Healthy lunch (May 4, 2011) - Double Oval Box Spinach/onion omelette with salad in bottom tier. Snack box in top tier: sesame rice crackers, clementine orange and chocolate covered ginger.

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All my lunches last week featured Joseph's Low-Carb bread products. These things are GREAT.  Not only are they high-fiber, low-carb and low calorie, they are softer and more elastic than the normal pita bread and wraps.  I was experimenting with how to pack wraps in different boxes. I think the one that works the best is the lavash-based wraps cut into 4 pieces and packed in the Big Black Hakoya.

	Cold lunch - Jan 24 or thereabouts - Bunny Blossom box Annotated after the fact, so I'm not sure what's in that pita sandwich. I'm going to guess cold chicken and salad. Piquante peppadew peppers with feta cheese and olives in the silicone cup. Fruit, nuts and cheese in the lower tier.
	Another cold lunch - Jan 25, 2011 - Dragonbox Chicken, avocado, green onion and bacon bits in the wrap. Tomato slices, cheese, peppadew peppers, olives nad mushrooms in the other tier.
	More wraps! Jan 26, 2011 - Bunny Blossom box I was really working on using up leftover chicken and wraps this week. Not sure what's in those wraps, but that's definitely chicken and green onion piled on top of it. Garnished with sweet pickeled ginger. Mmmm. Snack tier has a cup of vanilla yogurt with cinnamon sprinkle, orange sections and a couple of canned plums.
	Finishing up Wrap Week - Jan 28, 2011 - Big Black Hakoya Really, those are more properly called rollups this time. Wrappers are a full sheet of Joseph's Low-Carb Lavash. Not sure what's in them. Apple slices to fill up the rest of the tier. The other tier is really more dessert than "snack". The larger compartment is bread pudding with almonds on top. Vanilla yogurt and canned plums in the other compartment.

Dec 14, 2010 - Dragonbox (delicious). Bottom tier contains the remains of a dismantled shepherd's pie: potatoes, red cabbage, carrots, misc vegies and beef. Top tier: spinach salad with piquante peppers, ricotta cheese, sliced black olives, and a few pomegranate seeds. Egghead contains my favorite dressing: poppyseed diluted with white wine vinegar.

Okay, now I'm on a mission to use all my new bento gear at least once, or as often as it takes to figure out what each box is best for. This isn't a fancy lunch, but then, it isn't a fancy box. It's one of the midsize $1.50 snaplock boxes I picked up at Ichiban Kan. It looks like these boxes are perfect for sandwiches. Small sandwiches like this one can be packed with a few sides. I think that those wide bread loaves that are so popular now would probably just fill the box  sideways. I'll have to buy some of that bread size and give it a try. It would be nice to have a box that would accommodate those wide sandwiches.

Maiden Voyage of the Small Green Snaplock Box with Clear Top Tuna salad sandwich on Trader Joe's Low-Calorie bread (smaller than normal bread slices). Garnished with shredded carrot, cheese wedges and a couple of prunes. And packed with a banana, since this really isn't a very big lunch box.

Visited my daughter in San Jose and took a day trip to Japantown in San Francisco. By the time my family dragged me away I had bought 14 bento boxes, 4 carrying bags, 2 furoshiki and a few random accessories. So now I have a reason to take pictures of my lunches again. Most of the bento boxes I bought were of the $1.50 variety (and I've already given away 7 of them) but I got a couple of classy ones from fancier gift shops. This is the best one (anyway, the most expensive) - a fully microwavable 2-tier Kotobuki with a dragon tattoo.
This is the first long thin box I've bought. It's great for stripes of contrasting colors and textures. And it's nice to have a box that is clearly made for microwaving (notice the steam valve in the inner seal for the top tier?)

	Kotobuki Dragon Box - Maiden Voyage (Dec 2, 2010) Top Tier: leftover stir-fry with cottage cheese and olives. Bottom Tier: spinach salad with smoked salmon, roast turkey breast, piquante peppers stuffed with sour cream, a little grated carrot.
	Chinese leftovers in Dragon Box (Dec 5, 2010) Top Tier: Sesame chicken w/ broccoli, white rice, and some leftover stir-fry. Bottom Tier: half a coconut tart from Dim Sum, clementine sections, pomegranate seeds, almonds. Yogurt in the small container.

One reason I threw myself into the bento hobby was hoping it would make dieting more enjoyable. Mostly I wanted to make healthy food more fun to eat. That worked immediately, starting with my first healthy bentos packed in plastic Chinese takeout containers.

