The Get Started Bento Challenge will start on January 12th

The Challenge is now over, but if you would like to do the Challenge on your own, just follow along with the week-by-week tasks. Links at the bottom of this article.

The bento challenge that I talked about previously here [1] and here [2], will start on January 13th January 12th.

Why the 13th? Well, I think that at the start of the New Year, a lot of us are very busy with work or school, for ourselves or for our family, cranking up into full gear. So, the 13th seems like a good time to really start concentrating on ourselves and our habits. Since it will extend into February, I’m going to call it the Get Started Bento Challenge.

(Yes, I misread the calendar. As a few people have pointed out, Monday is the 12th. I had forgotten I’d recently changed my iCal settings so that the week starts on a Monday. Anyway, we’ll be going quite slowly the first week, so let’s say we’ll be starting out on the 12/13th. Hope everyone is ok with that!)

The Get Started Bento Challenge

To get into the habit of making bento, and start 2009 off in a great healthy way!

The details

• The Get Started Bento Challenge will be for five weeks from January 12th to February 15th, with a specific task or challenge to work on every week.
• Participants will make a goal or a short list of goals they want to work on for themselves, whether it’s just to get into a bento making routine, to use bento for healthier eating or to lose weight, to save money, and so on.
• We’ll use a Flickr group [3], and a forum (location of forum to be announced!) to track our progress and share ideas. (I’ve read all of your comments so far and have taken into account all of your suggestions and concerns, and have decided that a combination of a Flickr group and a discussion forum would probably be the best.)

What do I need to participate?

• The first thing is to be sure you want to do this. Like anything that requires you to make changes to your daily routine, it will require some level of commitment on your part in order to be a success for you. If you are new to Just Bento, you may want to read through the Getting Started series [4].
• One basic thing you’ll be asked to do is to take pictures of your bentos. So you should have some way of taking pictures of your bentos (they don’t have to be beautiful, just visible!) and uploading them. I really think visual feedback is one of the best ways to really see what you are doing.
• You’ll need at least one bento box before the 13th. Remember, your bento box does not have to be an ‘authentic’ Japanese bento box. Read the Selecting the right bento box [5] article (and the linked articles in there). I’ll be posting more about this as needed leading up to the Challenge start.

How do I sign up?

• Update: The forum is now open [6]! If you haven’t already, please register on the site [7] in order to be able to post to the forum.
• If you are already a flickr member, please join the Just Bento group [3]. If you’re not yet a flickr member (it’s free!) please join flickr [8] and proceed. If for some reason you cannot use flickr, I can give you some limited tech support if you’re a Mac user. (But really, it’s very easy.) Otherwise, once the forum is up you’ll be able to post photos there that are uploaded to other photo hosting services like Picasa, Photobucket, and so on.

Note: My last blog post of 2008 is over on Just Hungry [9], which may be of interest if you’re setting goals and resolutions for yourself in the new year. Take a look!

Get Started Bento Challenge: Week 1

Welcome to Week 1 of the 5 week Getting Started Bento Challenge! If you’re new to the site, see the overall objectives of this Challenge [10].

The Challenge officially commences on Monday January 12th (Joining in later is fine too - just catch up where you can!)

Before we kick off Week 1, here’s a quick outline of this and upcoming Challenge weeks.

• Each week, we’ll be focusing on a particular aspect of making tasty, healthy and cost conscious bento lunches as efficiently as possible.
• There will be three task and goal levels: Basic, Going Deeper, and Weight Loss. Basic is what you should try to do at a minimum. Going Deeper is for people who are very motivated and want to take on more. Finally, Weight Loss is specifically for people who want to use the Challenge to kick start, or enhance, a weight loss plan.

So, on to Week 1!

Week 1 Focus: Getting Organized

My aim is to make most of my everyday bentos in under 30 minutes, with under 20 being ideal. While there are a lot of things we can do to make this happen, I’ve found that the most important aspect is to be organized. This means the following:

• Planning my bento lunches ahead. The difference in time spent when I know what I’m going to make for my bento when I get going on it in the morning vs. when I don’t have a clue is pretty big. Besides, I can’t think too clearly early in the day, so I really waste time waffling around between the freezer, refrigerator and the pantry, trying to come up with something. More often than not I’d get too discouraged by my indecision and decide to forget about making a bento altogether.
• Have the equipment and supplies ready to go. A well run restaurant, not to mention an efficient chef, always practices mise en place a term that means having the tools of their trade and the ingredients at hand before starting to cook. That’s how these restaurants can manage to make dishes on order in such a short time.
  
  Here’s a photo of a recent mise en place I did, with bento boxes for The Guy and me, a small pan and a small frying pan. (I also use an electric water pot [11], but that’s always out on the counter anyway.)

