Archive for the 'tips' Category

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New Bento FAQ

Somehow I’ve managed to slide by this long without writing a FAQ (frequently asked questions document), but as bento-style lunches become more popular I see a lot of new folks with questions like the ones below. So I finally wrote a full bento FAQ page here to answer them; please have a look to let me know if I’ve missed anything major and I’ll add it!

THE BASICS

OKAY, I’M IN!

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Published by Biggie on August 6th, 2008 tagged bento, parenthacks, tips, tutorial or how to | 23 Comments »

Spice cabinet reorganization

About a month ago Apartment Therapy’s kitchen blog The Kitchn asked if they could come to my house and take pictures for a photo tour of my bento kitchen. Now, I don’t live in House Beautiful with a gorgeous remodeled kitchen, and only parts of my kitchen were organized, so this was a terrifying prospect. I finally decided to treat it as an opportunity to do a massive reorg of my kitchen, incorporating tips that I’ve seen in my Japanese freezing and housekeeping books. It took me over a week to overhaul the kitchen pantry, refrigerator, freezer, deep freezer, and downstairs pantry. It’s way too much for a single post, so join me for the first installment of my Kitchen Reorganization Series with nitty-gritty “before” and “after” photos. First stop: the spice pantry. Behold the unorganized scariness! (UPDATE: The kitchen reorganization series continues with my main pantry, refrigerator and freezer, and the remaining cabinets and garbage containers for the prep area.)

I had previously put our commonly used spices into plastic trays (bottom left) so that I could lift out similar spices and sort through them quickly (salts and peppers in one, whole spices in a second, and ground spices in a third). But noodles and furikake rice sprinkles had encroached on the spice area, and the rest of the cabinet was a jumble of assorted bottles, jars and boxes. My husband was forever asking me where things were and getting frustrated by the crowded cabinets. I had to pull out a stepladder to reach things tucked in the back on the top shelf, and trying to pull down a box of teabags was an easy way to get a shower of boxes on your head. Obviously this needed work! (Click on any photo for a larger, annotated view.)

Enter pantry baskets. The first few times I saw pantry baskets in Japanese organization books I didn’t immediately recognize their utilitarian benefit. Yes, you can put like items together, but:

Storing things together in baskets also means that you can just pull a single basket down from a high shelf instead of pulling out a stepladder to root around.
Because I pull out entire baskets more regularly, I’m more familiar with what’s in the pantry and will be less likely to re-buy something I already have (I do this from time to time. D’oh!). Any food inventory system should save you money in the long run — what’s yours?

(Read on for the full spice cabinet reorganization…)

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Published by Biggie on July 30th, 2008 tagged equipment, organize, tips | 33 Comments »

Laptop Lunch planner from DooF-a-Palooza

Last weekend I attended DooF-a-Palooza, a big kids’ cooking event at the Google headquarters in Mountain View put on by the organizers of DooF (food spelled backwards). DooF is an upcoming kids’ cooking show on PBS that has similarities to Spatulatta. I stopped by the Laptop Lunch booth, met president and co-founder Amy Hemmert, and picked up their very handy visual planning worksheet for lunches packed in the Laptop Lunchbox (UPDATE: download from Obentec or here). The reverse side has a list of packed lunch ideas organized by food type (fruits, vegetables, sandwich fillings, and sandwich alternatives). As the planner isn’t available on their website, the folks at Laptop Lunches sent me the PDF file and graciously agreed to let me put it up on Lunch in a Box for downloading. (UPDATE: The Laptop Lunch folks have made the worksheet available for download on their website.)

Because I’m container-agnostic and use a variety of lunch containers, I find that jotting down rough meal ideas on a magnetic whiteboard sheet on my refrigerator works well enough for me, but I definitely see the appeal of this sort of visual planner as well. If you’d like to try it out, download it, print it out, and put a copy up on your fridge to make a glanceable lunch plan that incorporates a balance of foods and dinner leftovers.

