No Wonder I Love Bento

It’s no wonder I love bento.

To the left was my lunch box when I was in 7^th and 8^th grades. I don’t remember if I asked or it or if my mom, knowing my tastes, just got it for me.

I loved this lunch box so very much. You could put a sandwich in it that wouldn’t be all squished at lunchtime, and there were these little containers you could put other food in — a salad (which I often did. I like salads), cut up fruit in the little container, but best of all, you could freeze a drink in the cup and have it be cold with slushy bits come lunchtime, even in an un-airconditioned Virginia June.

But I also loved it because it was a little gadgety. All the pieces fit into the box perfectly, and the tops seals so the food wouldn’t mix. I was a picky little heathen as a youngster, and would have found the food mixing in my bento of my middle age horrifying.

I was once pondering with my husband whether or not I would have made bento had I known about them when I was a teenager. I think, in the 1970s orange Tupperware goodness of my youth, I have an answer.

I would have made bento. I would have adored making them, been proud of them and found them just as much of a respite in the middle of a difficult day as I do now. In fact, I can recall those neatly-organized lunches and the pleasure I found in them quite clearly.

Truly, it’s no wonder I started making bento as soon as I encountered the concept.