Happy Earth Day, everyone! I'm a pretty big fan of green-ifying your life. So today in Randamity I shared a couple of things I do every day to help reduce my carbon footprint. But I've just started something new, and appropriately enough, today is my very first day to try it!
I've recently become very interested in the Japanese art of bento. Bento means "box" in Japanese. It's a way of packing your lunch that's started spreading over in the western world, and I've been doing a lot of research on it over the past few weeks. It's all about portion control and planning and making your lunch beautiful and fun to eat - and the best part is, it's better for the environment because you pack everything in one reusable box, instead of bringing plastic baggies or microwavable dinners to work. You can see some examples of what people are doing here and here. It's amazing!
Anyway, I ordered my own bento and it came in the mail yesterday. And I got little sauce bottles and dip containers and rice molds and I absolutely couldn't wait to try it out. So today was my very first day to pack a bento lunch - we'll see how it goes! I wish I'd taken pictures. I'll do it tomorrow. I have little cubes of ham, cheese blocks, and crackers, celery with peanut butter and ranch, and sugar cookies. It's not too fancy or cute, I was just trying to figure out how to fit everything into this tiny box! But I think it's a really creative way to reduce my waste at lunch time. And it's not a bad idea for saving money and eating healthier. It's also given me the opportunity to dive into Japanese cooking a little bit. Bento doesn't have to have japanese food in it, obviously since I have ham and cheese, but the traditional boxes do have rice and nori and such so I'm going to do a little traditional bento mixed in with my own western flair. Too fun!!
