December 2007

All the content on this site by month.

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Looking forward to the new year, here's a juunishi or Chinese zodiac print furoshiki, Japanese wrapping cloth.

Cross stitch Christmas Advent wallhanging

This is the very last day you can donate to Menu For Hope! And a nice bonus - take a look at the beautiful poem about Lesotho <a href="http://sotho.blogsome.com/2007/02/08/my-country-my-home/'>here by Rethabile.

Just Bento is taking a few days off to take care of a ton of offline duties. We'll be back on the 26th, Boxing Day - an appropriate day to start talking about getting into the bento making spirit for 2008.

Happy Holidays!

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Bento item of the week is a weekly feature on Just Bento. This week's item is this adorable bento box.

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Recently, Mark from CalorieLab went shopping armed with a camera in Japan, and took some pictures of the bento supply displays at several stores. He's very kindly allowed us to share them with you here. So come along for a virtual bento supply shopping trip in some typical stores in Japan.

Since I've recommended two wooden boxes as the Bento Box of the Week so far, a few people have asked how practical wooden bento boxes are.

Review of Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals On The Go

Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals On the Go is, I believe, the only book available in English at the moment that is wholly dedicated to Japanese bento box lunches. I didn't have much incentive to get this for myself, but someone kindly sent me a copy to take a look at recently, so I can finally review it properly.

This slim softcover book (64 pages) is published by a Japanese publishing company. It's quite obviously a translation from a Japanese book, one I am guessing published about 10 years ago (the publication date of this English version is 2001). I'm not familiar with the author, Naomi Kijima, though that doesn't mean much. The bentos are very attractive, if a bit old-fashioned in feeling, and the photographs are beautiful.

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Bento contents:

  • 1 small piece of shiozake or salted salmon (about 150 cal)
  • 1 cup brown rice (220 cal)
  • A few bibb lettuce leaves (3 cal)
  • _Konnyaku no tosani_, salty-sweet konnyaku with bonito flakes (about 30 cal)
  • Homemade 'instant' miso soup ball (see how-to) (about 30 cal)

Total calories (approx): 435 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 5 to 10 minutes

Type: Japanese

Make your own instant miso soup balls

There are many kinds of convenient instant miso soup packs out there. I like to make my own 'instant' miso soup balls though. They are dead easy to make. All you need to do is combine about 1 to 2 teaspoonsful (for an average size miso soup bowl) with whatever ingredients you have on hand. All you need is a source of boiling water at lunchtime, which most offices have. Put the miso ball and ingredients in the bowl (or you can use a mug), add hot water, and let it sit for a few minutes while the ingredients expand and flavors amalgamate. This technique is often recommended in Japanese bento books with a healthy or macrobiotic focus, since instant miso soup mixes are often loaded with preservatives and MSG and so on.

Bento box of the week: Magewappa bento box from northern Japan

magewappa1.jpg_Magewappa_ means bent woodware; it's a traditional hand craft of Odate, which is located in Akita Prefecture in northern Japan. Straight grained pieces of Akita cedar are bent in circular shapes to form the sides of containers. The bent wood is then fastened with a contrasting dark bark or wood strips.

There's been a resurgence in the popularity of magewappa ware, so it's made around the country, but this box comes from Akita, where I think the craftsmanship is still the best.

Homemade furikake no. 4: Spicy curry peanut

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Warning: This furikake is very dangerous. It is so more-ish that you might find yourself putting spoonfuls of it directly in your mouth. To prevent this, I recommend making it a tad spicier than you might be comfortable with eating it on its own, so it will not disappear before you can use it on your rice. The spicy-salty-sweet taste, coupled with the interesting textures of the peanuts and the seeds, is quite hard to resist.

It's the least Japanese-tasting furikake so far perhaps, but it fits plain white or brown rice very well. It is not exactly low-calorie, but a tablespoon or so goes quite a long way to spice up things.

A quick bit of shopping news for UK and European bento fans: it looks like Japan Centre, who recently teamed up with Japanese "100-yen shop" giant Daiso, is slowly starting to carry more Daiso lunch bento boxes and supplies. See the current list of offerings here. Maybe if they prove popular they'll carry more bento supplies!

