Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

My psychiatrist friend is fond of musing, “Mal likes little things, like purses and dogs.”

Well, who can blame me?

I like to counter his wiley, psychological ways by stating that I’m living out an unfulfilled fantasy of being tiny myself. An as yet unfulfilled fantasy. But, I digress.

Last year, when I was getting really serious about packing my lunch for work, I found some websites about bento boxes. Apparently¹ there is a tradition of Japanese mothers carefully packing compact lunches for their children, with cute little touches and flourishes to encourage their healthy eating. Like any good idea, this has been seized on by marketers and now there is a whole industry built up around “cute foods” with accessories and characters and so forth.

Still, a white, adult woman can find some use in the idea, and I bought a few grown-up boxes from J-list (which ships from Japan, so you have to be patient) and a few Ebay stores (most of them ship from the states) and began dutifully packing a small, healthful, interesting lunch every day. I got a lot of inspiration from other websites, bento bloggers² and the flickr.com bento group.

My experience with packing bentos is that it was a really great way to impose portion control, while still being interested in what I was eating. I did not create faces on my food with strips of cheese or use Japanese condiments just because I was using a Japanese tradition (as many bento-ers do, to make their food feel more “cute” in a Hello Kitty way), but I truly enjoyed the time I took each morning to pack lunch, and the challenge of maximizing nutrition, health, and satiety in small packages.

Just like purses and dogs.

This week, I am experiencing a return to bento. My first day, I did so with just plain kitchen containers, so you could see that you don’t have to have a fancy Japanese box to start in on the fun. Believe it or not, I managed to get lunch and THREE snacks into these containers. The larger container is a Ziploc disposable deal that I think is built for packing a sandwich and a few sides. It’s got little compartments, though, so I love it. (Little compartments! So cute!)

Here’s what I did:

1. Tuna salad on a bed of lettuce with sliced grape tomatoes. (Little tomatoes! So cute!) The tuna is one 3-oz can of water-packed tuna, about 3 tbsp of plain yogurt, 1 tbsp of fat-free mayo, and a handful of black beans tossed in for good measure.
2. Here you can see little packets of lemon juice, salt, and pepper that I bought from Minimus.biz when I was really into bento. (Little packets! So cute!) I use these on the tuna salad to make it more juicy and appetizing without wilting the lettuce throughout the day.
3. A Weight Watchers carrot cake. I don’t consider this a dessert, since I don’t find them very enjoyable, but I have some that I want to get rid of.
4. Under the cake, there is a layer of almonds — one ounce worth — which provides yet another snack.
5. A mid-day break of crackers and Laughing Cow cheese (Little cheese!) is perfect when paired with…
6. Grapes. Eating this snack mid-day feels all fancy, like a wine and cheese party (even though I don’t drink wine).
7. Finally, my favorite standby snack these days is a sliced apple with a tablespoon of all-natural style (yes, the kind you have to stir), reduced fat peanut butter. I find that this snack totally fills me up, provides some protein and good fat, and fiber to keep me going.³

I think I’ll be trying to incorporate more bento-ing into my plans, and dig out my old, cute bento boxes and little tiny condiment bottles and colorful muffin cups and… and… and…

Let’s finish off this cute entry about cute things with one more tribute to the ultimate cute.

That will be all. Carry on, soldiers.

1. I am not Japanese, nor do I know anything about Japanese culture, so I am only reporting hearsay and what I have read on the InterWeb. Do with it what you will. [↩]
2. Seems like just about any weird obsession has its own blogger following these days… [↩]
3. Heh. I just realized how you might read that. OH WELL. [↩]