Using Bento Boxes for lunches.
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I didn't think I'd do them every day, but it kind of became an addiction....0
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I had never even heard of bento but these sound awesome! Can you give me some really simple ideas for boxes with calories too please if possible. I have never heard of some of the things listed as have never eaten Japanese food! So some quick and easy ideas that don't require posh ingrediingredients would be fab hehehe! Excited to try some!0
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I already have some egg molds, as well a ton of cookie cutters. I need to pull them out and see what they are good for (larger for meats, cheeses, and bread, small and tony ones for fruits and veggies). I have several small Rubbermaid-type lunch containers that I use for lunches, and I can bento in them. However, I want to kick it up a notch.
I tried shopping near my house, but the stores didn't have what I was looking for. I don't drive, so getting across town is a pain (Houston is HUGE). Therefore, I decided to order several things from Amazon. Woot, free shipping! Furikake, pickled plums, a couple of actual bento boxes, a carrying bag for the boxes, a tamagoyaki pan (rectangular pan for making Japanese rolled omelets, for those that are curious), cooking chopsticks, bamboo mats for rolling, some silicone cups, a julienne peeler (so I can make kinpira easily), and two bento cookbooks. Wah-hoo!0 -
@supershamster Bento's don't need to be Japanese food focused, but the type of foods they use are definitely more portable at room temperature than some western foods. My personal rules for Bento's are:
Once again, I'm sorry for the long post, but I kinda got on a roll, and had 10 mins to spare before gym....
- It must not be a drippy food (it means it has sauce can go through the other foods making them soggy, or potentially leak from a container). If it needs sauce, the sauce can go in a mini squeeze bottle.
- It must taste good at room temperature.
- It must be safe to eat after being at room temperature for up to 6 hours. For example, cream/mayo based food doesn't last at room temp for very long.
- If it's squishy, you need to be able to separate the food from the foods that can squish it. Berry fruits are a good example for this one
- No salt on your vegetables. Trust me, you'll learn they're damn well tasty enough on their own. Edamame (soy beans) are probably my only exception to his. Your blood pressure will also thank you.
- Pre prepare! Cook your meat in batches, portion it out and store it in ziploc bags, wrap it in gladwrap, or whatever. That way you've already got your portion (so you're not going to be deceived by your eyes if you're hungry whilst making your Bento), and it's one less step to worry about during the week. I pre-cook and freeze everything except my vegetables. An hour cooking some different meats one night a week saves you a LOT of time.
In essence, most of my Bento's consist of rice, lightly blanched or raw vegetables and some kind of meat - there isn't that much variation except for the fruits I eat. The main concept is more about portioning your food, packing it well, and have as many colours as possible. The Japanese believe that the more (natural) colours you have in your Bento, the healthier it is. And as @Specialkitty7 said, it can be quite satisfying having a little bit of everything to eat, instead of say, one bowl of pasta or a sandwich.
In terms of recipes, there might be some you may not try if the ingredients are too hard to get, but I can't recommend the JustBento website more. Makiko Itoh has the 500 cal or less Bento down to an art form, and they all sure do taste good.
A good example of portion control/ratios in a Bento. It also talks about easing into using Bento concepts if you've never had/heard of them before:
http://justbento.com/handbook/getting-started-bento-making/aim-for-balance
A "skinny" versus "not so skinny" bento
http://justbento.com/handbook/getting-started-bento-making/skinny-bento-vs-not-skinny-bento
Some of the foods I might list aren't necessary, or I'm using the Japanese name for the food. For example furikake (foo-ree-ka-keh) is a dry rice seasoning. You could season your rice with just salt and pepper, or roasted sesame seeds with salt (which in Japanese is called Gomashio). The umeboshi is a sour pickled plum, and that is DEFINITELY an acquired taste. I just like something sour to finish off my meal, and it's meant to help the rice keep longer at room temperature. Tamagoyaki is a rolled cooked egg with some soy and a pinch of sugar. Ponzu is a soy sauce with citrus in it, so its like a slightly sour soy sauce. Only a few of my ingredients require a specialty store - most you can find in the asian section of your supermarket.0 -
Makes a much more festive looking gathering then my zip lock baggie lunches...All smooched together and un-recognizable. Hee, hee0
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barbiegirlie2 wrote: »I already have some egg molds, as well a ton of cookie cutters. I need to pull them out and see what they are good for (larger for meats, cheeses, and bread, small and tony ones for fruits and veggies). I have several small Rubbermaid-type lunch containers that I use for lunches, and I can bento in them. However, I want to kick it up a notch.
