Tell me everything about Bento (food). And no wikipedia link, please?

This link has a good step-by-step process on crafting one: instructables.com/id/Crafting-a-Bento.

Bento is a craze widely popular with soccer moms. After the excitement of their morning coffee wears off, stay at home moms have nothing better to do than make rice sculptures in the shapes of cartoon characters such as Wall E and Tigger. While a seemingly harmless past time, many moms, if not careful, find themselves trapped in a downward spiral of rice and molds.

During they day, they shop for new items to include in their 'sculptures'. By night, they scour the inter highway, hooking up with stay at home moms all over the world trying to find a food combination they haven't yet discovered. Trying to find the best way to get their hot dogs to stay in a perfect rose shape.

Sadly, all this time that could have been put to use is wasted making a lunch for a five year old who probably never even notices he's been eating a different transformer for lunch every day this week. Its depressing, really.

O-bento' is what the Japanese call a packed meal, usually lunch. Bento boxes have internal dividers, and sometimes several stacked layers, so different kinds of food sit in their own little compartments. (This is nice if, like me, you don't necessarily like to mix flavours!) The whole thing is usually wrapped together with chopsticks in a cloth or special bag, and the goal is to make the whole package as attractive as possible - from considering the colour combinations of the food and presenting and garnishing it as neatly and artfully as you can, to co-ordinating the box, chopsticks and wrapper, and any other items like paper napkins, knife and fork or spoon, drink flask or thermos.

Bento boxes themselves range from handsome lacquered wood boxes, with which you may be served in a nice Japanese restaurant, to children's plastic lunchboxes decorated with cartoon (anime) character art. There are styles to appeal to the businessman, the elegant young lady, the differing tastes of little boys and girls. I once saw an extra-large charcoal-grey bento box that I thought would be exactly right for Tony Soprano!

As with so much of modern Japanese culture, the aesthetic (especially for children and young women) is strongly based on a compact cuteness. If you went to a school where kids brought packed lunches, you know how much it means to a kid when Mum (or Dad, or whoever takes care of these things at home) packs his or her favourites, and what a social advantage it is to have a parent who packs lunches that are admired or envied, particularly if the food is handy for swapping and sharing. The same is true in Japanese schools, but the 'judges' award a lot of additional points for presentation.

There is often some rivalry between housewife-mothers to produce the niftiest bento, which can be fun, but is a source of serious and unwelcome social pressure for some women, who rise early in the morning and agonise over what to make today, so their children's friends and teachers won't think they suck. The base of any bento lunch is cold, cooked white rice, or sometimes noodles - the filling, carbohydrate-rich staples of the Japanese diet.(I wonder if anyone in Japan is willing to try the Atkins diet, or are they all too sensible?) In addition, there's okazu - side dishes, which can include meat, fish, eggs, tofu, fruit and vegetables, all presented in bite-size form for handy chopstick action. They all have to be prepared in such a way that they will taste nice cold (although sometimes bento is reheated).

Okazu add colour and flavour, vary with the seasons, and round out the nutritional value of the meal with protein, vitamins and minerals. For colour and dietary balance, try to have one 'protein' item and at least two from the fruit/veg category (remember, a healthy diet includes at least five handful-sized portions of fruit and vegetables a day). Of course, there are also different ways of dressing up the rice or noodles to avoid monotony.

As well as seasonal items, bento may showcase regional specialties - this is true of ekiben, takeaway bento sold at railway stations around Japan. You can take an ekiben eating tour of the nation if you like! Momoko's friends nagiku and Yuri show why, in Japan, cute boys eat for free.

Bento form part of the Japanese language of love. Aiso bento (I think I spelled that right) means bento made as a romantic gesture. In a culture where girls are traditionally expected to be pretty demure and domestic, one of the accepted ways to show a boy you like him is to make him a special bento.

Of course, when you look at some of the wilder Japanese youth culture, that seems sweetly old-fashioned, but it can still mean a lot! In shoujo (for girls) anime and comics (manga) you'll often see schoolgirls give bento to the boys they have a crush on - in Wedding Peach, Momoko's attempt to do this for the handsome Yanagiba is thwarted when pesky but attractive Yosuke points out that the food wasn't homemade, but came from a convenience store! In Maison Ikkoku (although it's more of a seinen - young man's - manga), Kyoko shows her affection for Godai by making him cute kid-style lunches that will impress the children at the daycare centre where he works.

