Back to Bento

I still promise that I won't show every lunch I ever pack - at least not on this blog - but I've found a wonderful new website called Just Bento, so I'm trying to use it for inspiration (and recipes) to pack more healthful lunches.

This is a recent attempt. It's a 20-ounce Lock-n-Lock container, which means about 600ml. If you pack a box in the traditonal way, you'll have about as many calories as you do mililiters. I'm skewing towards the vegetables, which is good, but I don't think traditional bentos include dessert, so I'm not sure how much extra credit I get for the veggies.



Anyway, this bento is packed on a bed of spinach sauteed with vinegar and pepper. I'd intended that to be the main vegetable, but didn't appreciate how much the spinach would cook down, so I added a handful of frozen edamame to keep things green (and slipped in a few carrot sticks at the last minute). There's half a chicken sausage from Trader Joe's, and an onigiri - a rice ball - made from brown rice, so it's nice and nutritious. Dessert is in the two silicone baking cups - a serving of sutlac (Turkish rice pudding), and some frozen raspberries. These silicone baking cups are the best thing in the world when cooking for one, because they can go straight from the freezer to the oven or microwave, so I can prepare a single serving of something very easily.

In an attempt to keep up my enthusiasm, I've ordered an authentic bento box from ebay. I've promised myself that, if I walk 5000 steps a day all week, I can buy another one, and some accessories. (Yes, I'm counting - I'm wearing a pedometer. I'm using the M-Plan 10,000 steps site to track my progress. It's great - you can enter your total steps every day, and it gives you the equivalent in miles or minutes of exercise, keeps track of your weekly average, and creates a nifty graph to show your progress. I don't know why keeping score makes me more active, but it seems to work.)

And on a completely unrelated topic, I'm making progress on the Fiber Fish mitten. Since entrelac is completed in discrete chunks, it always seems to go quickly. I've nearly done as many rows as the pattern requires, although I think I'll have to add a couple more to make the mittens long enough.


It's a good thing I'm making progress, because it's cold and wet, and getting colder. All that snow from Monday? It was gone by the time I got home from work. Then it rained, yesterday and today, so even the areas that aren't flooded have pools of standing water everyplace. The dog park looks more like a dog lake, according to the pictures. So I think fish-shaped mittens are going to feel right at home.

I'm taking quite a sock break, between the fishie mittens and the Hat Of Doom. But that's OK, because, as of today, there's just one month to go until my sockday!!!!!!