Eating Our Way Through Japan Town

(Again the photos were taken with my phone...)
If I could eat only Japanese food I probably would. One of our favorite things to do in San Francisco is to go to Japan Town it is all things Japanese, between the food and the great products it is a perfect half day trip.  We went to the city to get some items for more exciting bento lunches. We came home with so much more.....
As you can see we have a new member of the pack called Choco Kitty. Sanrio is a dangerous place, I pretty much wanted everything I saw and of course kidlet and hubby did too!  

Hello Kitty travel mugs, Domo everything...even DH was loving it!  As you can see in the photo Choco Kitty is enjoying one of our favorite drinks, tapioca bubble tea, also called Boba Tea. Read about bubble tea in a prior post.
Kidlet had mango @food_is_art and I had Thai iced tea. We love to slurp up the gelatinous balls of tapioca!
Kidlet's favorite lunch place is the Sushi restaurant that has the little boats that float around with sushi on them. I assume the sushi is removed after 10 times around but you never know, it makes me feel like I am living on the edge. It may not be the best Sushi around but the little boats that go around and around are a real crowd pleaser. Kidlet likes Tobiko the little tiny fish eggs, it is pretty hilarious to watch her eat the rice and Tobiko with chopsticks. She does a fairly good job if the chopsticks are rubber banded together!

We saw so much great food that day including these funny fish shaped cakes with fillings like sweet bean and chocolate.  They are cooked on a cast iron molded griddle, they are spongy and only slightly sweet.

The other thing we saw that I really wanted to taste was Spam Sushi, but I didn't. Growing up in a kosher household Spam was not on the menu, so in my adult life I have developed a kind of strange love for all things SPAM. My MIL gave me a can of SPAM one Christmas about 7 years ago, I am still not sure why, maybe she likes the graphic tin too! I do still have it, how long does it last anyway?
The original reason for our trip was to get the bento supplies and boy did we get bento supplies....Egg shapers, soy sauce containers and cute little rice molds.

Keep an eye out for some new bento box posts using our cool new stuff.

Orange You Excited for this Bento?

A while back I wrote a post about the fun items you can use to make bento lunches.  Many of you asked me to post some of my bentos, well here we go.....

I pack lunch very fast, I am not one of those bento artists, although I do aspire to be someday!

My bentos usually take a total of 15 minutes and I do have some more detailed ones but the photos were not up to par,  in the future I will have more for to show. The reason I am showing this one is because it is simple and made from ingredients you probably have on hand.

Making bento lunches inspire me to fit in healthier food, because in bento making it is all about making the food fit in the box. I love bentos because I get to use up all those pesky scraps, like one lone strawberry that I just had to save, or some cheese chunks that my frugal side can't part with.  Bentos are great for using up leftovers too like a few beans or half a hot dog.  If you were to put a few beans or half a hot dog in a zip top baggie it would probably not be received well, but in a bento it just looks cute and on purpose.  Maybe I love bentos because my lunches as a kid were so dreadful (sorry mom) I want my daughter to have like lunch-y goodness at school.

I remember the crinkled brown bag with the half stale peanut butter sandwich, I hated jelly so that was my poor luck!  Back then we used wax bags that didn't seal so half the sandwich was always stale. It usually contained an apple, although I loved apples, one a day got a bit boring....plus no one ever wanted to trade for an apple.  The best part were the chocolate chip cookies on occasion they went well with the school milk. My lunches ended up being pretty unhealthy too, if a trade was discussed it was for chocolate milk or a Ho Ho.

I decided that I would not put my kid through the embarrassment of being the kid with the lame and lunch.  So I may have gone overboard but at least the box comes home empty!!

So I bento....

We went to Japan Town and I let her pick her own box out, I would not have chosen that particular one, but then again I am not the one eating out of it every day.

We discussed the size, and how easy it was to open, then we went to get some of the fun stuff like tiny soy sauce containers, bandanna's to tie it up with and those cute little divider papers. You can see some of those things in my previous post.  This bento I am showing is made for eating quickly, the kids lunch is short so I try to make everything easy to eat. Instead of peeling an orange, which takes time I slice them up.  
So there you have it, easy creative and quick and affordable. If you do not have an authentic bento you can use plastic containers or recycled margarine containers. As your child grows the bento will too, this is a good amount of food for a 5 year old but as they grow they need more.
Just try it and see for yourself if bentos are for you.