Bento can also be a wife's way of showing her husband that she still cares for him - and, of course, her children that she loves them and wants their day at school to be pleasant. Bento Equipment I've illustrated this article with photos of my own collection. Click on the small photos to see a bigger version of each.

Box Can't have bento in a paper sack! You don't have to order an authentic bento box direct from Japan; a locally-bought lunchbox will be fine for all practical intents and purposes. However, if you are ready to spend the money, an authentic box is great fun, built for the purpose, and will often get admiring looks and questions.Nifty.

Modern bento boxes are generally made of plastic or aluminium. If you choose a metal box or one with metal parts, remember that you can't reheat it in the microwave. Sometimes only the lid has metal parts (in clasps which hold it closed, for instance) so it is okay to microwave the box without it.

Some boxes are tiered; some have removable or adjustable dividers; in others the dividers are fixed; in others still there are no dividers. Shop around a bit if you can, to find the box that's just right for you. A good place to start is Jbox.com.

You may end up collecting bento boxes, because there are so many lovely designs (and it's useful to have a variety of sizes, so you can pack a snack or a big meal without wasting space). This is fun but can lead to embarrassing situations, as when my mother said she'd buy me a treat from the Texan Art Schools design store, I found a gorgeous little red bento box, and she said quite audibly to the rest of the shoppers, 'No, Sarah, I will not subsidise your fetish. ' Also, it can get expensive, so don't go overboard!

Care tip: Bento boxes should be washed before their first use, and between subsequent uses, with hot soapy water and a sponge or soft dishmop. Brushes and other scrubbers tend to scratch their decorations off and dull their smooth surfaces. Left to right, Hakoya lucky cat, Impressive with argyle pattern, Hakoya yellow kitties.

Chopsticks Often these come with the box, and are a matched set. They may have their own drawstring cloth carrying bag, or plastic case, or they may fit into a slot inside the box lid. They're actually not that hard to use.

Number one rookie mistake: trying to cross the sticks and use them like scissors/pincers. That really won't work. It's also not a good idea to hold the sticks too close to the tips, as this limits their range of movement and also, apparently, makes you look uncouth.

Chopsticks and cutlery from i. Kotoba, Comment Vas-Tu? And Sanrio's Here's how I do it - tuck one chopstick under my thumb, and brace it in place with my middle and ring fingers.

The secret is, this stick hardly moves. I then hold the other stick between my thumb and index finger, much like a pencil. My thumb stays straight and my index finger moves this chopstick up and down.

Perfect! Try practising your chopstick technique by picking up something the same size as a bite-size piece of food - an eraser is good. When you feel confident, challenge yourself by picking up a roasted peanut.

When you can consistently pick up a peanut on your first try, you are a fully competent chopstick user. If you want to be an intimidating chopstick master, try picking up multiple peanuts, side by side. They actually have competitions for this in Japan, with the real experts picking up six or seven peanuts at a time.

Crazy, man. Note: Japanese chopsticks are usually shorter than Chinese ones and have tapered, pointy tips, while Chinese chopsticks mostly have blunt ends. Other Cutlery Although a knife is not so often found, it's not unusual to see little matched fork and spoon sets for bento.

Sometimes, again, they fit inside the box, or may have their own little case. Sometimes they come with the box, sometimes you buy them separately. The fork is good if you really aren't a confident chopsticker.

The spoon is particularly useful if you've packed something runny like curry (see the Staples page). Furoshiki This is the cloth or napkin that the box and chopsticks are bundled up in. The furoshiki often has a decorative pattern on it (more anime character art for the kids) and is spread out under the open box like a miniature picnic cloth.

It keeps everything clean and together. The chopsticks are often tucked under the knot tied at the top. A clean bandanna makes an excellent furoshiki, and they are easily available in a wide range of colours and patterns.

An alternative to the traditional furoshiki is a drawstring or zip-up cloth bag. A bigger bag is handy if you want to carry a flask, extra cutlery, a piece of fruit, etcetera, along with your bento.I. Kotoba bags and a range of bandannas that I use as furoshiki.

Traditional triangular mould, and cutesy-poo petite mould. Onigiri Moulds I love these. You can get them in the traditional 'standard' shapes, particularly triangular, or fancy shapes.

