Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

bento-riffic

A story about bento boxes in the Post’s Thursday food section inspired me to leave a rare (and rather gushing) comment on the article at washingtonpost.com about my love for a different style of bento: my Mr. Bento lunchbox.

I *love* the bento boxes at Teaism.

There’s another style of Bento box that’s also a lot of fun — the Mr. Bento lunchbox (or “lunch jar”). My husband and I got a matching pair as a wedding gift. It basically looks like a silver thermos (a little wider, a little shorter), with four canisters inside for different parts of the meal. Not quite as pretty a presentation as the bento boxes featured in this story, but quite portable. There’s a pretty active fan community around it on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/mrbento/), where folks take pictures of their bento meals.

It really can be kind of a challenge to come up with good, bento-friendly lunch menus, but the result is (ideally, at least) a fun, balanced meal with reasonable portion sizes.

The Post article is worth a read. There were some interesting guidelines about color harmonies and the general philosophies behind what goes into a Bento that I hadn’t heard before but which make a certain amount of sense.

Now to just channel my enthusiasm and love for the idea of Mr. Bento into actually putting it to use more often. I really do love the idea of the multi-item, small-portion lunchbox; it just takes some planning to put together a well-balanced lunch.