It’s back to school time, which means you’re going to have to make the decision on whether to send a lunch or have the kids buy a school lunch. Buying a school lunch is expensive, and my kids only like what they’re having about a third of the time. The schools serve so much fatty, fried food that it isn’t the most healthy meal, either.
Sending a lunch to school can be very expensive as well, if you are using the pre-packaged convenience foods that are marketed toward busy mamas like us. So what’s a busy, but frugal mom to do? Try Bento.
Wikipedia defines Bento like this:
Bento is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. While bento are readily available at convenience stores and bento shops throughout Japan, it is still considered an essential skill of a Japanese housewife to be able to prepare an appealing boxed lunch.
Bento can be very elaborate, aesthetically pleasing cuisine arrangements. Often the food is arranged in such a way as to resemble other objects: dolls, flowers, leaves, and so forth.
It sounds a lot harder than it actually is. Most of what I include in my daughter’s Bento is leftover food from dinner, remade into a pretty form. The most time consuming part is cutting up fruit and veggies into pretty shapes. Some things can be cut for the week ahead, like peppers and carrots.
Once you get started making Bento lunches, you’ll find it’s actually quite fun, seeing what you can make with food. I get inspiration from the Bento Flickr group, and from the Bento Lunch community on LiveJournal. Here are good instructions on how to make Onigiri, a Bento staple.
[Photo by jbox.com, Hello Kitty Bento kit can be bought here]
Technorati Tags: back to school, Bento, Bento LunchAdd to:
I think another good tip would be to check with the school to see if your family is eligible to buy lunches at a discounted rate. My family was eligible for this when I was a child (and although this was ages ago) I think they only paid a quarter per lunch for us kids. Now even then, there was no way we could have packed a lunch at that rate, and since my lunch tickets looked the same as everyone else's, i was not shamed in any way.
Posted by: Heidi | August 13th, 2007 12:53 pm |
Heidi, that's a great tip! My oldest son was on reduced lunch until last year when we finally started making enough money that we didn't qualify anymore.
Of course, making more money is good, but we're still broke! Funny how that works.
The income limits in my state are fairly high for reduced lunch, so everyone should check to see if they qualify or not, you'd be surprised, many people do.
Posted by: Ivy | August 13th, 2007 1:01 pm |
That is a very creative idea. While my older boys enjoy buying lunch everyday it just kills me to have to write that check every month for their lunch accounts. Then the girls want me to make their lunch and all the pre packaged junk is just not healthy. This is such a great tip Ivy.
Posted by: kristen | August 13th, 2007 6:18 pm |
I make Bento for my son and myself. They really are alot of fun to eat and make. (there are some on my blog)
He only used to stay for lunch one day a week in preschool, so I'm not sure yet if I'll be giving him bento everyday come spetember when he moves up to reception class.
Our school lets you see the school menu for the week ahead, and pick and choose when to have lunches or packed lunch, which methinks we'll be doing!
Posted by: Modified mummy | July 23rd, 2008 4:15 pm |
I've been doing bentos for myself for a while now and just started doing them for my kids (age 1 & 3). They love the fun bento boxes and accessories and are now actually eating the lunches I send them to daycare with!
Posted by: katia | July 25th, 2008 9:01 am |