The back story...

April 27, 2011

I started bento-ing, in the sense of a take-away boxed lunch, sometime after Christmas break for my first grade son. After christmas break is when I started sending a packed lunch- and at some point it morphed to bento. Sending lunch was a result of realizing the answer to the question "what did you have for lunch at school today?" was NOT the same as "what did you literally eat out of what they served at school for lunch today" . So the first half of first grade, (and what about kindergarten??) when I thought "what was for lunch today" was a list of what he ate, who knows how much he was eating. The pivotal conversation day? - he'd only eaten the peaches.

It had been a constant, seven year battle to get Mark to eat enough-literally, his whole life. I don't know where my head was that I was thinking he went to school and just started magically started eating all of what they were serving?? So, I had to bite the bullet and make it a priority to send a lunch *ev*er*y*morn*ing* . Bento was a natural attraction and it made it fun for me to pack and appealing for Mark to get more calories/better nutrition than the easier route of school lunch.

I had known of bento for some time, thanks to the wonderful world wide web :D, but more as a curiosity/interest and an art form (seriously, google bento and surf the images!) It wasn't in my realm of considering it as something I'd do on any kind of regular basis. But coinciding with beginning our packed lunch routine (surfing to find an alternative to sandwich idea, probably) I clicked on this blog: anotherlunch.com and it jelled with what I was doing for Mark, and started us on our bento journey.

I did not take any pics until the lunch of April 27, when I'd posted on Facebook that I'd made onigiri for the first time, pictured above. That lunch consisted of jerky bites in a silicon cup heart, cookie dough protein bar cut in half, strawberries with leaf picks, red grapes with panda picks, steamed carrot flowers and the onigiri with fruit leather features, all packed in a Lock & Lock brand square box. He would have had milk or yogurt packed alongside.

The rest of our bento story will be continued...

Ciao! ~Kristin