New Obsession

Image courtesy of http://www.jbox.com/

So, I was looking online the other day at 'stuff' - you know - general browsing that has you jumping from one topic to another, using StumbleUpon and generally having a nice time, when I came across an advert for one of  these - it looed like a beautiful lacquered box, with matching accessories.

How cute, I thought. What is it?

I love pretty boxes & containers of all sorts (don't ask) and wanted an excuse to buy one of these.

It was then I noticed that the 'accessories' actually were chopsticks! What was going on?

Reading a little around the subject, I realised what I was looking at is called a Bento Box and is, effectively, a Japanese lunch box. A beautiful Japanese lunch box. With matching accessories.

Nice. Pretty. Slightly boring. I have quite a few lunch boxes, so no real excuse for another one of these.

How wrong could I have been?

I started googling for Bento Boxes.

It would seem that, in the way that the Japanese people do with many things, they have elevated having lunch to an art form.

Image courtesy of http://casabento.com/

The boxes seem to be available in about a million different shapes, sizes, colours & designs. Some have layers, some come with a matching bag, some have chopsticks.

But, it's not just what they look like that's important, and they are gorgeous; what goes inside them is equally important and part of the art form.

There are 'principles' you have to stick to.

First there's the 3:2:1 principle - 3/6 of the content should be rice, 2/6 of the content should be veg, 1/6 of the of the content should be protein.

Pic courtesy of The Blogging Mum on Flickr

Then there's the colours - you have to have 5.

Next, if you're being purist, you should use 5 different methods to cook the food (boiled rice, fried wonton, steamed veg etc etc) which is being presented in the bento.

Then, and I'm not sure why, but this is the bit I like the best, you have to make the contents look as attractive as possible...rice shaped like animals, veg cut in the shape of flowers. Anything, in fact, that makes the contents look lovely.

See what I mean about the art form?

Pic courtesy of Bentobird on Flickr
I don't know what it is with the Japanese people and cute stuff - anime characters - dressing up - they get completely obsessed!!! It's fab.

So, I was not so surprised when I looked further into the bento accessories and found ALL SORTS of gadgets to make your bento lunch contents as adorable as possible.

Gadgets which include...

o A thing which you put your hard boiled eggs in to change their shape into cars, bears, stars, cartoon characters - seriously - there are molds for Winnie the Pooh shaped eggs!

o Little silicone sheets printed with designs such as monkeys, octopus, rainbows, and cartoon characters which you wrap around the food to keep the flavours separate from each other.

o Cutters which cut face shapes into (and out of) anything. Ever seen a rice ball with eyes?

Pic courtesy of CasaBento.com 

 o And - a personal favourite - a weiner cutter (that's Americano for hot dog sausage) which makes your hot dogs look like a fish, a crab or a penguin. No, really. Look. Penguins made out of hot dogs. In your lunch box.

Pic courtesy of CasaBento.com 

Isn't it stupendous?

Talk about creativity. This is ultimate foodie creativity. Check out the Bento Flickr Pool. Many people who consider their lunch pretty enough to be worthy of a photo. Imagine that.