Once a year, volunteer language teachers come from Japan to help out at my son’s school, and do a month’s homestay with families from the school. Part of the homestay deal is that the host family is to pack the teacher a daily lunch to eat at school. So that means that I’m back to making adult and child versions of the same lunch while “A-sensei” is with us — I’m finding it stimulating.

It was initially a little weird to be making bentos for a Japanese person. (You know, will she like our food? I don’t want them to look so thrown-together that the other senseis at school wind up gossiping about it.) But we’ve gotten used to each other over the past couple weeks, so I’m less self-conscious now and am learning her food likes and dislikes. The result? I’ve slipped back into my regular old [1] speed bento habits for both lunches.

[2]

[3]

For this meal I fell back on [4] pasta frittata, a simple egg dish that incorporates leftover spaghetti from the night before. Now whenever I make pasta I just go ahead and make extra, knowing that leftovers will get remade into breakfast or lunch the next day.

Contents of adult bento lunch: Pasta frittata made with leftover spaghetti, shrimp & tomato sauce (see the full [4] pasta frittata tutorial). Sauteed orange bell pepper with garlic & soy sauce, and green grapes.

Morning prep time: 20 minutes for the two bentos, using leftover pasta for the frittata and including prep/cooling time for the frittata and peppers. Thoroughly cooling all foods before closing them up inside a bento box reduces the amount of condensation inside of the box, improving [5] food safety and making it easier to remove the lid of the bento box. ([6] Click for lunch details and a kid-sized version of the same lunch.)

Packing: I cut the frittata into large bite-sized pieces to make it easy to eat on the go. The peppers are packed in a removable food cup that’s part of the bento box, keeping them separate from the grapes. The lunch is packed in a Hakoya 600ml two-tiered bento box (300ml lower tier, 300ml upper tier) that I picked up last year at Soko Hardware in San Francisco’s Japantown (see my [7] bento gear shopping guide for the San Francisco Bay Area). This make it the right size box for an average adult woman, according to the [8] bento box size guidelines.

[9] [10]

Verdict: Well, the box came back empty and I got a thumbs up on the frittata as an interesting way to use up extra pasta. I hesitate to read too much into it, though — our teacher’s very polite.

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[11]

Contents of kindergartener’s bento lunch: Same as the adult lunch above: pasta frittata, sauteed orange bell pepper, and green grapes.

Morning prep time: 20 minutes to make and pack the two bentos, which includes time to cook and cool both the pasta frittata and the peppers.

[12] Packing: I cut the frittata into small pieces to make them easier to eat without struggling with a knife in a small container, and packed them in two layers inside the box. The peppers went into a [13] reusable silicone baking cup, and I separated the frittata from the rest of the lunch with a removable divider that came with the bento box. The lunch is packed in a [14] 450ml Disney Cars bento box: Bug’s favorite and the appropriate size for him according to the [8] bento box size guidelines.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Got back an empty box.

RELATED READING:

• [15] Pasta frittata bento using leftover spaghetti carbonara
• [4] Pasta frittata recipe and tutorial
• [16] All Recipes on Lunch in a Box
• [17] Bento FAQ and [18] Biggie’s top speed bento tips