The planner is similar to Maki’s weekly bento planner on Just Bento. If you have a different type of lunch container or bento box, you could make your own version of these planners pretty easily. Do you plan out your packed lunches? What planning method works best for you? Let us know in comments! (Read on for Laptop Lunchbox photos taken at DooF-a-Palooza.)

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Published by Biggie on July 21st, 2008 tagged Laptop Lunchbox, organize, tips | 59 Comments »

Double-decker microwaving for a donburi thermal jar lunch

At first glance this may not seem like a particularly interesting lunch, but I’ve actually taken a couple of new approaches to packing that can be applied to other dishes. Double-decker heating of multiple dishes in the microwave oven saves time and energy, and I created a do-it-yourself thermal donburi bento box for a child out of an adult-sized thermal lunch jar.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Mild Japanese curry made with chicken, carrots, onions and purple potatoes (see my cooking notes). Accompaniments are rakkyo pickled scallions and rice.

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using leftover curry and rice. In the morning I microwaved the rice and curry in microwave-safe ceramic bowls while preheating the outer thermal food jar with hot tap water. Preheating the outer thermal jar helps the container retain heat longer, keeping your food nice and warm.

Gear: Although microwave ovens are usually a pretty good size on the inside, the limiting factor on how much food I can warm at once is usually the diameter of the round glass carousel on the bottom. It makes sense to take advantage of the oven’s vertical space to warm multiple dishes at once, though, reducing the time the microwave is running and saving money on electricity.

I’ve found a few different stands and plate covers that let you stack plates and bowls on top of each other in the microwave or refrigerator. I keep them next to the microwave and reach for them every day — the covers are faster than reaching for plastic wrap when nuking even a single plate of food, and the plastic doesn’t touch the food directly. An added benefit is that they’re reusable and reduce kitchen waste. I happened to pick them all up at at the Daiso discount store in Daly City, CA (branches internationally) because at US$1.50 they’re cheap there, but you can also find these sorts of microwave plate covers on Amazon in different designs. (Read on for more microwave covers and lunch packing details.)

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Published by Biggie on July 5th, 2008 tagged bento, curry, equipment, for kids, lactose free, poultry, rice, thermal lunch jar, tips | 16 Comments »

Toned-down spicy bento lunches for kids

We often eat food that’s too spicy for our three-year-old, but find ways to salvage it for his developing palate that don’t require me to be a short-order cook, making a whole separate meal for him (see my mommy’s lunch manifesto). Some things are more easily tamed with a quick rinse, like mild kimchi. I used to think that dishes like Thai curry just needed the addition of yogurt to tame them, but even this usually doesn’t do the trick fully. So instead I started plucking the meat, seafood and veggies out of the curry, rinsing them off in a little sieve under water, and re-saucing them in milder sauces like vinaigrette, sanbaizu sweet vinegar sauce (see my sanbaizu recipe), barbecue sauce (Western or Korean), teriyaki sauce, or even just salad dressing. Use your creativity with whatever you have on hand! How do you make spicy leftovers palatable for sensitive mouths? Let us know in comments!

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Homemade kalbi (or galbi, Korean grilled marinated beef short ribs), an onigiri rice ball filled with chopped kalbi, chopped kimchi, red lettuce, blueberries and a strawberry.

Morning prep time: 12 minutes, using leftover kalbi from dinner, rinsed kimchi and frozen rice. In the morning I microwaved the frozen rice, chopped the kalbi and kimchi, and quickly made the onigiri rice ball with my wet, salted hands.

Packing: Regular kimchi is too spicy for my preschooler as is, so I generally rinse it off before giving it to Bug (his favorite is the sour ggakdugi daikon kimchi cubes). I chopped up the kimchi because I had originally intended to stuff the onigiri with it, but Bug saw what I was doing and said he didn’t want the kimchi inside of the rice. So I made a mid-course correction and substituted chopped kalbi beef for the onigiri filling. (Read on for full details and an additional spicy-turned-mild bento lunch.)