Cooking in Sens: My New Bento Boxes

Maybe I exaggerated but they were all so cute! I just had to have them all. They each come with a soup bowl, a container with a tight fitting top for soup and the bottom container can hold rice, salad or whatever you decide. The belt that holds the three layers together is very sturdy.

About 4 -6 years ago, while aimlessly surfing the net, I stumbled upon a website called, "Cooking Cute" and thus began my obsession with bento lunch boxes and their contents. Bento boxes, no matter the shape, size or color are all very cute. Probably because they are usually small and are filled with a variety of attractively prepared and arranged, child size portions of food.

When I first prepared a bento lunch box for my husband, he was skeptical and pretty sure that he would be dead from hunger by dinner time. But after a week, he confessed that the lunches were not only tasty and filling but also entertaining with the heart-shaped eggs, panda picks, Hello Kitty sauce bottles, rice onigiri with funny faces, mini-meatloaves, inarizushi, Japanese rolled omelets, etc. He did admit that at first it sort of bothered him to be seen with some of the cuter boxes with Japanese cartoon characters and/or the ones in pastel colors. But when his "real" men and women colleagues started dropping by each day to admire his lunch AND the box, he stopped being bothered.

It looks like Cooking Cute hasn't posted for a while but if you are interested, the site "Just Bento" has wonderful recipes and ideas for bento lunches. There are also great links for bento boxes and accessories.

Still no stove.