Mom's love. Character lunch box

When I was in junior high I brought a Japanese style Lunch Box=Obento to school for lunch every day. My mom made it for me and of course I am appreciative to her for doing it, but I must admit that her obento's were quite simple and sturdy. For example, she would include such standard Japanese home cooking as boiled vegetables in soy sauce. When you boil vegetables in soy sauce, the vegetables turn brown. You couldn’t tell by looking whether what you were eating was a piece of carrot or shitake mushroom, so there wan't a whole lot of color to speak of. For a bit of color mom would include baby tomatoes and little red Vienna sausages, which my mother felt looked pretty in an obento, but which I felt were not quite so tasty as I would like. And she would pack all these contents together tightly into my obento. And she would not separate these intems with any kind of partition because she thought that the blended juice released from all the side dishes made it more flavorful. My mom’s bento's were simple with the brown color of soy sauce all over the inside. At school I always envied one boy who would sit beside me everyday during lunch because his bento had a such a nice color contrast with red Vienna sausages, yellow rolled eggs, brown meat balls and white rice.

Anyway, I am reminiscing about my mothers lunch boxes because I came across the very cute and warm sitethe very warm and cute website of a woman who cooks very elaborate obento's for her four year old daughter everyday. Her obentos are made to look like cute characters. I was so impressed by her creativity and ingenuity. Some of the characters on this site are Anpan man (a famous character in Japan), Sanrio's hello kitty, Hamtaro, Pokemon, Ghibli Totoro, and Desniy. All the ingredients she uses are edible. For black parts she uses nori, and for pink parts shes uses denbu, which is a pink colored cod fish powder used in sushi. The only color she cannot reproduce in the form of food is blue, so she has to use black in place of blue. The main reason I am so impressed with this web site is that each of this mothers beautiful creations are loaded with so much love for her daughter.

Comments

[Alwin]

Hey,

I'm from the Netherlands (here we send our children to school with some cheese sandwiches and a can of orange juice) and in preparation of my daughter going to school (will take some more years since she's just 14 months old) I want to learn how to make obento for her. Gives me some time to practice and decide what tastes best in hot or cold weather and how to make it look tasty. I think that's a really important part of any meal. And a great way to show the love you have for your children!

By the way, I'm a man :o) and I wouldn't mind spending 45 minutes in the kitchen every morning preparing lunch for my loved ones.

If anyone had a list of obento recipies online please send it to me, it's really hard to find a good book for obento's here!
Thanks!

[Redruin]

The "o" part is the honorific prefix, bento is the noun. So either one works, but obento is more formal or polite. Some of these look really hard to make! How long do you think it takes?

[cecile]

i also had to bring bento every day until high school. my bento was nothing cute or special though. they don't bother with colors or shapes here and the food was just so-so coz people aren't supposed to spend a lot of time preparing school food. so now that i'm older, i sometimes bring bento to work when i feel tired of eating the food at work. but at least this time, i can request what i want in my bento. hehe.

[Huang]

Hi Mari,
What's the difference between Bento and Obento ? The word 'bento' has gone global and is used in Taiwan, China, Korea etc.

I was once prescribed painkillers that were blue oval tablets. Because they were blue, I didn't take them !

I don't really like blueberries (partly because of the think skin).

Lunch boxes especially the ones made of metal would not appeal to my parents' generation. The poor on social welfare were given free food in sturdy metal boxes, so it doesn't bring back pleasant memories.

[robert]

"presentation is everything", it's said, and I feel with much truth. It is hard to get excited about something if it is hard to recognize, but then I would argue that much of the processed fare that people consume on a regular basis resembles nothing existing in nature..so taste and perceptions of it are acquired. But there is some exception, I've discovered recently. In fact last night. I went to a party and they held a blind taste test of scotch. The range was in imports and grades as well as aging. I dont drink scotch..(or much of anything else truth be told..except for special occasions)..naturally I went first. I did my best to explain the flavor, which drew chuckles, but more or less represented the taste. It turns out I got each one right and the "expensive" one got a "WOW!" out of me...so I guess I have a discerning palate despite not being able to see it. :D now where was I going with this?...hmm well, I think the overall perception is the amount of caring is a represention of the quality, but I argue that overall brown carrots are much better than throwing a pre-packaged processed ideology at your kid. The mom's love bento's are amazing and fun, I have to say, having a Totoro in my lunch box would make me want to strut around the school like Kidzilla, but also I'd lose weight because I would probably want to save them.. or put them on EBay. ;p

[Charles]

Tastiness isn't just flavor, it is also texture and visual appeal. Color might be even more important than flavor. I read a research paper, some psychologists had jelly beans specially made with the wrong color for their flavor, i.e. blue for cherry, red for blueberry, etc. Over 85% of people that tasted the jelly beans reported a flavor that corresponded to color, not the real flavor.

[Count Orlok]

A good meal should be tasty and... um... that's all :)

[Charles]

Ah yes, a good meal should have variety of flavor, color, and texture. I used to watch a local cooking show, every dish was brown. I got my friends to watch it, I told them "look, everything she cooks will turn out brown!" One day I thought she might have changed her cooking style, she cooked a meal with some colorful carrots and broccoli, but then she dumped a brown sauce over it!