In the first layer of this bento we have:

blood oranges

one strawberry

chick peas in a silicone cup

In layer two we have:

Sliced turkey rolls with - Sesame Sprinkles (Gomashio) pinned with small character picks

A few leaves of crisp lettuce

Bread cut into shapes (you can add spread or make tiny sandwiches)

A few cubes of jack/cheddar cheese to take up space

Good Things Come in Small Tightly Packed Lunches

I don't know why but I have become slightly obsessed with making cute Bento lunches for my daughter. Maybe it is my fascination with "cute" food, maybe my love for Asian cuisine? Maybe it gives me a reason to go to Japan Town and buy the cutest little lunch time items. Or maybe I think if I make cute food, she will eat it? Either way now that we are in Kindergarten my lunch making had gotten a bit out of hand!  I mean not totally out of hand but I do try to get creative with the same old ingredients.  A peanut butter and jelly is so 7o's, I mean really a sandwich can be so much more. A flower shape or cut into tiny little blocks all stacked up in Bento box. 

There a are cutters for Nori that are fun to use, and cute little silicone cups to put food into.

If we make rice then she gets a tiny soy sauce dispenser to season the rice with. There are countless ways to decorate Bento lunches, like thin egg omelets, as a base and sliced veggies as eyes and whiskers.  You can write a cute rhyme to go with your bento too, like; carrots are orange, kitties are fuzzy, hope lunch time is great and you are real cozy! (OK, maybe poetry is not my strong point but you get the idea, right?) 

I like Bento boxes because you can put an array of foods. We waste so much food in our culture, so I have been trying to use up small amounts that otherwise would go in the trash.  Bento is designed to control portion size, It is a great way to use up small amounts of food, and are designed to pack tightly so the food stays put. I know that there are amazing Bento lunch makers out there and I hold you in great esteem. I don't aspire to ever be a Bento wiz but I sure do try.  

I thought I'd  put all my lunch time goodies out for you to see in these photos.

Here are many ways to spice up lunch with a some of the gadgets shown. 

Ingredients:

• Nori cut outs, crispy healthy seaweed cut using a paper punch style cutter.
  
• Rice molded into cute shapes using rice molds.
  
• Hard boiled eggs molded into shapes like squares, bunnies, cars. 
  
• Rice rolls (sushi want to be) using sushi molds.
  
• Veggies cut in shapes, slice veggies in wide strips, use tiny cookie cutters to make shapes.
  
• Sandwiches cut in shapes.
  
• Use silicone cupcake cups to pack bits of snack food in.
  
• Use wood or biodegradable spoons.
  
• Use small containers for sprinkles, seeds or seasonings, soy sauce or ketchup
  
• Use reusable food separators, like the fake grass you get at a Sushi bar.
  
• Send fabric napkins with cute patterns.
• Themed lunches, like round, or one color only are fun too.
• Add a note from home.
• Pack it all in a great Bento box!!

Other foods that fit in a Bento box:

Dates

Figs

Nuts

Beets

Stuffed Pasta

Dried fruit

Sliced fruit

Thin no cheese omelet, rolled up and sliced

Cubed cheese 

Romaine leaves

Plain water chestnuts

French toast

Noodles

Mini drumsticks

Rolled cold cuts 

Mini pickles

Tiny tuna sandwiches

Cheese and crackers

Pancakes

Bento Lunch #2

Here is a quick nut free camp lunch for a hot summer day. 

The sandwich: Biscoff spread and cream cheese. Biscoff or Speculoos spread looks like peanut butter but is nut free, unfortunately it is not available in the U.S. yet. I was working on a photo shoot and was lucky enough to get a hold of a jar!

Veggies: baby carrots and cooked sliced purple potatoes

Fruit: blackberries and banana

snack: Goldfish crackers and a frozen thawed filo cup with avocado and shredded cheese.

yogurt, frozen to add chill to the box.

School is over...but camp is starting, that means MORE lunches

I recently started experimenting with Bento style lunches, the only problem is that after about 5 of them school ended! I guess I was a little late with this whole concept, but camp is starting so I am happy to say I will get to make more bentos this summer.I recently saw a cute post on Coffee and Vanilla 

She inspired me to start posting these lunches.

I started using my laptop lunch box, it works but we are planning a trip to Japan Town Mall to get a new cute little Bento box.
My daughter's preschool was nut free and meat free so lunches are tough, creativity had to be key.

Next year she will be in a public school so watch out for our new and improved lunches.
This box is really simple here is what is in it.

Thin egg omelet with cinnamon (tomago) on a skewer

Rice with nori strips and peas

2 kinds of beans

fruit

a date for dessert.