Just Bento

This is such a simple thing to do, and there’s no better time to do it than in the summer when so many fruits are in season. Cut up any soft ripe fruit, and put them into silicon cupcake liners or wrap in plastic film. Then stash each cup or bundle in a freezer safe plastic container. You can then take out a cup or two and tuck them into your bento box. They act as an edible cooler for your bento. The container here has a cut up nectarine (divided into two silicon liners) and 2 small bananas (divided into 4). continue reading...

Reader Suzi no miko left this great comment:

I am a vegetarian and my husband is not (slight issue…). When I make Bento for the two of us I end up making a bunch of different things because he wants meat in his Bento almost every day. He’s also on the South Beach Diet thing and won’t eat rice, carrots, corn, potatoes, soba, fruit, etc… This page had been very helpful to us (more specifically me) and thanks to our bento boxes making portion control easy and the tips on packing from you we have collectively lost about 50 pounds.

That is really great - congratulations to Suzu no miko and her husband! Bentos are a great weight loss aid, as I’ve written before, because portion control is much easier than with large or more open containers.

One point that Suzu no miko brought up is something I have to deal with too: how to make a vegetarian-based bento that an omnivore, or a bigger eater, would feel satisfied with. I often show the bigger-portion version of each complete bento, but here are some general tips. continue reading...

Even if you have a small bento box, you can still go overboard on the calories. Here’s how to, and how not to, fill a bento box if you’re using bento lunches to try to lose weight. continue reading...

There are several books dedicated to using bentos for weight loss. I have quite a few of them, and most have a lot of good ideas. I only got Yaseru Obento Recipe recently, but it’s already become my favorite bento-for-weight-loss book and one of my favorite bento books of any kind. It is in Japanese only, as are all good bento books unfortunately. But it’s so full of great photos and illustrations that I think you could get a lot out of it even if you don’t read Japanese.

Yaseru Obento Recipe just means “slimming bento recipes”. The subtitle is kirei de oishii baransu bento ga atto iu ma ni dekiagari! dakara nagatsuzuki shite reboundo nashi! That’s a bit long, but it means generally “beautiful and delicious balanced bentos that are made in a jiffy! So you can keep (making them) for a long time, and won’t have a relapse!” That sounds good to me, and the book does deliver on that promise. continue reading...

Bento box lunches are a great tool to use within an overall weight loss program. Just the fact that the box is quite compact makes portion control a lot easier. However, just packing your lunch in a cute box doesn’t automatically make it ‘diet food’ either. Here are some simple rules to follow to maximise the weight-loss benefits of your bento lunches. continue reading...

In most cases, your bento lunch would have been sitting around for several hours by the time you open it. There are some precautions to take if you don’t want to get sick from eating it, which is not fun to say the least. continue reading...

Like a lot of web-monkey types who sit in front of their computers all day, I work from home at least several days a week. But I still make a bento lunch in the morning for myself whenever I can. Why bother? you might ask. There are lots of good reasons for it, but here are my top five. continue reading...

In Selecting the right bento box, I talked about how important it was to select the right size of box, especially if you are using bento lunches as a tool to lose weight. The other critical factor is to control the amount of rice you put into the box, if you are making Japanese style bentos. continue reading...

When I got married to a Swiss guy some decade or so ago, one of his far-flung friends in Germany sent him a letter congratulating him for ‘catching a beautiful Asian gazelle’. The Swiss guy told me this while rolling on the floor, where I kicked him hard. Ah, the point is not that I’m a spouse abuser, but that I’m nowhere near being gracefully gazelle-like. Going against the stereotype of the skinny Asian chick, I’ve always been on the round and cute side rather than sylph like.

This has bothered me of course off and on over the years, but I’ve never been good at sticking to any kind of diet. I just love to eat tasty food too much, and I also love to cook. This is where bento lunches come in. continue reading...