Bento and I have had a long love story. I discovered the art of bento and packing cute lunches a couple years ago when my oldest son was in first grade. The above picture is from way back then. I fell in love with bento because it reduces waste and eliminates the need for baggies with individual foods because bento boxes usually have sections for different foods or clever ways to keep it altogether but still separate. I am 33 and I admit that I don’t like my food to touch. Packing in bento boxes also it makes it easy to pack REAL food for lunch! Things that were difficult to pack in plastic baggies like pasta, California rolls, omelets, or rice are really super easy to pack in bento boxes. Of course many bento enthusiasts have gone a step beyond and made the food resemble something closer to edible art and that is what the book Bento Yum Yum addresses.
What I Liked About This Book: I loved the ideas for cutting veggies into cute shapes like the carrot stars and flowers. The ability to make animals or make your eggs have happy faces is just too cute! See the little chickies made of eggs above? I also liked the advice on how to dye things different colors naturally… aka making the rice pink to make little piggies or green to make frogs. How well it will work on brown rice remains to be seen though. The themes of each lunch really creates a great place to get your lunch imagination working.
What I Dislike About This Book: The abundance of what I would consider junk food.. the white rice, the hotdogs, the deli meat, white bread, fried foods, ect. Yeah I get that hotdogs can be easily turned in an octopus but I would rather my kids not eat hotdogs, ya know? At least half of the book highlights ways to make lunches with the stuff that many of us are trying to get away from. It is discouraging to wonder how you can recreate certain theme meals without using what they used.
Still I can use the book as inspiration for my lunch making adventures this year and I will just have to find clever substitutes for the foods I am not so fond of. Just with the world of bento boxes and the abundance of cheap plastic crap you can get sucked into buying.. you take the good and find ways to ignore or work around the stuff you don’t like.
Hey Tiffany,
I love the idea of Bento – I’ve been pouring over a blog just loving the eye candy. So I was curious about the egg molds and silicone cups. I think I see some in your pic above – though your cups don’t look silicone. So do we just suck it in and just figure food items are only in the plastic for a bit so it’s okay. I guess I’m especially wondering about the egg molds. Your thoughts would be welcome. I’m not at all trying to be critical just trying to figure this out from someone who has done this. Thank you.
Sheryl, we don’t have the silicone cups anymore. They came with one of these sets but we donated them. The egg molds we have had for years and the eggs only spend about 5 minutes inside them.
Thank you for the reply!