Bento Box.
Tonight is our first poker night. It is an excuse for friends and pizza really. The Japanese people we invited have no idea what poker is, so we will be playing for small change.
I expect we’ll degenerate into playing Nintendo 64. Either way, I win.
So bento boxes. Lots of people have heard of them. They are the japanese lunch box. For whatever reason, they have a hold over Americans’ attention enough to have heard about it. Really though, its just lunch in a box.
To be fair, the Japanese have perfected the lunch box. Lets start with the physical parts of the bento box.
When it is lunch time, you set your bento box down. It will be wrapped in a large hankerchief that is tied at the top. That way all the contents are kept stacked together.
So you untie it and lay the hankerchief down. It becomes your placemat. Now in your bento set, you will have whatever utensils you need. Chopsticks most of the time, but maybe a spoon for curry rice days.
Then you have the bento boxes themselves. They are small boxes that range in sizes, but are pretty tiny in general. Most of the time there are two boxes. One for rice, which is typically on the bottom. On top of that is another bento box that holds all of the goodies.
What makes bento boxes so fascinating is that the topmost box is usually very carefully laid out. Since the boxes themselves are small, the top box will only contain a bite or two of any one thing. There may be 5-7 things in this box.
For example, the top box may contain a meatball or two, a small cube of scrambled egg, a salad of some sort, and a small croquet or Japanese pickles. So there is variety, and where the lack of quantity is, you have a substantial box of rice to power through below.
You might think, “I don’t want my single and delicious meatball touching those icky pickles my mom packed.” Never fear, it is very common to use cupcake wrappers to isolate each food item from the rest. So your single bite of meatball or cube egg will taste as though it were the only thing in the box. Which it nearly is.
When you see real bento boxes you wonder if these Japanese people wake up at 4:30 in the morning to cook their single cube egg, slice their veggies for the single wholesome bite of salad, or otherwise waste their lives on a small lunch. They don’t. They do it the way we should.
They simply take leftovers from dinner, put them in the cupcake wrappers, arrange them, and scoop the rice in the bottom one. If they want a single cube egg that day, then they will make one.
These are bento boxes. They are really just packed lunches, just prettier.
Now lots of stores and everywhere sells bento lunches. They are like little sealed trays of food. They always have a large portion of rice, a main dish, and one or two smaller things that may be pickles or a salad.
Bentos rule the country here, and I’m glad. The days of simply grabbing a sandwich or a value meal at fast food are over.
Now I just have to figure out what I’m eating.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:12 pm by rl