I have both a large, standard triangle and a 'puchi' (petite) onigiri mould which makes a heart, a star and a teddybear face. They're such fun. They're also very useful for people who find it difficult or unpleasantly messy to properly mould onigiri by hand.

When you need to make a lot of onigiri, for a picnic for example, you really need moulds. Wiener Shapers Don't laugh. Okay, laugh if you like.

Miniature weenies (think cocktail sausages, or if you are a New Zealander, cheerios) are a popular item in bento. And these are little cookie-cutter-like devices that you use to cut them into shapes like penguin, octopus, flower... You can also make the cuts by hand with a sharp knife (that's how I do my octopi, or rather hexapi, because when you cut eight legs they are rather thin and spindly) but again, these save time and mess, and can produce a neater, more uniform-looking result. Cut the sausages and then give them 5 minutes in boiling water.

If you can't get any nice miniature sausages, you could always cut down frankfurters. A related American product is the Octodog, but this is for full-sized franks and they would be a bit unwieldy for a bento box. Apparently they are planning a mini version for cocktail sausages, so keep an eye out for it.

To my eternal shame, I couldn't find my own wiener cutter when I was taking photos for this article, so I've ganked two examples from Jbox.com. Kambrook Rice Express cooker with measuring cup and scoop. Rice Cooker Not just for bento... I used to avoid making rice, until I got my rice cooker.

It was such a hassle trying to get the proportions of rice and water right, the temperature and the time, not letting the pot boil over while trying to attend to other things I was cooking... An essential appliance in any modern Asian kitchen, a rice cooker takes all the effort and guesswork out of the job. You just put in rice and water in the amounts recommended by the manufacturer, put on the lid and hit the switch. The cooker runs on a timed cycle and at the end you have just-right rice.

It only really does one thing (well, some you can also steam vegetables in) but, like the humble toaster, it does it better than any of the alternatives. Dividers Your box may have come with dividers in place, or it may have just one large compartment. To keep the food from mixing into an unattractive mess, you can sub-divide the box in a variety of ways.

Lettuce leaves (look for smooth-leaved varieties like buttercrunch rather than iceberg) can be used to make crisp, edible nests for cold food. Waxed paper or aluminium foil cupcake or muffin cases are also excellent (and can be very cute). You can also sometimes find, with sushi-making equipment (again, try a Japanese food store), little plastic sections of 'grass' used as dividers in boxes of sushi.

They're authentically Japanese and look pretty nice. Condiment Containers In stores selling Japanese goods (it's a good idea to keep checking the bento range at Jbox to see what they've got in stock, as it changes quite often) you can find little 'mayonnaise cups' which can hold anything from dipping sauces to pills you have to take with your meal, and tiny squeezy plastic bottles shaped like fish that hold soy sauce, which are also nifty. Convenient and cute.

Deeko paper cupcake cases, plastic cookie cutters, bamboo sushi-rolling mat and A word on food safety: If you don't have access to a fridge at work or you'll be carrying your lunch in a schoolbag, you may be concerned about your food getting warm and spoily.In this case I have two tips for you: one, invest in an insulated bento bag, which is lined with foil-y stuff like a pizza delivery bag. Two, get an ice-pack and put it in the insulated bag with your bento. You can buy little lunchbox-sized plastic ice-packs in a variety of designs from stores like Payless Plastics and Plastic Box (these are New Zealand chains; I don't know what all of you have locally, but think of the kind of store that carries kitchen bins, drawer organisers, food storage canisters) which you simply keep in the freezer overnight and pop into the bag with your bento before you go out in the morning.

Alternatively, freeze a small juice box and pop it in the same way. It will keep your food cool as it thaws and you'll have a chilled drink by lunchtime! Bento Staples Rice Rice is a near-indispensible part of any meal in Japan.In fact, the word for cooked rice, gohan, is used as a synonym for 'food' or 'meal.

' Bangohan means dinner, or literally, evening rice. So of course you'll find gohan in most bento boxes. Plain white rice, steamed in a rice cooker, is the baseline, but you may also find yummy fried rice.

(Noodles are an alternative to rice, with chilled buckwheat noodles called soba being particularly popular in summer. ) It may simply be packed in a layer of the box, or a compartment, or you may find it in the following form. Onigiri These are usually translated as 'rice balls' which is a little weird because I've never seen one that was ball-shaped.

