Bento, bento, bento – Filling a 2.5 cup box with randomness
Japanese bento boxes are measured in milliliters, so that 2.5 cups is a 600mL bento. The really cool part about portion control like this is that for authentic boxes, the capacity is supposed to also line up with about how many calories are in the box.
LIAB has some really awesome charts for how large bento boxes should be based on age or height. It also has various breakdowns of ratios of food groups to be in each box. So for example, the general rule is 3 parts grain, 2 parts vegetable, and occasionally things like meat, fish, dairy or fruits, but no candy, junk food, or fatty foods.
On some days, that 600mL of food seems like an absolute ton. Other days, I feel like I’m not sending enough food. It just depends on what I’m sending that day and just how crammed I make the boxes. I haven’t been following a set ratio, but tend to lean toward having a main grain dish, sometimes 2, a veggie portion, and fruit. They’re big fruit eaters and this meal is when they usually get their fix for that.
Most days tend to be completely different (read: completely random), even if I’m repeating various sides and using the same proportions
Here’s some of the boxes from the last few weeks:
- Brown rice with peas, onions, soy sauce
- A row of green beans
- Steelhead nuggets
- Grapes
- Peanut butter with crackers, alternated with banana slices
- Salmon with spicy diced tomatoes
- 12 grain cracker things for the fish
- Boiled egg
- Sliced oranges
- Pretzel sticks
- Ants on a log, celery with peanut butter and raisins
- Taco pockets (recipe soon)
- Twix bar from Easter (shhh, it’s breaking the no-sugar rule)
- Boiled egg
- Celery and peanut butter
- Prunes (yay for them liking prunes, woo)
- Blueberries in the ziploc bag
- Leftover fish taco, rolled like a burrito
- Vegetable straws
- Homemade pineapple mango fruit roll up leather
- Half a banana
- Leftover jambalaya
Bento challenges – Balancing nutrition with fun
I’ve been making the girls bento boxes for right at a month now, without much of an update, but lots of progress has been made.
I read lots of bento blogs already, so I knew the basic concept along with the really creative, artistic side of things, but in practice, some of it was harder than expected. Here are some of the problems we’ve run into and how they were overcome.
- Challenge – Incorrect sized bowls
- This is a biggie because the whole idea behind bento boxes is portion control. It was a spur of the moment decision to start sending them, so I made do with what we had. I had too-small bowls and too-large bowls, but nothing in between really, or at least not 3 of any given size.
So I took the too-large bowls and improvised. A slab of styrofoam wrapped in aluminum foil in the bottom of each bowl cut the room in half. Then I bought more appropriate-sized bowls over the weekend. They’re still slightly larger than they should be for kids, but I make it work.
- Challenge – Water bottles
In that past when I’ve sent lunches, I tossed in a quarter, too, and they picked up a carton of milk. No milk means I needed to send drinks. The first couple days, I just refilled old water bottles, but those are flimsy, get squished, and the lids don’t always close the way they should.
- I assumed I’d keep using them actually, but while picking up a few other things at Dollar Tree, we found these:
Awesome. The best part is, the color options they had were exactly the colors I would need to match their lunch bags. No really, they were the perfect colors, see?
They’re a great size, seal well, and the girls like them, so works for me.
- Challenge – No fancy silicone cups to separate possible messes
Ideally, I would have little cups like those to separate any potential liquidy items. Or items that would have a tendency to go all over the bento box if flipped upside down or something (because the cup tops would press tightly against the bento lid, keeping loose items in place regardless).
Instead, I’ve taken to improvising.
Here, I stacked some crackers and used a paper muffin tin liner just touch the top of the lid and help hold the contents in place.
In the same one, I also had a paper towel cradle to hold some frozen strawberries that I knew would thaw by lunch time and could be quite the mess.
^ A simple divider to help keep the pasta sauce from mixing with the greek salad dressing.
If all else fails, I have some tiny glad bowls with lids to guarantee certain foods will stay put. I’ve also used ziplocs a few times, just in case. While I enjoy doing the boxes because it cuts down on waste of things like baggies for sandwiches, chips, etc, I have no problem using a few here or there to keep things going smoothly.
Pink eggs – Apparently, not all the rage
While making bentos for the last few weeks, I discovered rather quickly that boiled eggs are an easy addition that pack a nutritious punch. Almost as quickly, I discovered that they get boring after a couple weeks.
I was already drawing faces on them to help make them a little more appealing, but there’s only so far that food markers can take the same ol’ boring egg.
One afternoon after making a batch of them, I found myself with a dozen eggs that were impossible to peel. Or rather, the entire egg would start peeling into layers and chunks of slimy egg white instead perfectly smooth ones as they should be. So I did what any sane person would do and I scrapped the idea of getting the shell off easily, and threw the chunks of egg and yolks into a pan of colored water.
The result? Pink eggs. And strangely orange, weirdly textured yolks.
Gross, huh? What the heck was I supposed to do with that??
Chop it up, of course. Two of the girls loved the little muffin cups I filled with pink eggs and a ball of sunshine on top. The oldest, though? “It was weird. I didn’t like it. It just….it tasted weird like that.” She didn’t mind the pink, but having the egg deconstructed really threw her off. Oops.
Recent Comments