Mike's First Bento Lunch

Day 1 of bento! Honestly, I spent a couple hours on Sunday prepping food, which I realize most moms may not have the time or energy to do. However, I also experimented a lot and played around, so if you stick with basic shapes and stuff, I think you could make a bento lunch in about 15-20 minutes a day or less, if you prep at some point. Prepping fruit or veggies for the week really helps, so you can just throw things together. And if you prep extra egg salad or tuna salad, or have deli meat ready on hand, you could do this during the week in 10 minutes or less. It's all in the planning!

Today's meal has three kinds of sandwiches - turkey/smoked gouda with mayo/mustard on rye (both the top and the bottom sandwich), egg salad with celery on wheat, and tuna with celery and relish on potato bread (We ate all the trimmings and extra pieces for dinner). After putting the sandwiches in the box, I realized they were super bland looking, so I thinly cut some bell peppers as "dividers." I had leftover tuna AND leftover egg salad for later this week.

Mike needs some crunch with his sandwiches, so I threw some baked cheese crunchies from Trader Joe's into a silicone heart cup (to separate them from the veggies), but in the future I think I'll get some bigger dividers; he'll be bummed there's so few in there! There's Brianna's all natural ranch dressing in the little bear, and bell peppers, celery sticks, and carrot/cucumber flowers. Those were a sudden inspiration - I was cutting Persian cucumbers and realized that the cutout would be all seed - yuck! But the outside was perfect. Then as I threw them into the tupperware I saw that the carrot cut outs would fit inside them...ta da! Also, note that you don't have to cut everything cute - the celery and bell peppers are cut normally. Save yourself some time!

Under the bear is a mini package of Orbit gum that I saw, last minute, at the grocery store. Cute, small, and perfect for the bento box (especially with stinky sandwiches like tuna and egg). Plus, the combo of the plastic on the gum and the silicone bear helps keep it gripped in place while transporting this lunch to work. I later added in two of those sugar snap peas on either side to brace the bear, although he didn't move at all when I shook the box.

P.S. this bento box only cost $7.00 at Marukai Market and it came with the divider, which is very convenient!

REVIEW: Mike says this lunch was delicious but too many veggies and not enough sandwich (all four of those sandwiches = one sandwich). Also the cheese crunchies got stale when I put them in the fridge the night before. Whoops! You can only prep so far.