I tried shopping near my house, but the stores didn't have what I was looking for. I don't drive, so getting across town is a pain (Houston is HUGE). Therefore, I decided to order several things from Amazon. Woot, free shipping! Furikake, pickled plums, a couple of actual bento boxes, a carrying bag for the boxes, a tamagoyaki pan (rectangular pan for making Japanese rolled omelets, for those that are curious), cooking chopsticks, bamboo mats for rolling, some silicone cups, a julienne peeler (so I can make kinpira easily), and two bento cookbooks. Wah-hoo!
Man I wish we had Amazon Australia. We can order from the US, but the shipping prices are exhorbitant0 -
So, this is the bento I made for lunch tomorrow. Made another one identical to this for my husband, because he likes them, too.
This is a fairly large bento box -- 750ml. The meal has 437 calories, though, because a Japanese person would fill that bottom portion with the onigiri and orange peppers with rice and I filled in a lot of the volume with a low-cal veggie.1 -
I received my new bento box!! Included the lid because it's just so darn cute. Included here: Trader Joe's harvest grain mix, 85 grams sugar snap peas sauteed in a smidge of sesame oil, yellow bell peppers, raspberries and 4 pork potstickers. In the little container is a tablespoon of Bolthouse farms yogurt ranch dressing. Total cals 510. The yogurt and strawberries are for my afternoon snack.
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One of the bento boxes I ordered is that Kiki one! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE0
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Dumb question: How do I insert a picture from my phone? Lol0
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barbiegirlie2 wrote: »Dumb question: How do I insert a picture from my phone? Lol
No such thing as a dumb question, only w***ers who give sarcastic responses.
On my iPhone above the text input box there's a little camera icon. I press that, and then tap "choose file" and it goes into my images so I can pick one to upload. I'm assuming it's the same for android
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For any of the Australian's looking at this thread. Thanks to the back to school stuff happening, Officeworks has some great lunchboxes available atm.
They have an actual Bento box that's about 1 litre. It comes with cutlery and the elastic strap to hold everything together for $6 (I may have bought two)
They also had some cool collapsible lunchboxes. The one in the picture below has 2 small and one large compartment, and is the size of a small diner plate I guess. A bit big for me so I didn't buy one, but I still thought it was cool
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Oh thank you so much for your detailed reply! Could I add you on finesspal as a friend? I will have a lookat the justbento site and would love to try some of the Japanese recipes and see how I get on. Any advice on quick and easy ones for a newbie? I'm not a very good cook at the best of times but feel quite enthusiastic about this!
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It's really nice, bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, i'm going to have to rework plans to use my box.barbiegirlie2 wrote: »One of the bento boxes I ordered is that Kiki one! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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Mangrothian, how do you log your marinated eggs in your MFP Diary? I am adding the recipe I used to My Recipies, but it isn't accurate because I am not actually going to consume the leftover marinade - Only what is absorbed by the eggs. What are your thoughts? Are the calories from the marinade so trivial that I don't need to worry about accounting for them?0
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This is my attempt at a bento using the monbento box - I can post what it's meant to look like if you want a laugh... 0 -
Supershamster wrote: »Oh thank you so much for your detailed reply! Could I add you on finesspal as a friend? I will have a lookat the justbento site and would love to try some of the Japanese recipes and see how I get on. Any advice on quick and easy ones for a newbie? I'm not a very good cook at the best of times but feel quite enthusiastic about this!
Of course you can ^_^. The easiest ones would be what you're comfortable with. I would suggest some chicken peices (tenderloins, sliced breast, thighs, whatever is your preference, just skinless and around 50-60g portions), sautéed with minimal oil and when they're almost cooked, add about a tbspn of soy sauce and toss the chicken pieces in the frypan until they're glazed and the soy has almost completely evaporated from the pan. If you cook yourself dinner, keep a small portion of meat aside, and just use that if you like. I keep mentioning it, but redwine vinegar sweet and sour chicken is easy and really really tasty.
Vegetables - cut up some vegetables you like in as many colours you can find (i would not suggest potato or mushrooms though) into small pieces. They should be big enough that you can pick up one piece at a time with your fork (or chopsticks if you're that way inclined. Blanch for 3 minutes in a pot of boiling water. If you're not a fan of plain vegetables, add 1-2 tsps of low sodium stock powder to cook them in.
