She Looks Like a Mom: Bento

I snapped the picture and Senpai said, "This is a blog post waiting to happen."

Umm... yeah.

From Kindergarten through 8th grade, I went to a private school that did not have a cafeteria. Students were responsible for bringing their own lunches. If they forgot, well, they weren't eating that day. I was a picky eater who was always changing her appetite, so, fairly early on, my mom stopped making my lunches for me. Left to my own devices in the 5 minutes before the bus came to pick me up, I scrounged for anything that already looked like food, such as tomatoes left on the windowsill to ripen. The kitchen was always stocked with ham and rye bread, but on days when the ham went bad and nothing else looked good, I popped a bag of popcorn. Seriously. The real trick was letting the popcorn cool down before transferring it to a Ziploc bag or else the kernels melted the plastic. As I ate a tomato like an apple at school one day, my classmates asked me if I was a vegetarian.

I swore that when I had kids, I would make their lunches.
I would do it not only for their nutritional benefit, but also as an expression of my love for them.

Now that Rosemary has started preschool, she needs a packed lunch twice a week.

I like the idea of Japanese bento as a waste-free alternative to sandwich baggies and individually packaged snack foods. I've seen enough anime and followed Bentobloggy long enough to get some fun ideas of what to pack. It was from Bentobloggy, actually, that I discovered the Planetbox.

This is the Planetbox Shuttle and it is awesome. It's the perfect size for a preschooler. Rosemary can use it all by herself. She'll never need help from her teacher to open a string cheese or a sandwich baggy. I love filling it up.