New lunch adventures: bento

So I haven't written here in a while. So much has been going on in the holiday season that I haven't had time to update! I promise I will include some of our adventures in Hawaii (best food we've ever had in our life) but for now, I'll start with my bento food obsession. Bento is a tradition Japanese meal in a box. That's it. Of course, you want to fill each box with nutritious, non-junk food things and have a lot of variety in them to appeal to the senses.

I got into it by reading lots of bento food blogs and really liking the presentation factor. Apparently it's a competition between moms in Japan to see who can pack their kids the cutest lunch. I'd be totally down for that if I was a stay-at-home mom. =) For now, Nick will have to suffice as my guinea pig. He agreed to it, but put his foot down on the cutesy stuff. Here is what I made for lunch today:

Nick's bento is big according to bento size guidelines at about 1200ml (but he still thinks it's tiny) and is filled with banh chung, nuoc mam, an eggroll, jello, grapes, tomatoes, edamame, and steamed asapragus. It would be more if I didn't have as much empty space as I do. I chalk that up to being a first-timer.

My lunch is smaller (about 600ml) and is filled with the same stuff as Nick's, minus the banh chung. I also have two small nori furikake onigiri that are not pictured.

I wrote out a bento planner for this week, so I hope I stick to it and have more to post here in the future. =)