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daidoji_giseiToday I treated myself to a new lunchbox. Not the kind I had in childhood: a big metal thing that held a sandwich, a small bag of potato chips and a Hostess cup-cake. This one is metal--stainless steel, in fact--and it holds only three cups worth of stuff. It's like a very basic version of a bento lunch container, and this is not an accident because I have been reading up on bento recently.
I'm not interested in the arty kind of bento; there are people who are entranced by the notion of carving a slice of carrot into a flower and I am not one of them. (On the other hand, I now have several kinds of edible flowers in my garden, so I could come up with a lunch plan that included sprinkling flower petals over everything. Hmm.) But bento-style lunches by their nature are exercises in portion control, and I am interested in that. For a long time my breakfasts have been models of dietary rectitude and if I can start lunching in the same fashion I'll have 2/3s of my eating day corralled. At that point, dinner should start falling into line naturally. I'm really bad at dieting, but given a list of things that I should eat each day I do pretty well.
The lunch box is a bit of an extravagance. I've been doing my bento-inspired lunches for a couple of weeks with plastic containers I picked up at a discount store, and it has worked well. Except that I have to tie them up with a ribbon, because I cannot trust them to stay shut in my backpack. The new metal one has a locking system that pretty much ensures it is going to stay closed until I say otherwise. Also, I am not opposed to the occasional extravagance, especially when it is for something I'll get some use out of.
Now I need to wash some dishes, so that I can cook something to pack in it for tomorrow's lunch!
I'm not interested in the arty kind of bento; there are people who are entranced by the notion of carving a slice of carrot into a flower and I am not one of them. (On the other hand, I now have several kinds of edible flowers in my garden, so I could come up with a lunch plan that included sprinkling flower petals over everything. Hmm.) But bento-style lunches by their nature are exercises in portion control, and I am interested in that. For a long time my breakfasts have been models of dietary rectitude and if I can start lunching in the same fashion I'll have 2/3s of my eating day corralled. At that point, dinner should start falling into line naturally. I'm really bad at dieting, but given a list of things that I should eat each day I do pretty well.
The lunch box is a bit of an extravagance. I've been doing my bento-inspired lunches for a couple of weeks with plastic containers I picked up at a discount store, and it has worked well. Except that I have to tie them up with a ribbon, because I cannot trust them to stay shut in my backpack. The new metal one has a locking system that pretty much ensures it is going to stay closed until I say otherwise. Also, I am not opposed to the occasional extravagance, especially when it is for something I'll get some use out of.
Now I need to wash some dishes, so that I can cook something to pack in it for tomorrow's lunch!
