This second round of bento making went much better than the first!
This is the heavily calorie restricted bento I sent with Himself to school. Rice, a little bit of salted salmon, blanched green beans tossed with soy sauce and sesame oil. The whole thing can't be more than 400 calories. I used the little boxes from my original sandwich set and didn't have any trouble at all. Apparently I just pack better in threes than fours!
And here's my own bento. I don't dare fast this year, but there's no reason I can't abstain from meat. So more salted salmon for me together with rice, a salad, and a clementine. Packing two square boxes was much easier than the variety of differently sized boxes.
I was much happier packing the boxes this time. Each bento came out feeling like a coherent meal instead of a jumble, even though when I started I was uncertain of what each would contain. And in my lunch, I did a much better job of vertical packing and tight packing.
February 13th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
I LIKE your bento.
February 13th, 2013 at 5:23 pm
It was tasty. But Mike needed a smaller vegetable than salad, and he says the green beans were pretty tasty.
February 13th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
I think it’s funny that you mention 400 calories because I was feeling vaguely skeptical about having fed my husband 400 calories at each of his mini-meals. (By his request, and he’s old enough to be responsible for his own soul.) I wish there was some kind of guide for what constitutes “a full meal” (and by extension what counts as less than half thereof).
Then again, my husband could practically qualify for the health problems exemption. I’m back to being super annoyed about his weight because he had a doctor’s appointment today and has lost a pound and a half in the last six months. Even if you blame that on an empty-ish stomach, it means he’s staying level instead of gaining. I seriously have no idea how to deal with somebody who can’t GAIN weight.
Irrelevant tangent brought to you by somebody who’s bored and can’t snack…
February 13th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
He has a sensitive stomach, right? My sister in law is like that, she can’t eat too much, and if she does it makes her sick. And because she has no energy stores at all, minor illnesses can completely knock her out of action for a couple days. It’s hard.
But as far as the what constitutes a meal, I think it’s written as it is to provide maximum flexibility around how individuals eat. I judge by both overall size and calorie content. One could eat a big salad for relatively few calories… but if it’s too filling, it defeats the purpose of fasting. Thus Mike’s bento was less than half the size of the lunch I would normally send with him, and (I calculated all this out) under half the calories it would normally contain. He has a 2600/day caloric requirement, and I allot a good 1000 of those for his lunch.
I couldn’t fast, but I did give up snacking and sweets today, and that was painful enough. I have a bunch of Green & Black’s 85% Dark sitting in my pantry just calling my name…
February 14th, 2013 at 6:53 am
He has an extremely rare autoimmune disorder that affects his digestive system (“sensitive stomach” in Latin
). Most of the time he eats like a horse, but he doesn’t gain weight. That’s partly genetic (his oldest brother is 35 and still skin and bones), but probably also partly due to his weird stomach thing, since it’s been linked to failure to thrive in children.
When I was commenting last night, I had a batch of homemade strawberry muffins cooling on the counter. It was very hard to resist nibbling a bit.
February 13th, 2013 at 8:40 pm
P.S. Your lunch looks tasty.
February 13th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
My lunch was tasty! Instructions for salted salmon, black sesame salt, and properly cooking japonica rice are over on JustBento.com and JustHungry.com. I can’t take any credit for it.