This may sound rather complicated, but it really isn’t once it becomes a habit. It only takes me about 10-15 minutes to roughly plan my bentos for the upcoming week. And getting the equipment ready only takes a couple of minutes, once you know what you need.

Your tasks and goals for this week

Reminder: The week stars on Monday/Tuesday.

Whatever level you decide to tackle, you should do the following:

• Photo. At lunchtime, take a photo of your bento, and upload it either to flickr (and add to the Just Bento pool) or to your preferred photo hosting service. A record of your first bento steps!
• Report. At the end of the week, report back here in the dedicated forum [12] and tell us how it went for you. (Or link to your blog post with your report.)

Basic

• Make one bento. If you’re just starting out, aim to make at least one bento this week. Yep, just one - we’re starting out slow and easy. If you don’t have a bento box yet, just use a nice plastic container with a tight fitting lid. We won’t even quibble about the contents for this week. Your aim is to just do it!
• Mise en Place. The night before every day that you plan to make bento, make your supplies ready. Have your bento box out with your eating utensils, plus the pots and pans you’ll need. In addition, if possible have the food item you’ll either be cooking or just packing into your bento box at the front of your refrigerator, freezer or pantry shelf so that you can just grab them.

Going deeper

In addition to the Basic tasks:

• Pre-plan. Plan out your bentos for the week. You can use the simple Weekly Bento Planner [13], or the more comprehensive Weekly Menu Planner [14], or whatever works for you. Try to plan for bentos with at least 1 protein, 1 vegetable and 1 non-sweet carb. (For people who tackle this level, it will be interesting to compare what you planned to make and what you actually ended up doing. It will help you pinpoint any problems.)

Weight Loss

If one of your goals for this Challenge is losing weight, consider these additional tasks:

• Figure out how many calories you really need. There are several studies that show that eating too few calories can actually sabotage weight loss efforts. So you want to make sure that your daily calorie goal is appropriate to your height, current weight and activity level. There are lots of online tools where you can figure this out. Here is one I like [15].
• Measure your bento box’s (or boxes’) capacity in mililiters (ml). As a general rule of thumb, if you pack a bento box tightly, the capacity in ml gives you the capacity in calories. You may not always have a tightly packed bento though, so you may want to have a bigger one for loose food like salads. In any case, it’s good to know just how much your bento boxes can hold.
  
  For this task you’ll need a measuring cup with ml markings for maximum accuracy. Take out your bento box. Fill each up with water, and empty out that water into the measuring cup. Read the ml. amount, and write it down somewhere. If you don’t have a ml. measuring cup, you can use regular U.S. measuring cups; 1 cup is 236 ml. It won’t be as accurate but you’ll get a general idea. (You may want to read Easy Diet Bento Rules [16] if you haven’t already.)
• Move? This is not strictly bento related, but this is a good time to start or re-start a good exercise program.

(And of course, before starting any kind of weight loss plan check with your doctor or other trusted medical professional, especially if you have an existing medical condition.)

So, to sum up:

Basic: Mise en place, at least 1 bento, photo, report.

Going Deeper: Pre-plan, mise en place, 1 more bento than you’re making now, photo, report.

Weight Loss: Caloric needs, measure bento, pre-plan, mise en place, 1 more bento, photo, report.

Just tackle the level you feel capable of. And I’ll see you at the end of week! (I’ll be around during the week too, doing the challenge along with you and hanging out of course.)

Get Started Bento Challenge: Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of the 5 week Getting Started Bento Challenge! Week 2 officially starts on Monday January 19th (Martin Luther King Day for USens, and the day before the Inaugural!), but join in whenever you can!

Here’s a quick reminder of the outline of this and upcoming Challenge weeks.

• Each week, we’ll be focusing on a particular aspect of making tasty, healthy and cost conscious bento lunches as efficiently as possible.
• There will be three task and goal levels: Basic, Going Deeper, and Weight Loss. Basic is what you should try to do at a minimum. Going Deeper is for people who are very motivated and want to take on more. Finally, Weight Loss is specifically for people who want to use the Challenge to kick start, or enhance, a weight loss plan.

(Click here to skip down to the task descriptions, or just the summary.)

Week 2 Focus: Healthier Bentos

For Week 1 [25], the focus was on getting yourself organized for making bentos on a regular basis. That will still be your foundation, so if you had some trouble with that aspect, continue to work on that primarily. As a lot of people who took the Week 1 Challenge found out, things like planning ahead and having your bento making equipment and supplies ready to go are really useful.

If you’re ready to tackle more though, this week’s focus is on making your bentos healthier. Whether you are interested in losing weight or not, a healthy lunch is the fuel that’s going to keep you going for the rest of the day.