If you want a more glamorous vegetable dish, try kinpira or toss some vegetables in ginger and chopped coriander.
Rice - once you learn how to cook a good batch of rice, you'll never go back. I followed this method to learn, since I don't have a rice cooker to do it for me. Buy yourself a small bag of Japanese rice and have a go - it is quite easy, you just need to be patient with it.
Bento's for all that they're pretty, can be easy. Even I save harder (read: time consuming) Bento recipes for a once a fortnight thing. I wouldn't be able to cope if I was cooking complicated things every night to eat the next day.barbiegirlie2 wrote: »Mangrothian, how do you log your marinated eggs in your MFP Diary? I am adding the recipe I used to My Recipies, but it isn't accurate because I am not actually going to consume the leftover marinade - Only what is absorbed by the eggs. What are your thoughts? Are the calories from the marinade so trivial that I don't need to worry about accounting for them?
I log boiled eggs, then log 1 tspn of soy sauce for every egg I'm having. My cheat egg recipe is two boiled eggs, 1 black teabag and 1 tablespoon of soy then top up with water in a ziplock bag to marinate, so even if the 1tspn of soy per egg sounds high, I'd rather overlog than underlog what I'm eating. The marinade does have a decent amount of sodium, which is why I tend to log it.0 -
I thought I'd log today's Bento for a reason (other than me just liking to take pictures of my food that is). Fridays for me are generally a different sort of day; I start work earlier, but finish around the same time and then have some classes after work, getting me home at about 11pm, which is way to late for me to eat. Classes started up again today, so I've made myself food to last the whole day, and is capable of lasting through a warm Australian Summer's day.
The caloric intake of this is quite high, as I also have some decent cardio exercise lined up with a work colleague for the middle of the day (I'm also convinced that the caloric intake MFP has for me is too low considering my TDEE-25% is about 700 calories higher than what it gives, but I'm not going to discuss that in this thread). I don't want to be too tired to concentrate in class from eating too little, or from scarfing some fast food down instead.
I'd like to stress this: If you are or would like to try Bento to help train yourself with portion control, or if you're the kind of person who has the habit of eating everything in front of you regardless of what your stomach tells you, I don't suggest you do what I have done with my Bento and snack containers today. It's taken me 2 years to learn not to eat everything that's put in front of me. I actually don't plan to eat everything here unless my body truly tells me that I need to.
The picture isn't the best, but I couldn't help showing one of my doggies trying to convince me to give her a strawberry with her big brown eyes. She and her big brother may have succeeded later on (doubling up the puppy-dog eyes was just too much for me).
The box is the one I bought yesterday (which I can now confirm to be 1.1L, a 400mL top section and 700mL bottom section). Everything you see in this pic totals 1820 calories. I'll give the caloric amounts for each box so you can see where its gone.
Pink box, bottom right - 586cal (this is the lunch section of my box)
- 0.75 cup blanched vegetables
- 120g rice
- 2 pickled plums (umeboshi)
- 50g Sweet & sour red wine vinegar chicken
- Beef Gyuudon (@supershamster you can find a recipe for this here. It's really tasty and really easy. I just don't serve it with the eggs or pickled ginger for a bento. The sauces used in it should be available in your supermarket. If you like saltier meat, double the soy sauce in the recipe.)
Blue Box, top right - 180cal (my breakfast box)
- 30g blueberries
- 50g mango
- 150g greek yoghurt
- 1/4 tsp mixed spice
Green box, top right - 38cal
- 120g cherry tomatoes
Green box, middle - 60cal
- 12g Red Rock Deli Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar chips (what can I say, they'd go stale otherwise!)
Blue box, bottom left - 71cal
- 120g strawberries
- 50g mango
Pink Box, top left - 903cal Once again, I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to eat all of this, but safe than sorry and all that.
