plain boiled), meat (chicken breast, imitation lobster, cold shrimp), and finally veggies. If I have a long day, I'll usually also bring a yogurt cup and a banana. I love being able to split my lunch up into parts in order to be able to snack throughout the day - as opposed to, like, one tupperware of pasta that I'd have to eat in one sitting or heat up and nibble at every couple of hours.
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I love bento! I have some bento stuff, but i need some more. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY CUTE LUNCH BITS.
How do you marinate eggs? I would like to try that.
I would also like to get some pickled plums, and even try Japanese rice flavoring. Hm. I will have to check the Asian section of the grocery, and if that fails, go to an actual Asian grocery store.
AND I LOVE YOUR CHEWBACCA LUNCH BOX.0
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