The building blocks of any main meal are to have a good balance of carbs, proteins and fruits or vegetables. This is so much easier to focus on within the confines of a bento box. Many Japanese bento books have formulas like 4:2:1:1 (carb:protein:side1:side2) or 3:2:1 (carb:protein:vegetable/side), but the easiest one I have seen was detailed in a book I’ve reviewed earlier, Yaseru Obento Recipe [26] (Slimming Bento Recipes). I think this formula is useful whether you are dieting or not!

Step 1: Fill only up to 1/2 of your bento with carbs

Carbs include rice and other grains, pasta, bread, potatoes and other starchy vegetables, crackers, etc. All of your carbs combined should not take up more than 1/2 of your bento.

Step 2: Fill 1/4 of your bento with proteins

Proteins include meat, fish, eggs, cheese, tofu and other vegan/vegetarian proteins.

Step 3: Fill 1/4 of your bento with nutrient-dense vegetables

This is the tricky part. Not all vegetables are that nutritious - for example, most lettuces, especialy light colored ones are basically mostly water with a bit of fiber. For a bento lunch where you have to cram is as much nutrition as you can in a very limited space, go for dark or bright colored veggies. Dark green leafy vegetables (blanched or sautéed if ou want to squeeze a lot into a small space), bright red peppers, carrots, beetroot, broccoli, etc… you get the idea. Brightly colored vegetables make our bento look really nice too! If you do bring a salad for lunch, try to include some dark leafy greens in there like baby spinach leaves, arugula (rocket), mache (lamb’s lettuce), darker lettuce like romaine, and so on.

(An exception to the brightly colored = healthy, pale vegetable = not so much rule is cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower. Pale cabbage is a good healthy vegetable.)

Step 4 - Optional: Brighten your bento with ‘accessory’ food

This is an optional step, but it can make the difference between a blah looking bento and one that makes you happy at lunchtime and people around you jealous! I think of things like cherry tomatoes, lettuce leaves,and snow peas (mangetout) as ‘accessory food’. Other accessory food can include things like brightly colored pickles, a few green peas, umeboshi, furikake, and so on. And of course you can add color with non-edible accessories like picks, little flags, or what have you.

Don’t worry too much about this though this week - focus on the health aspect rather than looks!

Fruit?

If a little bit of fruit is part of the bento box, I usually treat fruit as an ‘accessory’ or part of the vegetable section. Otherwise, if it’s packed separate it’s well, ‘fruit.’. Keep in mind that some fruit, like bananas for instance, are more carb-like in terms of their nutrition profile, a concern if you’re trying to lose weight.

I try to follow these principles with all the bentos I post here, especially the ‘formal bentos’ that get a number and are listed on the Bento archive lists [27], but in Bento no. 39 [28] I show this in step-by-step detail.

Not just for traditional bentos!

This principle doesn’t just apply to traditional bentos either. Let’s take a look at this traditional brownbag lunch for example:

• 1 sandwich (2 slices of bread), peanut butter and jelly
• 1 brownie
• 1 apple
• 1 small bag of potato chips (crisps)

Do you see the problem? It has way too many carbs (bread, brownie, potato chips, not to mention the sugar in the brownie, jelly and peanut butter). Let’s see what we can do about it…

• 1 sandwich (2 slices of whole wheat bread), peanut butter, no-sugar jelly or preserves
• small pack of carrot and broccoli floret salad or maybe Orange Juice Carrots [29], etc.
• Babybel cheese
• small apple
• brownie saved for mid-afternoon snack, or maybe as a mid-morning snack? (If you bake your own, think about adding some nuts)

Your tasks and goals for this week

Whatever level you decide to tackle, you should do the following:

• Photo. At lunchtime, take a photo of your bento, and upload it either to flickr (and add to the Just Bento pool) or to your preferred photo hosting service. A record of your first bento steps!
• Report. At the end of the week, report back here in this forum with how it went for you! (Or link to your blog post with your report.)

Basic

• Make one bento more bento than you did last week. Didn’t make any bentos last week? Then make one! If you made one, make one more!
• Mise en place. Continue to do this if you can. If you don’t have space on a countertop or table, or you have to keep those clear since you share the kitchen - how about setting it out on a tray or something, putting it in a cabinet or drawer, so you can take everything out at once?
• Consider doing a little pre-planning. Look at Week 1 [25]’s ‘Going Deeper’ level.

Going deeper

In addition to the Basic tasks:

• Look back at the bentos you made from Week 1 (now you see the point of the photos!). See how you can improve them nutritionally. Try making just one or two bentos a bit better balanced.

Weight Loss

If your goal is to use bentos for weight loss for the long term, you should by now know how many calories you want to allocate to lunch. You will need to work within that figure to create a balanced bento.

Let’s say your goal is to make bentos that are under 500 calories. If you are using rice as your main carb, you should not use more than 1 cup, which, depending on the type of rice, is around 200-250 calories. (The same goes for most grains.) Using brown rice or zakkokumai ups the nutrient value of your rice. So, with the rest of your bento you need 1 or 2 proteins, which will come to around 150-200 calories. Vegetables barely count for any calories, but you do need to count the oil and things you use to cook them.

