Friday, September 17, 2010

Ben... What?

Bento. The cool new mommy movement. Well, it's been new for almost 6 years and I am just now getting to it. The cool kid is always the one who makes an entrance, right? Bento is a slang Japanese term, that basically means convenient. (so I understand. Correct me if I'm wrong) Some say it means boxed lunch, but there are tons of jokes there, so let's skip it for now.

Bento has been popular in Japan (and moved into other countries) for hundreds of years, and it didn't start out as what we have turned it into. You know us crazy American. Always changing shit. For something that is supposed to be convenient, we've turned it into something to showcase our supermommy skills. I'll call it New Bento. May the best mama win. (Bloggers, that would be me. I'm the super special snowflake mommy. Deal with it)

The idea of the new bento started to appeal to me due to the reduction of lunchtime waste and no longer wanting over processed foods for my children. Do you know the number of plastic baggies and food wrappers an average child goes through a school year? Neither do I, but I figured it must be a lot. So I started using gladware to package my daughters lunches and for a while, I was happy. But then, I wanted to do things to make them smile, so I busted out my cookie cutters and started cutting the sandwiches into shapes and making sandwich rolls.

Finally, I decided if I'm going to go halfways, why don't I just march onto full New Bento? This morning was my first official New Bento meal, and for someone who has no tools of the trade, I was pretty happy with myself. I met Alice at school for lunch however, and she had opened the box on the bus (she wanted to see what I did, and she didn't shut it back correctly) and I about cried at seeing how the items went everywhere, ruining my presentation. So, it's time to invest in some actual Bento boxes. So I don't burst into tears during lunch time again.

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