So, I’ve been working on ways to put together healthy lunches for myself and Celtling. Her current school has a great and healthy food program, but in the one I’d like to send her to next year, they don’t do food, you have to pack up everything. I find this idea incredibly daunting.
So, in part of my research I discovered the art of Bento Boxes, and all the lovely places we can learn about them. Although I don’t plan to get too creative about it, I’m going to try and start doing this for myself this year, to get into training.
Anyhoo, the main point of this post was to share this little tidbit, which nearly made me pee myself. I hope it holds up for the less sleep-deprived among you:
So, anybody out there have suggestions for bento or other ways to work a healthy packed lunch into the schedule? The really overwhelming part to me is the lack of refrigeration or heating. I just don’t know many foods that I trust sitting out in a box that long. We’re talking breakfast, lunch and two snacks daily. (Well, second breakfast, but I don’t want her just sitting there watching the other kids eat, and by the time we get there she’ll probably be hungry again.)
I live in Japantown in San Francisco and there are a ton of various insulated bento boxes which are sold – both to keep foods hot or cold. Google around and you’ll find something that is the right size.
I actually send one every year to my god-daughter on the other side of the country for her “back to school” present. Usually it is a Hello Kitty theme ('cuz she’s seven). But they are getting progressively more complicated and bigger due to her growth.
Let me note – for the sake of the uninformed – that an “octopus wiener” is a hot dog which has been sliced so that it makes an octopus shape. It is not the penis of an octopus.
If octopodes…octopii…octoplural have a penis, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the Japanese do eat it. However, I don’t believe that octoplural do, and at any rate that’s not what they’re talking about in regards to bento boxes.
a lot of them are metal - so no heating in the microwave
not leakproof- so nothing that might slosh out of the container
the plastic ones don’t seal as well as say tupperware and are not as interchangable or replaceable as just purchasing some plastic containers fow much less than a bento set
there is an interesting site that compares different lunch box sets, if I can locate it again I will post it.
An idea I saw was to get the silicon cups for baking and put small loose items in it, nuts or grapes etc. It will tuck into box next to something else. My idea I used when taking my lunch at a place where the refrigerator was not secure was to put frozen fruit in a container and that would keep my lunch chilled until time to eat. I bet you could also use the prepacked apple sauce and freeze it or juice boxes if you like those.
Breakfast, two snacks, and a lunch does seem to be a lot to pack for. How old is your daughter?
For one of the snacks, you can just pack a different fruit (or veggie) every day of the week. For example, you could pack thin sliced apples on Monday, pear slices on Tuesday, grapes on Wednesday, avocado slices with lemon on Thursday, and cherry tomatoes on Friday. Other options are berries, carrot sticks, celery sticks, and pineapple chunks. Basically something easy to cut up and assemble. These can be packed in small plastic bento boxes or ziploc baggies depending on space.
For lunch you can pack little tea sandwiches, like cucumber or tomato sandwiches cut into tiny triangles with the crust cut off. Onigiris or rice balls are very easy to handle and depending on the filling, can last till lunch with minimal refrigeration. Pasta salads or potato salads can work if she has a cooler. If she likes salads, you can even do a small salad with a separate container for dressing. One thing that might work for warmer weather would be a cold spaghetti dish, with julienned carrots and cucumbers and a peanut or tahini sauce.
The main thing is to get lots of little plastic containers that are appropriately sized for your daughter’s age and appetite. Then you can just mix and match as you need to during the week.
Aha! I hadn’t though of just freezing things, that’s an elegant solution! I could even just freeze the potato salad itself, and then it hsould be just right by lunch time.
Silicone baking cups are also a great idea. I was picturing a mountain of paper cupcake cups in the school garbage can. . .
For snacks I usually riff on the basic formula: Whole grain, fruit, protein. The grain is usually some sort of Kashi cracker (or a cookie if she’s lucky!) and the protein is generally cheese. She’s great about carrots and broccoli too, so I’m really lucky that way. But you can’t leave those string cheeses sitting out - I wonder if I could freeze them? I’ll try it tomorrow in my own lunch and see how it works.
I often bring leftovers and other food to work for lunch and a snack (including dressing for salad). The only food I put in the fridge is yogurt. Haven’t had a case of food poisoning yet. I think most foods can be a room temp for a few hours with no or minimal risk. If it’s a concern, then you could use a little blue freezer pack to keep things cool.
One of my bento boxes (which I’ve been trying to use more recently) is semi-insulated. It keeps hot food warm and cold food cold.
Silicone baking cups do work well for keeping things separate.
The other is really a glorified pencil case (it was $1.50 at the Japanese $1.50 store. I’m not expecting a lot), but it works ok for mini sandwiches and the like.
I like the Sistema brand of storage containers; you can get them at places like The Container Store and so forth. They have snap-hinges to hold the lids on tight, and silicone gaskets to help prevent liquids seeping out. They come in all sizes, from tiny snack-sized to storing bulk dry goods in your cupboards.
Also, on the cheese thing… There are many countries that don’t refrigerate hard cheeses. Keep cool, yes. But eating a few slicing of cheese isn’t going to kill a person after not being a fridge for several hours.
That’s true. But the mozzerella and colby-jack sticks we usually buy develop a sickening tranlucency after a very short time out of the fridge. Definitely not meant for sitting out.
I’ve often wondered about that. I thought the whole point of developing cheese and yogurt was to preserve milk for future use. But I don’t know of any mild cheese which can sit out of the fridge safely.
The Mr. Bento and his harem of Ms. Bento options nestle in a vacuum flask for temperature control. It’s also a lot of food that fits in them. Unfortunately, through use of one, I’ve found out that the plastic ring the lid snaps on to tends to come loose. You then have a Mr. Bento that doesn’t lock closed. Grrr.
If you click around the bento websites for long enough you’ll find this tidbit of info–Japan’s government has recommendations for the proportion of rice, vegetables, and meat that should compose a healthy meal. It’s something like 1/2 rice, 1/3 veg, and 1/6th meat. If you pack a bento box solid with this proportion of food, it ends up equaling approximately 1 kilocalorie per milliliter capacity. I guess that’s why Jbox and other Japanese websites list bento boxes by their volume rather than their dimensions.
The girl who runs the site is from Hawaii and her recipes often feature modern Hawaiian favorites. She makes bentos for her young daughter, so there are kid-friendly ones there.