Disc-shaped, triangular, even capsule-shaped, sure, but no actual balls. A more accurate but less appetising description might be 'moulded/pressed rice.' Cooked rice, while still warm, is pressed into a shape, whether by hand or in a store-bought onigiri mould. Often there's an okazu ingredient mixed in with the rice, or concealed in the middle like the filling in a jam doughnut.

Cutely shaped onigiri are popular in children's bento boxes - rice moulded into a bunny or teddybear shape, for example. The onigiri is picked up in the fingers like a cookie - it often has a strip of nori seaweed folded around it, like the wrapper on sushi rolls, to hold it by so that the rice doesn't stick to your fingers. Furikake This is not really an item in itself but a sort of accessory to rice and onigiri.

Furikake are savoury sprinkles which add flavour and colour to the rice, and are sprinkled over the top or mixed through. Onigiri may be rolled in furikake to give them a tasty coating. Popular furikake ingredients are dried flakes of edible seaweed, shrimp or salmon, or toasted sesame seeds.

You can prepare your own or buy shaker-top jars or individual sachets in Japanese food stores. Furikake is also great on hot rice with any meal. Pickles I don't mean just pickled gherkins/dills here (although if you like those, by all means put them in your bento), but all kinds of pickled vegetables and even fruit.

Umeboshi, a pickled red plum with a tangy sour taste, is a classic, especially when served in the middle of a bed of white rice in imitation of the Japanese flag design. Again, try to find a Japanese food store in your area so you can sample the different kinds. You may get grossed out a few times but you may also find a new favourite, that's always my attitude to trying new food... Curry Although people are often surprised to hear it, the most common basic Japanese meal is curry (kare) and rice!

The Japanese form of curry is based on the milder British adaptations of the original Indian dish, so while it's spicy, it's not the searing hot stuff they eat in Mumbai.It's a classic comfort food. It's also pretty close to liquid, so if you want to pack curry in a bento box, make sure it has a watertight seal, like a Tupperware lid, and include a spoon. Bite-Size Vegetables and Fruit Broccoli and cauliflower florets, celery sticks, cucumber slices or sticks, cherry tomatoes, baby corn, baby carrots or carrot discs (they look great cut into flower and star shapes - try a miniature cookie cutter from a baking shop), snow peas in the pod - they're all wonderful in bento.

You could fold or nestle raw vegetables in a crisp lettuce leaf, for an attractive wrapper that can be eaten afterwards. Did you know that the ready-to-eat peeled baby carrots you buy at the store aren't actually baby carrots, but mature carrots chopped into sections which are whittled to shape by a machine? Have I shocked you?

Fresh fruit is also a nice touch - mandarin orange segments (with the stringy pith removed) are cute, delicious and won't bleed juice in the box. Fresh summer berries are particularly well suited to the bento box as well as being a colourful representative of the season. Apple slices are not so suitable as they tend to become brownish and unappetising with exposure to the air, unless you rub lemon juice on their cut surfaces.

Eggs Whether a simple hard-boiled egg (cut in half to show the colour contrast of white and yolk) or a rolled and sliced Japanese-style omelette (typically sweeter than a Western one), eggs are an 'eggcellent' (sorry) source of protein and very convenient in a bento box. Little quail's eggs have a certain miniature charm. Glazed meatballs, quail's eggs, broccoli florets, apple slices, rice with cod-roe sprinkles.(Naomi Kijima) Leftovers!

Of course, if you are really dedicated and virtuous you will get up early in the morning to cook everything freshly for bento. But if you are like most people you will often prepare an evening meal with an eye to including leftovers in tomorrow's packed lunches - cooking some extra chicken pieces, for example. To prevent monotony, they may be done up with some seasoning or trimmings to make them a little different.

Or you may think, 'screw it, it's different enough that it's cold. ' *^. ^* Consult your own tastes and conscience!

You may also like to make some favourite items ahead of time in a big batch (e.g. Hardboil several eggs), and keep them in the fridge ready to use throughout the week. Other Good Okazu Chicken nuggets, croquettes of any kind, miniature/cocktail sausages, slices of teriyaki chicken or beef, meatballs, sushi rolls (maki), tofu puffs, sticks or chunks of cheese, chicken nibbles (wing joints), slices of cooked sausages, dim sum dumplings or pot-stickers (you can buy freezer packs in a Chinese supermarket, or indeed some mainstream supermarkets, and steam or fry them), miniature kebabs on cut-down bamboo skewers... You can also make sandwiches, yes, sandwiches, but with a cute bento twist... perhaps use mini-bagels as your bread (they can be cut in half to fit the box), or cut the sandwiches out using shaped cookie cutters. Circular crustless sandwiches are very bento.