So your task for this week is basically the same as the Going Deeper task. You do need to add up your calories, but if you are too busy for that, you can:

• Concentrate on improving the quality and quantity of the veggies in your lunch.
• If you’re packing too many carbs, consider reducing the amount. (Onigiri + crackers + Pocky is not a very balanced meal…)

(A note about onigiri. You can get a fairly accurate measure of their caloric value if you use the put-in-a-cup method [30] of making them. Figure out the capacity of the cup you are using. 1/2 US. cup of white rice (110ml) is about 120 calories, so if you make 2 1/2-cup onigiris that’s 240 calories. You don’ really need to fuss about the innards of the onigiri since the amount is so small, unless you are making big onigiri with fried chicken filler or something!

If you use onigiri molds (moulds), you should measure their capacity also to see how much rice they hold.)

Sites where you can calculate calories

There are tons of sites where you can input your food and figure out the calories, and a lot more, but here are a few:

• Calorie King [31] - I use their standalone software to calculate my calories
• The Daily Plate [32]
• Fit Day [33]
• Spark People [34]

If you can’t be bothered to use a particular site though, you can also just type in ‘calories in 1 cup of brown rice’ in Google search and come up with a reasonable answer fairly quickly.

But you need to know what exactly is 1 cup, or 1 ounce, or…

If you are really serious about losing weight, whatever program you are following it is really helpful to have these tools. They also make you a better cook!

• A set of graduated cup measures, ranging from 1 cup to 1/4 cup
• A set of graduated spoon measures, ranging from 1 tablespoon to 1/4 teaspoon
• A kitchen scale, ideally a digital one with a TARE feature (where you can put a bowl or something on the scale, then zero it out, so you can add the ingredients you want to measure in there withing having to do math in your head)

Cup and spoon measures are cheap, even if you get fancy stainless steel ones or something. (I do have a set of fancy stainless steel ones that I got ages ago - they last forever.) A good digital kitchen scale is not that expensive either (you can get one for around $20-30 in the US) and is a very worthwhile investment. If you have been guesstimating how much food you’ve been eating so far, you might be surprised…most people tend to underestimate.

(On a practical note, I do not measure things all the time by any means! Who has that kind of time in the morning? But, through lots of repetition I know how 1 cup of rice etc. look in my bento boxes.)

Summary

Basic: 1 more bento than last week, start planning, mise en place.

Going Deeper: Basic + Analyze your past bentos, improve 1-2 aspects of it.

Weight Loss: Basic + Going Deeper, concentrating on veggies and carb amount. Optional: gather your online and physical measuring tools.

Just tackle the level you feel capable of. And I’ll see you at the end of week! (I’ll be around during the week too, doing the challenge along with you and hanging out of course.)

Get Started Bento Challenge: Week 3

Welcome to Week 3 of the 5 week Getting Started Bento Challenge!

A quick reminder of the outline of this and upcoming Challenge weeks.

• Each week, we’ll be focusing on a particular aspect of making tasty, healthy and cost conscious bento lunches as efficiently as possible.
• There will be three task and goal levels: Basic, Going Deeper, and Weight Loss. Basic is what you should try to do at a minimum. Going Deeper is for people who are very motivated and want to take on more. Finally, Weight Loss is specifically for people who want to use the Challenge to kick start, or enhance, a weight loss plan.

(Click here to skip down to the task descriptions, or just the summary.)

Week 3 Focus: Money Saving Bentos

In Week 1 [25] we focused on getting organized for making bentos on a regular basic - the very basics. And in Week 2 [45] the focus was on healthier bentos.

For me, the no. 1 reason I like to make bento lunches is that it allows me to eat healthier. But just behind at no. 2 is to save money, especially in these uncertain economic times. I happen to live in a place where any kind of prepared food is either expensive or unhealthy, and sometimes both. So by the very fact that I do make bentos for myself and The Guy, we are saving a lot on our food expenses, without sacrificing the quality of our food.

For example, last week I made bentos 4 out of 5 days [46], and ate out on one day. Granted, the restaurant I went to is not that cheap (though not expensive by Zürich standards either), and I wasn’t paying! If I were though, my lunch there, without any starter or dessert, cost more than my 4 other lunches that week combined. (I don’t factor in the entertainment value of eating out here. More on that later.)

Still, there are things you can do to lower the cost of your bentos, not to mention your whole food budget, without compromising on quality.