- 2 cups blanched vegetables (carrot, brussel sprouts, red capsicum (bell pepper), snow peas, cauliflower, asparagus)
- 240g white rice
- shiso furikake (rice seasoning made with shiso leaves and plum)
- 2 pickled plums (umeboshi)
- 20g Pickled vegetables
- 6 prawn gyoza (I'm sure I'm overestimating the weight as they're small and I forgot to weigh them, but I've logged it as 250g which is 550cal).0 -
I'm excited to try what you have suggested! Thank you very much. I was looking for bento boxes but could only seem to find 1.1L boxes. Where do you get the smaller ones that are lunch only from? And is 500 ml box good for just lunch?0
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Looks like a great idea. I've looked at Bento lunch boxes before but couldn't quite see what I would put in them - really liking the ideas & inspiration on here. Think its time I shopped for a Bento lunch box!0
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I can say from yesterday I didn't eat everything on the list. Hardly any of the rice for dinner was eaten and I didn't eat the starberry/mango container and the tomato container. I was driving to until 1am though, so I kind of overdid it with the coffee though.Supershamster wrote: »I'm excited to try what you have suggested! Thank you very much. I was looking for bento boxes but could only seem to find 1.1L boxes. Where do you get the smaller ones that are lunch only from? And is 500 ml box good for just lunch?
If you want an actual bento box, try jbox.com and some of the other sites people have suggested in the posts earlier. Going to get a plain 500ml Tupperware container to start with is always a good option. You can type "bento boxes" in a Google search and you'll find so many stores.1 -
I was looking through the recipe pages on the MFP official blog today, and I've found a few more easy cook-and-freeze options for lunches. They're all egg based dishes, and look like they'd all taste fine at room temperature.
Mini filo quiche cups
Spinach and feta wonton quiche cups
Jalapeno popper quiche cups
Sausage egg nests
A couple of them are higher up on the calorie end of things when it comes to lunches (for me at least), but most of them could easily be baked in throw away or silicone muffin liners instead of the filo/wonton/potato based "baskets" that they're cooked in.0 -
Ooh, eggcellent! 0
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I made tamagoyaki for the first time today! It turned out super delish, and my daughter loved it, too. She and I ate the entire first batch, so then I made a second batch for our lunches this week (today is a holiday here in the States, so I am off today and am going full swing in bento prep!).
This is the recipe I [mostly] followed. Instead of the dashi, I added some furikake.
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groan...lol!barbiegirlie2 wrote: »Ooh, eggcellent!
I was a bit scared to try making tamagoyaki, i'm glad it turned out! I found a recipe from the just bento lady, that next time i get hungry for eggs, i'm going to try. My furikake hasn't been delivered yet, but i have a hard time finding dashi too, so maybe i'll wait until it comes to give this a try.
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I just used a dash of the furikaki, since it has a strong flavor, and I am making these bento bits for both my daughter and I.
I just steamed a ton of rice, and froze it in individual portions. I also made the Red Wine Vinegar Chicken Mangrothian posted about. IT IS SO FREAKIN' GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.0 -
I just snorted aloud on the train. The lady sitting opposite me look up from her newspaper, raised an eyebrow and shook her head at me. Seems I'm not allowed to be amused at 7:30 in the morning.barbiegirlie2 wrote: »Ooh, eggcellent!
Dashi may be something you need to ask for in an Asian supermarket. It barely has any English lettering on the pack, and there are different types when it's instant (shiitake mushroom, kombu, etc) and the descriptor for it usually just written in big Japanese characters on the front. If you've ordered it online I hope you're not paying too much for it. I pay about $2.00 for the common cheap stuff for about 12 sachets (which you never use all at once) and about $5-8 for the better msg free ones. It doesn't taste the same as home made stuff, but I can hardly be bothered making it from scratch.
Also, the jalapeño quiches are delish. I ate one for breakfast before I left home this morning
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Nah, I haven't ordered any dashi. But thanks for the information - I need to look into it!
I also didn't strain my eggs mixture before cooking. It worked just swell!0 -
I've never strained my egg mixture - too much effort tbh. It may have a better consistency in the egg if I do, but eh.
One of my favourite thing to do with Tamagoyaki is to place a nori sheet down during cooking and roll it up with the egg.
@specialkitty7 I've checked on Amazon, and this is the brand of dashi I use. I really didn't expect it to be so expensive though. I'm sure it'd be a lot cheaper in a local store, but maybe I'm just lucky to have so much competition with the food importers that the price is lower.0 -
I wanted to thank you for starting this thread! I had never thought about bento boxes as a way to have a fun, diverse, portion-controlled lunch!
I ordered a Bentgo box off of Amazon (I'm in the US), since it was the cheapest one that was BPA-free & dishwasher-safe. My lunch today was just items from my pantry & fridge, but I'm excited to experiment with some of the recipes listed in this thread! Thanks again!
Today's lunch: turkey, string cheese, Rae pecans, snow peas, carrot chips, blue cheese in ranch, & a cookie. 431 calories (27g carb, 4g fiber, 31g protein, & 23 g fat)...
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