I'm Biggie: avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom & former expat fluent in Japanese. 
About Me
I’m Biggie, a work-at-home mom of a three-year-old preschooler (called “Bug” online) in San Francisco, obsessed with cooking and building a faster, better packed lunch. I lived in Japan for nine years and am fluent in Japanese, but am into all cuisines. I’ve noticed loads of time-saving packed lunch tips in my Japanese-language cooking magazines and bento cookbooks, so in February 2007 I started trying them out, tweaking them for a non-Japanese kitchen and world food. My goal is tasty, attractive lunches with a minimum of morning prep. Comments in Japanese are welcome too. BTW, my “Biggie” moniker is short for Bigfoot, a childhood nickname because I have big feet. 
I also started a couple of Flickr photo groups: Kid Eats about children’s lunches and Lunchbox Recipes for food recipes that are particularly well suited to packed lunches. If these are up your alley, please stop by!
My back story:
A reader asked what got me into packing lunches like this. I’d lived in Japan for my 20’s but didn’t pack lunch often until my husband was misdiagnosed with celiac disease at the beginning of 2005. Celiac disease is an intolerance to gluten found in wheat, barley and rye.
After the diagnosis, I didn’t want my husband to feel deprived or depressed about his dietary restrictions. I decided to start sending along delicious lunches that would make him feel like he was eating better food than his colleagues who went out for lunch. A trip to the local Japanese-language bookstore turned up bento cookbooks that I started studying, specifically the creative packing tips and techniques that could be adapted to our normal diet.
Nine months later, the doctors at a new celiac clinic figured out that my husband didn’t have celiac disease after all (!), and we were able to reintroduce gluten to the kitchen. I lapsed with packing lunches after the “undiagnosis” until our son was about one, when I found myself carting around a diaper bag stuffed full of little Tupperware containers, or leaving the playground early to go get lunch. Time to pull out those bento boxes again so we can spend more fun time out and about!
Now Bug has started attending Japanese immersion preschool, where daily bentos are the norm and I’ve got even more incentive to speed up our morning preparation time!
To contact me, please e-mail lunchinabox (AT) gmail (DOT) com. I try to respond to e-mails, but leaving a comment on the site itself will generally get a faster response as it’s easier for me to track there.