I should never try to post blogs at 3 AM, because I omitted an important detail for the Menu For Hope prize description (which I've edited now). Any bento box featured up until the December 21st deadline as Bento Of The Week can be selected as your prize, even if the retail price goes over the limit. So if you fell in love with that gorgeous handcarved box that was featured last week, you can enter for a chance to win it!

Just Bento is happy to announce that we're donating a prize for Menu For Hope, now in its 4th year. Menu for Hope is an annual charity event contributed to by food bloggers around the world. It was instigated by Pim of Chez Pim, and this year's regional European host is Fanny of foodbeam.

Menu For Hope IV will benefit the United Nations World Food Programme; this year's donations have been earmarked for the school lunch programme in Lesotho, Africa.

We're calling our prize: The Bento Maker's Dream Package!

A heads up just in case you read Just Bento but not Just Hungry, you may be interested in the new post up there, Answering some rice cooker questions.

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Bento contents:

  • Gyuudon with konnyaku: Beef, onions and konnyaku on simmered in a sweet-savory sauce (220cal)
  • on 1 cup brown rice (220 cal)
  • Blanched greens (10 cal)
  • Pickled radish (5 cal)

Total calories (approx): 455 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 25 minutes total (15 the night before, 10 in the morning)

Type: Japanese

The top trick used here is setting aside some ingredients for a dinner dish to make the main part of this bento at the same time.

Bento box of the week: Hand carved and lacquered Japanese elm

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Hey, a new series! Every week on or around Wednesday, I'll be featuring a bento box or bento accessory that has caught my eye for some reason. I'll try to stick to items that can be ordered online as much as possible, unless it's something truly exceptional.

Important notice: This bento box can be selected as your prize in the Menu for Hope drawing!

Bento archive list (1)

A list of bentos no. 1 to 30 featured so far on Just Bento.

Complete Bento Lists

Here on Just Bento, a Complete Bento article has a list of components with links to the recipes for each, an approximate calorie count, the time it took in the morning to assemble the bento, and in most cases a timeline graphic. Some Complete Bentos also have information on what bento box was used.

There are also several post with "also-ran" bentos, with brief descriptions and photos. Follow this link for the "also-ran" bentos.

Or to see all the bentos posted on the site follow this link for a list in reverse chronological order.

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Bento contents:

  • Kiriboshi Daikon (dried daikon radish) fritters
  • Carrot and lemon salad
  • Boiled edamame

Total calories (approx): 380-400 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 25 minutes total (10 the night before, 15 in the morning)

Type: Fusion-vegan-gluten-free

onigirikorokoro.gifIf you are a Twitter user, I've started to post site updates and short bento or food related things there. I'll try to update, er I mean tweet, at least several times a week, or whenever an idea strikes me that's too short perhaps for a full post.

Update: I've divided my Twittering to two accounts. The @justbento has site updates for both Just Bento and Just Hungry, plus bento-related tweets occasionally, while @makiwi is where I tweet about whatever is on my mind, at random. So, follow one, or both if you dare!

The best Japanese bento books if you don't read Japanese

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There are lots of bento-related books published every year in Japan. While most of them have plenty of colorful pictures, some are too wordy to be really useful for people who don't read Japanese. Here is a list of books that I have in my collection that I think would be very useful even if you don't read the text. Most of these books reflect my preference for books about healthy, vegetable-centric bento, mainly aimed at adults.

I'll be updating this page from time to time, so please check back occasionally. You can also see other, less annotated book recommendations in the Amazon Japan aStore.

Homemade furikake no. 3: Noritama

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Noritama is one of the most popular flavors of furikake available commercially. Nori means the seaweed that's used as a sushi roll or onigiri wrapper, and tama is short for tamago, or egg. The base, which gives the most flavor to the furikake, is bonito flakes or katsuobushi.

Surprisingly perhaps, noritama is one of the more fiddly furikake to make at home, though it's by no means difficult. But I like to make it occasionally anyway becase I find commercial noritama to be a bit too salty. This version is lower on salt, so you can pile it on your rice if you want to. Naturally it's free of any preservatives, MSG, or what have you. It's also a lot cheaper than the commercial versions, even if you have to pay premium prices for the bonito flakes and nori as I do.