Plan for leftovers to use in your bento

This is the most obvious money saving tactic of course. If you can set aside a little of your evening meal and add a bit to it, you can basically assemble your lunch for almost no additional cost. If you don’t like eating the same thing two days in a row though, think about ways in which you could use the same ingredients and give them a different flavor. For example if you make a spaghetti bolognese for dinner, you could set aside some of the sautéed meat and onions etc. to make meat soboro [47]. If you make egg salad, you could reserve a couple for soy sauce eggs [48] or easy lazy tea eggs [49]. There are a lot more ideas on re-purposing leftovers on this page [50].

Plan ahead

I keep on harping on this point, but planning your meals ahead can really help to cut down on one of the biggest money-wasters, buying too much food and seeing it go bad. For instance, last week [46] I bought a head of broccoli. I used the florets for two bentos and the stemps in a kinpira [51]. I used to let broccoli get limp or moldy all the time, but am getting better at using it up! Planning helps me to use up fresh vegetables, fruit and other things before they go bad.

Freeze or preserve

The best way to save your food for later use is to freeze it. You can make things specially for freezing, or just make extra of whatever it is you’re cooking and freeze the surplus in individual portions. You can also freeze leftovers and things to use some time down the line.

You should remember that even in the freezer, things still get bad eventually. If you have little packets of food floating around, they can get lost and forgotten, until you discover them one day, frosty, grey and freezer-burned. So, keep your ‘stash’ all together! Clear out some space in your freezer big enough for a large plastic freezer-saver type box, and keep all your bento ‘stash’ in there so you can get at it easily. (I have a 4-drawer separate freezer unit - my refrigerator has no freezer section - and I reserve one of the drawers for bento stash. If you have the space, an extra freezer unit is a great investment for plan-ahead cooking.)

Preserving is another thing to consider, if you’re up to it. Things like pickles can be very useful bento space fillers. Preserving is a big subject so I’ll leave it at that for the moment.

Take a look at the Johbisai (food stash) [52] section of the site for recipes that are particularly suited to ‘stashing’, in the freezer or in your pantry.

Go easy on the snacks and exotic ingredients

Unfortunately, many Japanese ingredients are pretty expensive outside of Japan. Things like packaged furikake, pickles, snacks and so on are really pricey unless you live in an area with a large Japanese-origin population, like Hawai’i or some parts of California. I try not to over-rely on these ingredients on an everyday basis, and stick mostly to readily available things. (I do, however, splurge on the basics like soy sauce, mirin, miso and good rice. I use a little bit of these things at a time so the overall cost is not too bad. I don’t often buy things like snack foods, mixes, and prepared food.)

Buy fresh produce in season

Stick to vegetables and fruit that are in season, when they are usually the cheapest and the best. Asparagus and strawberries in the dead of winter is a waste in so many ways.

Consider going vegetarian, at least sometimes

Unless you are splurging on expensive Japanese (or other) ingredients, vegetarian ingredients are often cheaper than their meaty counterparts, not to mention healthier. So if you can stand the idea of a meatless meal once or twice a week, see if you can put together a meatless bento that costs less than a meat-loaded one.

It’s not a bad thing to eat out…just not all the time

By no means am I saying that everyone should stop eating out. I love going to good restaurants myself. But my reason for going to a restaurant is not really for sustenance. (When I do the household budget, I categorize restaurant meals under ‘entertainment’, not ‘food’.) It’s to have a good time - to try out new dishes and wines, enjoy the ambience, and of course to have a good chat with my friends. If you have the time and money to do this every day for lunch, you are probably not reading this anyway! I’d rather save up by making bentos most of the time, and splurge (entertainment wise and calorie-wise) once in a while.

That was a long preamble! Here are this week’s tasks.

Your tasks and goals for this week

Whatever level you decide to tackle, you should do the following:

• Photo. At lunchtime, take a photo of your bento, and upload it either to flickr (and add to the Just Bento pool) or to your preferred photo hosting service. A record of your first bento steps!
• Report. At the end of the week, report back here in this forum with how it went for you! (Or link to your blog post with your report.)

Basic

If you are finding the challenge is getting a bit overwhelming, slow down! Just concentrate on making a bento at least once or twice a week - more if you can manage it. As you feel comfortable, try the Week 2 [45] ‘healthier bento makeover’ tasks, and continue to try to get organized enough to make bentos part of your everyday routine.

Going Deeper

• Start or continue planning your bento meals! Not only does it keep you organized, it can help save money be reducing waste.
• Play a little game with yourself, and see how many bento items you can create by not buying anything extra over what you buy and make for dinner.
• Check out the prices you pay when buying a normal lunch (sandwiches or takeout salad or hamburgers or whatever). Compare how much you are, or can, save by having a bento lunch instead.

Weight Loss

If losing weight is one of your Challenge goals, continue to work on the tasks laid out in Week 2 [45], especially measuring portions accurately and aiming for good balance. Oh, and keep up the exercise too!