Try rolling the sandwich fillings up in a slice of bread, like a maki roll, and cut it into segments. Here's how to make plain onigiri by hand, without too much difficulty. Once you've mastered this, you can try adding fillings and furikake to jazz up your onigiri.

As my science teachers always used to tell me, read the instructions all the way through and make sure you have everything you need before you start!(And do remember to wash your hands well with soap and hot water before preparing food. ) Onigiri moulding illustrations from Naomi Kijima's Bento Boxes - Japanese Meals On the Go 1. Cook a suitable amount of rice for the number of people you want to feed.

Important: do not rinse the rice before cooking! You want it to be sticky and clumpy. For this reason, Uncle Ben's and other rice varieties guaranteed not to stick together are unsuitable.

White shortgrain rice is the best kind for both onigiri and sushi - in supermarkets it's often sold in a pack marked 'sushi rice,' or if you can't find that, look for 'pudding rice. ' I have also been able to make onigiri with long-grain rice - it's just not as authentic, and tends to have a slightly messier appearance (grains sticking out from the surface). If you are savvy you will be using a rice cooker for this part, but if you don't mind the inconvenience, you can do it on the stove or in a microwave - follow the instructions on the rice package.2.

It's important to work with the rice while it's still warm and sticky, but let it cool a little first so you won't be scalded. Five minutes should do it. Turning the rice from the cooking container into another bowl and fluffing it with a fork or rice scoop will help it to cool slightly.

3. Fill a bowl with cold water and stir in a couple of teaspoonfuls of salt - keep this in your work area and dip your hands before beginning each onigiri. This will ensure that the rice sticks to itself, without sticking to you!

Some people wet their hands and then rub them with salt. I think this transfers rather too much salt to the rice, but you may prefer the flavour.4. Having dipped your hands, scoop out a small quantity of warm rice.

Depending on the size of your hands, this may be a palmful or half that - remember that, like making a snowball, you'll be compressing the rice together, so the finished onigiri will be a little smaller than the scoop you start out with, and size it accordingly. Always take an amount that you can easily work in your hand. If you have tiny hands, just accept that you will make tiny onigiri.

They're cuter, anyway. Also, make sure the onigiri are the right size to fit in the bento box without being squashed when you put on the lid!5. For disc-shaped onigiri, you need to squeeze and shape the rice with both hands at once, which is why some people find it a little tricky.

Make the shape of a C with your left hand, and keep turning the wad of rice against this to give it a round edge. With the thumb and fingers of the right hand, press the rice into a flat shape - so your left hand makes it round, and your right hand makes it flat, turning it all the while, and both contribute to squeezing it together.It sounds complicated, but once you have some practice you can stop thinking of it step-by-step like this and it becomes simpler and more intuitive. Squeezing too hard will smush the onigiri up; too light a touch will mean it doesn't stick together properly.

You will be able to feel and see when you are applying enough pressure. For triangular onigiri, straighten the fingers of your left hand and angle the thumb so that you can give the rice slightly rounded corners as you turn it (you could also make a square - some people do by accident! ).

You can also modify the disc technique to make capsule or cylinder-shaped onigiri, but I've never had much success with this. Fancier shapes will usually require a mould, which couldn't be simpler - scoop rice into the mould, put on the lid, press it down, then turn the onigiri out of the mould. When the shape is complete, you can add a pre-cut strip of nori seaweed if you wish, folding it around one edge of the disc or triangle, or wrapping around the middle of the capsule.6.

Set the completed onigiri aside on a plate and dip your hands ready for the next one. Chilling the onigiri in the fridge helps to set them. When they are cool, arrange them in the bento box.

Quantity will depend on individual appetite, but I find three small onigiri or two medium-sized ones a good amount for lunch.

Bentos are sold at 7-11s in japan :) - as mentioned it's rice and a choice of meat with sides.

Its a japanese meal. I think it means something like, packed lunch. My mother used to pack "Bento's" which had sandwhiches, chips, and your typical sack lunch.

However, with more traditional Japanese food a Bento contains rice, maybe a salad, maybe: sushi, tempura (breaded and fried food), something to put on the rice.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.