Of lunches and Bento

Over the last few weeks I have become fascinated with Bento boxes. I once more followed a rabbit trail through some blogs and stumbled across this phenomenon. For the uninitiated, like myself until a week or so ago, a Bento box is a Japanese style lunchbox, which can be divided into several sections by inserts, dividers or different bowls clicked together. This allows you to arrange your food in an atractive way, as well as practicing portion control.
My first forray brought me to www.laptoplunches.com which has an atractive American version of Bento boxes. From there on, I discovered several Bento themed blogs. Biggie's being the one that grabbed my interest most. Remembering the sandwiches and square boxes lunchboxes I toted to highschool, with lunches that were not very inspired, I love the idea of being so creative with small amounts of food. And in a few more years, I want to be the mom who packs the coolest lunches in all of preschool!

For now though, I want to start packing a bento for myself. No, I am not about to start working out of the house, but I find that my lunchtime is the time when Joseph would like to have most of my attention, right before his naptime. Taking fifteen minutes to make lunch and then taking the time to actually eat it is the same as torturing my little munchkin and expecting him to put up with it. As a result, I have gained five pounds under the motto: "I started making a perfectly healthy lunch, but then Joseph interrupted me because he wanted my apple and then he wanted something to drink and then he ran away and it became quiet and I needed to go check on him and then get him down from the stairs after he had somehow managed to get the door open and after he had his tantrum... I just grabbed the first unhealthy thing I could find."

I want those five pounds gone. I love healthy foods, that is not the problem, the problem is that I need to actually pay attention to what I eat and that is not possible during lunch. I need to be able to just open a box and eat what is inside. Possibly microwaving it for one minute tops.
Enter the bento. I actually bought one for my mother, before I realised that she is travelling to Japan in two weeks time. She offered there to buy me some bento supplies. Wooohoo!
In the mean time I am telling myself that it is absolutely ridiculous to buy an eighteen month old todler his own bento box. No matter if it has miffy on it!