Using Bento Boxes for lunches.

Kabiti wrote: »

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.

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

salemnye wrote: »

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

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...

@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.

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.

@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...