Secret Ingredient

What do you remember as your favorite foods of childhood? Was it your grandmother's turkey gravy, or the green beans you picked in your Uncle Paul's garden? Was it the pizza you had every Saturday after you played baseball? One of my favorite meals of childhood (there were many), was the homemade yogurt and Syrian bread I always had at Auntie Jeanne's; as soon as a kid walked in the door, they were proclaimed to be too skinny and told to help themselves.

Last time I wrote about the importance of having a special treat in every lunch, but the real special ingredient, the essential ingredient, is love for the person you cook for and love for the food you prepare. It comes through, and it doesn't have to be fancy, or even healthful. If you're a child and someone who adores you takes you to McDonald's as a special treat, I believe that meal will be more nourishing than a bowl of organic stir fry served by someone who resents having to cook for you.

Our goal with bento is not to kill ourselves making the most fancy lunch. The lunch you pack should make someone, even yourself, feel loved and cared for. Design your lunches around the joy of the cook as well as the joy of the diner. It can be a difficult dance at times finding foods that are packable, keep well, please a variety of diners, and are a pleasure to make. Know your limits. Mine is that I will not make more than one meal--that is to say, everyone gets the same thing! Or at least, variations of the same thing.

The point is, don't make yourself crazy. While you prepare the seared salmon or the peanut butter sandwich, think about how much you care about the person you are cooking for, and how lucky you are to have this moment to cook for them. Then take one extra second to lay the salmon neatly on the bed of noodles, or to cut the sandwich into perfect triangles, and off you go. This is your contribution to world peace.

Special Food for Special People, or, It's Only Good If They Eat It

Rice with sprinkles, teriyaki shrimp, deviled egg, marinated gigandes, cucumber, carrots and apple

Okay my special ones, here is an example of a Lock & Lock container with dividers. It has a leak-proof lid that snaps on. La Segunda can drop kick this thing across the elementary school gym, and as long as it doesn't break, her lunch items will remain separate. Cool, huh? This is one way I appease her--give her a lunch box that is "special."

This lunch is a good example of another strategy for helping a lunch that's different from everyone else's seem different in a good way: Include a small luxury item. Nothing says "don't you wish this was your lunch?" like a few shrimp. Seriously, a bag of frozen shrimp is a good investment when you only serve three at a time, and it's a great stash item. Also note the sprinkles on the rice--the sesame seeds add extra calcium and there are loads of minerals in the nori, but mainly my kids think it tastes good and makes them "cool."

The luxury item should be whatever the recipient of this box of edible love perceives as a treat: strawberries, or snap peas, or a tofu-dog cut to look like an octopus and served with catsup. The main thing to remember is that the people sitting next to your diner often influence their perception of what they are eating. Are their table mates envious, or are they grossed out? The corollary to the luxury item is NEVER pack anything that smells funny or looks like puke. Ever. It is irrelevant whether they loved it for dinner: If someone at their table says, "Eeewww!" that lunch is going in the trash, and your diner will be offered something from one of their friends' lunches. This leads to having a child come home in a funk from eating the wrong thing, or nothing at all. There are many temptations in the lunchroom, and an awesome bento makes that easier to handle.  (Case in point: See the deviled egg in the picture? My kids used to get teased because hard-boiled eggs "stink," so they threw them away. If the eggs are deviled, everyone at the table wants a piece. Go figure. And if they're deviled and shaped like a flower, well, that's a luxury item for sure!)

This lunch took about 10 minutes using stash food: leftover rice, frozen shrimp, pre-made teriyaki sauce, and fruits and veggies from the fridge. The egg was already made the night before as well. Just warm the rice and simmer shrimp in the sauce for about 3 minutes. While the rice and shrimp cool back to room temp, cut up the fruits and veggies, and assemble it all in the bento. Toss a couple cookies and a little container of applesauce into the lunch bag, and you're good to go.

A Blog About Mom-Style Bento

Salad, wings, cucumbers, apples, pasta salad. Little bear holds ranch dressing.

American Mom-style, that is. Since I find myself posting all my lunch creations on Facebook, this seemed like a good move. Hope you like it. This is a blog for people who like to bring delicious meals along with them, for whatever reason.

Bento is a Japanese-style portable meal, usually lunch. I first got interested when my kids had food restrictions, and we had to bring meals everywhere. If you can't eat wheat or corn syrup, then museum visits, car trips, plane rides, and even the daily school routine mean packing food to take with you.

Now, although we like Japanese food, we don't always pack it to take along. Bento, to me, is a mindset. I happen to like fresh food, not industrial food, so premade Gluten-Free breads and such don't appeal to me. We turned to cuisines that have used a minimum of wheat for thousands of years. I advise you to do the same, no  matter what your dietary restrictions are--look for delicious recipes that are not trying to be something else. A sandwich on gluten-free bread will always be lacking, but a well-made tamale will always delight.

There is a style of bento that emphasizes cuteness over nutrition. It includes processed cheese, food coloring, and other such gimmicks to achieve the perfect Hello-Kitty-Gets-Married or Spiderman-At-The-Beach lunchbox theme. If that is your goal, this is not the blog for you. The most important decorative element is also the quickest, cheapest, and most nutritious: an eye for color, texture and placement. I also use colorful picks, silicone muffin cups and egg molds, but these are reusable and they are also not necessary. Bento by Mom is all about walking out your front door with something nutritious and satisfying to eat in a landscape of bad food choices.

Welcome to good eating at home and abroad!