You might also consider putting together at least one vegetarian lunch, relying on vegetable proteins like beans, whole grains, nuts and so on. You might find that it’s lower in calories, more satisfying, and cheaper than a meat or cheese-based bento!

Summary

Basic: Don’t give up! Just concentrate on making at least a couple of bentos this week if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Going Deeper: Try cutting the cost of your bentos without sacrificing quality. Calculate how much money you’re saving just by bringing bentos for lunch!

Weight Loss: Continue on from Week 2; consider vegetarian bentos.

This might be the toughest week to get through. Don’t give up, just do what you can at your own pace!

Get Started Bento Challenge: Week 4

Welcome to Week 4 of the 5 week Getting Started Bento Challenge!

A reminder of the outline of this and upcoming Challenge weeks.

• Each week, we’ll be focusing on a particular aspect of making tasty, healthy and cost conscious bento lunches as efficiently as possible.
• There will be three task and goal levels: Basic, Going Deeper, and Weight Loss. Basic is what you should try to do at a minimum. Going Deeper is for people who are very motivated and want to take on more. Finally, Weight Loss is specifically for people who want to use the Challenge to kick start, or enhance, a weight loss plan.

(Click here to skip down to the task descriptions, or just the summary.)

Week 4 Focus: Bentos For Others

So far, we’ve mainly concentrated on bentos for you. But many people make bentos for their family members, in addition to or instead of for themselves. This week’s focus is on how to get your spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, or kids to love their bento, and how you can keep up with bento making without going crazy. Fortunately, you can use all the skills and tactics discussed so far to make your loving bento efforts go smoothly.

Organization is even more important

We started out this challenge by working on mise en place, getting organized and planning ahead [25]. If you are making more than one bento at a time, organization is even more important. I make two bentos, one for myself and one for The Guy. Usually I just make the same thing for both of us, and pack more food in his box. Still, I estimate that making one more bento with the same ingredients adds about 5 minutes of extra time. And more often than not I make something extra for his bento, like a meat item or something. So having everything in order and knowing what to make is critical.

• Make sure you make ready all of the gear you need for all the bentos you will be making. This includes accessories like bento dividers, soy sauce bottles and such. (A side note: You may notice that I rarely use soy sauce bottles in my bentos. This is because they are rather a bother to fill, not to mention keep clean. I prefer to flavor the food I’m packing enough so that they don’t need additional sauce.)
• Plan ahead, noting any additions/substitions you need for individual bentos.

Protect your bento stash!

In connection with being organized: If you have been following along with the recommendations both during the Challenge and on Just Bento in general, you know the critical role of bento ‘johbisai’ or stash foods in speeding up your bento making, as well as adding variety. One problem I used ot run into a lot was someone other than me diving into the fridge or, much less frequently the freezer, and eating up my bento stash, wreaking havoc on my plans!

To prevent this, I freeze as many things as possible (in a drawer of my freezer that is dedicated as the ‘bento stuff drawer’, see Week 3 [58]), or put it away in a plastic container way in the back of the refrigerator. You may need to take stronger measures if your house has more than one Fridge Marauder, and/or teenagers.

Dealing with picky eaters

Note that I am not that qualified to talk about bentos for kids, since I don’t have kids of my own. My sister has two kids, and I’ve talked to her about making her son, who is a bit picky, eat his lunch (the younger one, my niece, eats everything). Some of her ideas are incorporated here. And there are many other bento blogs that are specifically about bentos for children (see favorite bento blogs [63].) Of course, picky and demanding eaters come in all sizes and ages!

So, you are all gung-ho about bentos - healthier lunches! more variety! cut down the family food budget! But your picky family members are resistant. What to do? I have been lucky in that The Guy is not that picky about food, but I did have to start him off slowly. Here are some ideas:

• Start out with little variation on the sandwich lunch. Perhaps you can improve the bread - switch white sliced bread for whole wheat, or a crusty multigrain roll. Add a side salad and fruit.
• Think about mini versions of food that your family members like already. Some ideas: mini-meatloafs, hamburgers, meatballs, chicken nuggets, etc. Or how about a healthier version of a Lunchable? Pack some yogurt dip, veggie sticks, rye crisp crackers, low-fat ham and cheese in a compartmentalized lunch, with some apple bunnies… [64]
• Make it look appetizing! I can’t think of anyone who can resist a beautiful, great-smelling box of food at lunchtime. That doesn’t necessarily it has to be a cute decorated charaben, though the main reason most Japanese mothers make charaben is to encourage their picky eater kids to eat. (I’m not counting the extreme charaben here, which are more like artistic or crafty expressions of creativity, but rather the ones with simple decorations like cut-out vegetables and little onigiri with punch-out faces.) Do take a little time to make sure the bentos or lunch boxes you pack will look nice when they are opened though. You can do this with food, or with accessories like colorful picks or the bento box itself. (One bento blogger tucks in Post-It notes with cute messages into her child’s bento boxes.)
• Tuck in a sweet treat. A bento doesn’t have to be 100% healthy all the time.
• Don’t go all-out on traditional Japanese style bentos, unless the recipient wants that. You may want to gradually ease in things like onigiri. (Another consideration may be to avoid any bento teasing [65], though hopefully that will never be an issue for your kids.)

