This is a guest post by Yvette Bowyer from Little Bento World
“What is Bento” is becoming a hot topic amongst parents with school age children. It is fast becoming a popular way of creating a healthy school lunch in a fun and exciting way for both parents and children. And it isn’t hard to do!
Above lunch box available here.
“Bento” means a Japanese-style packed lunch, consisting of items such as rice, vegetables and meat – in Japan. Here in Australia, we create Bento by packing in our favourite lunchbox items such as sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, crackers, dips and cheese, into a Bento style container.
Bento can be both traditional and modern! It doesn’t need to be fancy nor does it take a lot of preparation to make. All you need is a good lunchbox, food and a little imagination.
Above lunch box available here.
How to make a Bento lunch box in less then 5 minutes:
As long as you are prepared, you will be able to make a lunchbox in less than 5 minutes.
- Bulk bake and freeze savoury and sweet items such as muffins, scrolls, pikelets and mini pizzas.
- Prepare cut fruit and vegetables in air-tight containers and store in the fridge on Sunday night. Dip apples in citrus juice or soda water to keep from going brown. Hard boiled eggs in molds keep for up to 5 days in the fridge.
- Packing leftover dinner (stirfry, fried rice, pasta etc) straight into the lunchboxes will save time in the morning.
Write a list of what your children like to eat and pop it on the fridge so you will always have a reference to different ideas every day.
Super cute panda rice ball mold with nori cutter no longer available.
When you start creating your Bento lunchbox, think of themes and colours to create a healthy lunch. You can either use a compartment style lunchbox like the Shikiri or a single compartment lunchbox and pop silicone food cups or leakproof containers inside to hold dips, crackers and separate your sandwiches and fruit with silicone dividers.
Top tip to making sushi
A great alternative to sandwiches is sushi, you don’t even need the nori (seaweed) paper on the outside to make sushi, as long as you have the right sushi making tool and create the sushi rice by using the absorption method.
1 cup rice to 1.5 cups of water. Rinse at least 3 times and then pop into a rice cooker or follow instructions on your sushi rice packet for saucepan instructions.
Fillings for sushi can consist of your children’s favourite fillings:
- Tuna/Mayonnaise
- Chicken Schnitzel
- Pork Katsu
- Avocado and Carrot
- Grated Cheese and Ham
- Cucumber and Fish Sticks
- Asparagus and Chicken Yakitori
- Leftover Stirfry
- Celery, Capsicum and BBQ Chicken
Make your sushi rolls the night before, keep them wrapped up in cling film in the fridge and slice in the morning as needed.
Yvette has been creating Bento style lunches for over four years now and her passion and love for healthy school lunches fits perfectly in the Bento way. “We want to help encourage and inspire parents to create a healthy Bento lunchbox every day for their children and even themselves. In doing so, Little Bento World was created”
