Bento - What's a Bento?

I had a draft post about Bentos and never used it..... So here it is and now scoot over to the Maisie Eats Bento blog to win one!

More fun stuff I wrote back when we were waiting for our China travel dates.... this dates back to August 2008.

I had no idea what a "Bento" was until I read Deborah Hamilton's web site on how to pack nutritious lunches for her child. She lives in San Francisco and was recently highlighted in the Washington Post.
She is the expert on Lunches in a Box has all the answers and plenty of examples.

Another introduction to this concept is here. Another fun place to visit is Adventures in Bento. We're talking an environmentally friendly approach to meal packing using a re-usable product and saving tons of garbage from landfills in the process!

I found Deborah's web after catching up on my blog reading over at Maisie's Parent's Blog. I voted for her bento's, #52 and #53. AND guess what? She WON!! (September 15, 2008 post).

What is bento? Is it the style of packing? Is it the box? Is it the food?

A bento lunch is a compact, balanced, visually appealing meal packed in a box. Historically, it’s a Japanese box lunch, similar in concept to the Indian tiffin, the Korean dosirak, or the Filipino baon lunch. In Japanese, “bento” or “obento” refers to the packed meal, and “bento-bako” refers to the bento box itself. See the Wikipedia entry on bento for more details.

This is a really neat concept, you can't over pack it so it is great for portion control, the "wet" portions stay separate from the "dry", it is visually appealing and kids love it (adults too).

Check out Sunflowers and Ladybugs post on this topic too.
Maybe use some of those leftovers in a creative way for the kids?
Enjoy!