A note for stay at home moms or dads

If you are making bentos for your spouse/SO or kids, you might consider packing a bento for yourself as well. This way, not only do you not have to bother about your own lunch, you also get to taste how the bento is after several hours, and make adjustments as necessary.

So, on to this week’s tasks!

Your tasks and goals for this week

Whatever level you decide to tackle, you should do the following:

• Photo. At lunchtime, take a photo of your bento, and upload it either to flickr (and add to the Just Bento Group pool [22]) or to your preferred photo hosting service. This week, try to take pictures of the bentos you make for your family member(s) too.
• Report. At the end of the week, report back here in forum [6] with how it went for you! (Or link to your blog post with your report.)

Basic

Just one more week to go in the Challenge! The most important thing is to just Do It - make bento at least a couple of times a week. If at the end of the Challenge, bento making has become part of your routine, you’ve passed with flying colors!

Going Deeper

• If you are just starting out, or considering, making bentos for your family, and they are resistant, make a list of the foods that they normally eat, and see how you can make them fit into a bento.
• If you’ve tried out bentos on your family and they’ve been reluctant about them, talk to them and find out what they objected to. It could have been the food selection, or having to lug around the box itself, or something else. If for instance you were giving them a Mr. Bento bento, maybe they didn’t want to carry a bulky set of boxes - so you could think about packing them a small, compact bento. Were they getting teased about their bento? Maybe you can switch to Western-style bentos and call it ‘lunchbox’.
• If you are making bentos for your family already, see how you can streamline your routine (see Week 1 [25]), make them healthier (see Week 2 [45]) and lowering the cost if necessary (see Week 3 [25]).
• Finally, and this is really Going Deep, if you feel like evangelizing the cause of Bento, think about making a big bento to share with your fellow students or co-workers one day. Or if there is a suitable occasion at your kid’s school, you could bring a variety of onigiri, teriyaki chicken on toothpicks, soy sauce eggs and things like that. Maybe they’ll be converted!

Weight loss

Your Weight Loss Challenge tasks are a continuation of the things discussed in previous week, especially Week 2 [66]">Week 2. How is the weight loss going? Have you lost a few pounds / kilos / stones?! If not, why do you think it is? You may want to review your bentos, and see if they are packing more calories than you thought. Or maybe you need to step up the exercise? (I know I do!)

Summary

Basic: Your main goal is to make bentos part of your daily routine, so keep putting together those bentos, even if they are very basic ones!

Going Deeper: Figure out how to make your family members and others love bento (or love bento even more).

Weight Loss: Review your weight loss and your past bentos. Are you losing weight? Do you feel healthy and fitter?

Just one more week to go in the Challenge after this. It’s all smooth sailing from here…right? Right!

Get Started Bento Challenge: Week 5

Welcome to the 5th and final week of the Getting Started Bento Challenge!

Where did the time go? For me, the Challenge weeks have just flown by!

Since this is the last week, the focus is on: Putting it all together, and moving forward.

(Click here to skip down to the task descriptions, or just the summary.)

Reviewing the weekly topics

• For Week 1, we focused on getting organized to make bentos part of our daily routines [25].
• For Week 2, we focused on making our bentos healthier [45].
• For Week 3, the focus was on saving money with bentos [58].
• And for Week 4, we focused on making bentos for others [72].

A special focus throughout the Challenge was on using bentos for losing weight.

What have you learned? What can you work on?

I thought that I was a fairly experience hand at making bentos. Still, I have learned a lot about my own bento making habits and what I have to work on during this Challenge.

For me, I discovered that I was not really taking into account the food preferences of the person that I was making bentos for other than myself (The Guy). Since he is not a picky eater and basically gobbles up everything that I make without complaint, I wasn’t really aware until last week that he really loves stuff like chicken wings in his bento. So, going forward I am going to try put in more of his favorites in our daily bentos.

Is there any area of focus that was a stumbling block for you? Perhaps it’s the planning-ahead aspect, or mise en place (putting your gear out ready to make bento). Or maybe you have trouble making your bentos as healthy and well-balanced, or as low-calorie as you like. Or, are you buying a lot of stuff (e.g. prepared foods, snacks) especially for your bento lunches, and not saving enough money? This is the time to try to work out those kinks in your bento making routine.

Where do bentos fit in your life?

If it has been a struggle to keep up with the Challenges, try to figure out why that is.

