hep

i am thinking incompetent cops again. this same sort of thing happens frequently with our UK servers.

Agreed.

I keep meaning to do Joey's lunches like that.

I never do.

sigh

do you make dinner at night? I find its easiest to do them when cleaning up dinner. I am lucky that I don't have to cook tho, so I have more energy than I would if I also cooked it. It takes me about a half hour to do 6 lunches, but one should only take 5-10mins. I highly recommend looking at lunchinabox.net. She has such good advice. Also buying stuff like premade salad saves you tons of time. in all of the lunches I only cook 1 thing which is cooked along with dinner. (ie on pot pie night we also make 6mini pies at the same time then put them in the fridge, on fried rice night they get the leftover pork fried rice the next day, etc) and the rest is either premade bagged stuff (salads, fruit mix, edamame etc) or small size fruits and veggies (blueberries, raspberries, sectioned clementines, whole clementines, grapes, strawberries, tiny cucumbers, cherry tomatoes etc). Once a week I also make up a huge batch of mini corn or banana muffins and keep them on hand as tiny space fillers. I timed myself one morning when Zane lost her lunchbox and it takes me longer to assemble a sandwich bagged lunch than it does to put together her bento box.

I don't make dinner anymore because I have too much to do. Joey and I eat frozen meals and salad, respectively, and then on teh weekend I try to cook a couple times.

I TRY to make all of Joey's lunch for the week on Sunday, because I don't have energy at night before bed, and I don't have brains in the morning before work.

I really want to bento. People on email party are always tlaking about it.

if you get enough containers you can maximize by doing prefilled bentos. Most of the stuff that is in the containers can sit in there all week, I just don't have enough room in my fridge. He could also pack most of his own. Zoe and Zane both help pack them sometimes which is a huge help and pretty fun for them. The only reason I don't let them fully take over is they will lose all my stuff cuz they are terrible about putting things away correctly (i admit it, I am anal, I have seperate containers for all my containers.) And I also do things like do the Trader Joe's orange chicken some days. You could do all quick food in bentos the same way, I just have way too many people to cook for to do frozen meals on the cheap (7 people every night, its a pain) so it just makes sense to do big giant homemade meals, plus the girls' dad is an awesome cook and handles most of the cooking.

I used to cook. But it created too many dishes that I was too tired to clean. They would pile up until the weekend.

Josh is too busy with his three freaking' jobs that he does out of our bedroom.
He cleans up after himself at least.

I am going to hit that blog before I go to get groceries this weekend. I have a bunch of plastic containers. Not as cute as bento, but will do until I get them.

yeah i thought it would be a lot harder than it was. My essential list of foods to have on hand are:

bag of premade salad from costco
blueberries/strawberries/grapes/raspberries from costco (2 kinds)
clementines
edamame from costco
cornbread mix
jello/pudding
ranch dressing
hardboiled eggs

the containers and stuff are suuuuper cheap if you are near a japanese store. I pay a buck fifty each for containers and supplies. I recommend finding some small bottles or squeezers for sauce but that is all you need along with a container and paper cupcake liners to do bento. Cupcake liners just keep your stuff seperated better. Once a week i hardboil a batch of eggs (and usually do a quick dye job on them with food coloring when they are cooling. just add some dye to the cooling water. this helps you know which ones are hardboiled) When sending a hardboiled egg I also like to include a tiny container of mayo + mustard so they can make ghetto deviled eggs if they want. Then once a week I also bake up a batch of mini muffins (cornbread mix + water + mini muffin tin + no stick spray = 20mins start to finish) and some jello that I put in little plastic cups. With that list above tho, usually I just need to add one protein item in for a full lunch. You could do frozen meatballs, frozen chinese food, anything that cooks up fast in a microwave. I also whenever we make spaghetti, I freeze the leftovers into pasta balls (wrapped with saran wrap using the method here: http://lunchinabox.net/2007/03/08/speed-bento-scrambled-egg-purses/) and I have something to drop into a cup if I ever need a space filler. Usually I make sure every pasta ball as 1 meatball inside.

oh cool, thanks! Yeah, Joey won't eat regular salad even though I am obsessed with it, but he does eat fresh cut vegetables.

He's justting so bored of sandwich, veggie cup, fruit cup. ALl of which I cut and put together myself anyway.

I think that I will do that this weekend, along with my other project. It will keep it easy for me, but get him interested again.

will he eat hardboiled eggs? i forgot all about that wonderful filling snack until I started doing this. My mom makes deviled eggs which all of the kids are obsessed with, so the mayo + mustard thing has been a HUGE hit. And hardboiled eggs are pretty filling as well. Also buffalo wings are a big hit as well. I make them in a frying pan with Soy Vey Island Teriyaki (in the fat bottle). First we cook the wings in the sauce on the stovetop for about 15mins then put in the oven covered for another 15mins. Then I let them cool on the counter until they are barely warm and refridgerate them until we need them for lunches. If you have an oven safe frying pan (no rubber handle) this is a 1dish cooking meal, and all the real oversight you need to do is to move it from stovetop to oven. Mostly I look for super easy stuff that takes either no oversight at all hardly, or less than 15mins to prep AND cook. This way I only have to spend about 45mins once a week in the kitchen prepping for the lunchweek. Usually on a Sunday afternoon (LAZY SUNDAYS!)

Perhaps we can make a webcam Sunday lunch cooking club!

That would be the best cam show ever.

Yeah, I was throwing eggs in his lunch for a while, then I forgot.

if you go shopping this weekend and decide to do it, i will set up a stickam room on sunday for Lazy Sunday Bento.

I will hit Uwajimaya this weekend and look for Bento supplies!

Awesome, my friend/roomies kid has a ton of bento shit from daiso, when I start going to school again I'm gonna make myself bento lunches.

omg i want an americanized bento lunch now that looks so awesome

wow can you make my lunches too? those are AMAZING looking and probably tasting.

uk grids

I love lunchinabox. She is my friend here ssbiggie.

I have been toying with bento stuff...generally if I want to change a habit, having gadgetry really helps me. :) Where did you get your boxes? most of the ones I've seen have been heinously expensive...