The automatic portion control exerted by the bento box can be a great diet aid too, but there was quite a learning curve involved in that one. I have boxes that range from snack-size to humungous Tupperware lunch boxes apparently meant to help Americans maintain their edge as Biggest People On Earth. But now that I pretty much know how to use the different sizes, I can make a nice healthy 300-400 calorie meal out of practically any set of leftovers without having to think about it very deeply. I did measure the rice on the Aug24 one, though. Rice can push the carb count through the roof very quickly if you don't watch out.  (I'm sure that's exactly the point of the traditional Japanese bento proportions, which are clearly aimed at a population that is a lot more active on a daily basis than most American office workers. Carbs aren't evil, but their only dietary purpose is as fuel. I don't need that much fuel.)

Anyway, I still pack a bento lunch almost every day, but only post pictures of particularly pretty ones. I thought these two looked really nice, and they sure did taste good!  Of course everything tastes good when you're on a diet. 

Diet Lunch - Aug 24, 2010 (320 calories) Turkey onion patties, rice with nori stars, steamed carrots and broccoli, grape tomatoes. Delicious.

Luscious leftovers - Aug 25, 2010 (300 calories) Beef and veggie stir-fry, cottage cheese, cheese-stuffed broiled mushrooms, whole wheat mini-pitas, grape tomatoes. Stir fry veggies seem to be: broccoli, carrots, onions, kohlrabi, and a little spinach seasoned with hoisin sauce and soy sauce (I didn't make it, so I'm reverse engineering the recipe).  I heated up the little cup of mushrooms, just to have something warm with the meal.

I'm no longer taking pictures of my lunch every day, but this one came out especially pretty.

Dumpling lunch - Aug 13, 2010 Salad in top tier, with 3 grape tomatoes and one peppadew pepper stuffed with (light) cream cheese. Entree tier: Thai Veggie Gyoza from Trader Joe with green onion, peapods and some more grape tomatoes.

Pink Eggs and ... beans? The beet-dyed eggs are really intended to be eaten with the salad tier, but one half was packed with the beans because that's where it fit. Salad tier also contains spinach, tomato, and cottage cheese. Entree tier - baked beans with chicken pot-stickers (microwave before eating).

This one's from last week - I just never got around to posting it. I had to replace the top half of the sandwich bun after getting it soaked with tomato guts.  I put a new top on the sandwich, but moved the tomato off to the side to be added right before eating. It occurs to me that  I could devote the whole double-tier box to one sandwich, packing the basic sandwich in one tier and the juicier ingredients in the other tier, with maybe some pickled ginger or something crunchy in the side compartment.

Note that these new "sandwich rounds" I like so much are wide enough to require a big bento box. This is my 950ml Hakoya, about as big as a Japanese lunchbox gets. This kind of thing is why one bento box is never enough, of course.  :-) 

Round flat turkey burger sandwich - July 7, 2010 Featuring my new favorite bread product - Arnold's whole grain sandwich thins. Turkey burger made from ground turkey breast, chopped onion and teriyaki sauce. Tomato slice on the side to avoid making the bread soggy. Served with carrots and spinach. Second tier is intended as a mid-afternoon snack: ricotta cheese with blueberries and Akmak whole grain crackers unglamorously sheathed in plastic to keep them from getting soggy.

New kimono patterned onigiri box (Hakoya) - May 19,2010 I wasn't going to order any more of these things, really. But I decided that I needed to start packing smaller lunches with an afternoon snack in a different box, which meant I could use more small bento boxes. This one has a relatively high domed lid sitting on top of a sealed bottom tier. You're supposed to put a couple of onigiri (Japanese sticky rice balls) under the dome. I will probably never use it for that, but I thought it would be handy to have a snack box with totally different dimensions. Besides, it is so pretty. Click through on this picture so you can admire the layer of kimono patterned cloth laminated to the plastic dome. Wow. Bottom tier holds a strawberry with dark chocolate and a snack mix of Chinese soy crackers, Cheerios and nuts. Under the domed lid, a little cup of cottage cheese and tomato, another cup with edamame and sweet pickled ginger (a wonderful combo, even though the beans got a little wrinkled when I steamed them).

Single tier lunch - May 19, 2010 Using only top tier of Hakoya double-tier box for lunch proper, since the kimono box turned out to hold a pretty big snack. Shumai dumplings with soy sauce and parsley garnish. Yummy vegie leftovers in the small removable tray (mostly spinach, eggplant and asparagus flavored with mysterious sauces). Garnished with a couple of grape tomatoes to make it look more appetizing. Really, it's delicious - just not so much with the looks.