Bento lunches

A discussion on an internet forum that I regularly read led me to spend some time over the last couple of days reading about bento lunches. In case you don't know what those are, here is some information from Wikipedia:

Bentō (弁当 or べんとう, Bentō) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. Although bento are easily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops (弁当屋, bentō-ya), train stations, and department stores, it is still common for Japanese homemakers to spend considerable time and energy producing an appealing boxed lunch.

Bento can be very elaborately arranged. Contests are often held where homemakers can compete for the most aesthetically pleasing arrangements. The food is often decorated to look like people, animals, or characters and items such as flowers and plants. This style of elaborate bento is called kyaraben.

That is a bit dry to read, so I will illustrate with a couple of examples taken from the internet:


There are some fantastic and delicious-looking lunches on sites like LiveJournal, Just Bento, Lunch-in-a-Box, and others.

It has become very apparent over recent months that my lunchtime eating habits are atrocious. I am disorganised, don't buy anything in advance, and end up eating expensive and unhealthy sandwiches and junk food purchased from the dairy round the corner. So I have gone out and bought my own bento box (Hello Kitty! It's pink! And sparkly!) and intend putting it to good use.

How cute is this for a lunchbox?


Here's my first attempt at putting lunch into it. Our kitchen is a mess at the moment and I'm not doing any cooking in it today, but I think I did pretty well (although not at all Japanese style) with what was in the fridge and cupboards.

Top layer - six cheese and poppy seed crackers, soft cheese triangles, and cherry tomatoes.
Left layer - mandarin orange halves, cherry tomatoes, ham, grapes, and blueberries.
Right layer - mixed salad leaves, red pepper, sliced radishes, some sort of green sprouting things, and salad dressing which came in the same pack as the salad leaves and green sprouting things.

I haven't a clue if I will find this lot filling or not. The box holds a lot of food, but I've put mostly fruit and salad into it, so I could end up ravenous or happily sated. I'll find out tomorrow lunchtime!