• Perhaps making bentos in the morning is too much? You can try assembling them the night before, or even (as some challenge participants have done) putting together whole or partial bentos on the weekend and freezing them.
• Assembling a good variety of ‘bento stash’ or johbisai items is a key for making people to long-term bento making.
• Or if making a bento every day is too much, maybe aim for a couple a week.
• Is making bentos for you and your partner too much? See who will benefit the most from bringing bentos to work or school, and consider making them just for that person at least for a while.

Think of the positives

There’s no way around the fact that making bentos daily is extra work for most people, unless it becomes a hobby for you, as it is for many charben artists for example. Me, for the most part I mostly prefer to express my artistic side in other ways. What makes that work all worthwhile for me, is the money-saving, the health benefits, and just the fact of having a tasty lunch that I know the contents and calorie count of waiting for me every day.

So ask yourself: What makes bentos worthwhile for you? When the routine gets boring or difficult, it’s good to remind yourself of those benefits.

Your tasks and goals for this week

The last week to do the following!

• Photo. At lunchtime, take a photo of your bento, and upload it either to flickr (and add to the Just Bento flickr pool) or to your preferred photo hosting service.
• Report. At the end of the week, report back here in forum [6] with how it went for you! (Or link to your blog post with your report.)

Basic

• Make a list of the reasons you want to continue making bentos.
• Take a look back at your Challenge weeks, and see what areas are or were giving you trouble, and how you could deal with them.
• Consider scaling back or changing your bento-oriented goals if necessary.
• Optional: Choose the 1 or 2 main reasons you want to make bentos a part of your life. Print them out in a large font, and stick it up where you will see it daily - on your refrigerator for example.

Going Deeper

One thing that I find to be just about essential in quick, varied bentos on a daily basis is building up a stash of prepared foods, called johbisai. I have explained the concept of johbisai or staples in detail here [83]. If you haven’t started a bento stash already, consider starting one this week. For instance:

• Make 2 or 3 favorites that you can stash in the freezer.
• Get into the habit of making more of something you need at a time, for dinner or for a bento, and storing the rest in the refrigerator to use later in the week.
• Frozen vegetables are great staples to stock.
• Don’t forget your pantry. Stock up on things like canned and dried beans, canned tuna and other fish, canned meats (Spam!), instant soups, herbs and so on, as well as Japanese things like furikake, nori seaweed, etc. Of course, such staples are not just limited to bento use!

There are plenty of ideas for bento staple items in the johbisai section of the site [83].

What are your favorite staples, both storebought and homemade?

Weight loss

For bento-dieters, this is the week to review your progress. Have you lost some weight? If you have, congratulations and keep it up! If not, why do you think that is? Perhaps your bentos were higher in calories than you intended. Or, maybe you were focusing too much on a healthy bento and forgetting to manage your other meals? Maybe you need more exercise?

If you find you really love bentos, consider extending the bento concept to other meals, especially dinner. The very fact that a dimensions and capacity of a bento box is so finite can really help with portion control. If you are making dinner and eating it right away, there is no need to let it cool and so on as you have to with a lunchtime bento; just put your dinner in a bento box and eat it right away.

Another interesting exercise is to take your normal dinner portion that you are eating spread out on a plate or several plates, and try packing it into a bento just to see how much you are really eating. You might be surprised!

Summary

Basic: Take a look back, and see how you can keep up what you have learned.

Going Deeper: Work on your bento stash!

Weight Loss: Review your progress. See what you can improve. Bentos for dinner?

Let’s get to the finish line together!

What are your goals for and thoughts about this week’s Challenge? Talk about it in the forum [84]!

April is Frugal Bento Month on Just Bento

[94]

April is National Financial Awareness Month* in the U.S. And, let’s face it, a lot of us are anxious to some degree about the state of the economy, no matter where we live. So in keeping with this, we’re going to have a Frugal Bento theme for April here on Just Bento. Judging from forum discussions like Penny Squeezing [95] I have a feeling that a lot of great ideas will be forthcoming!

While we covered the topic of money saving in Week 3 of the Get Started Challenge [58] but I didn’t feel like a week was quite enough. This time we’ll go really in-depth with bento frugality! During April, I’m going to keep track of how much money I save by making a bento lunch vs. buying lunch. Maybe you’ll like to do that too! Even if not, I hope you’ll enjoy the frugal-yet-delicious bento recipes, money saving tips and and more that are lined up.

And..that’s not all! Just Bento’s sister site, Just Hungry [96], will also running with the Frugal Food theme, especially (though not limited to) as it pertains to cooking Japanese food. You can read more about that over on Just Hungry [97].

*You can read more about National Financial Awareness Month on here on Get Rich Slowly [98], one of my favorite personal finance blogs, where they are focusing again on financial literacy this year [99]). I can’t think of a better time than now to learn more about fiscal responsibility than in this current economic climate.