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For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Today's bento, courtesy of Japan-based Moogs, is a "real" bento - that is to say, it's from a Japanese convenience store, not homemade. It's got some sort of mixed rice, three chunks of barbecued eel, a wedge of orange squash, green beans, bamboo shoot and lotus root. You can take these bento up to the convenience store counter and have the clerk heat it up for you. You think 7-11 will start carrying these?

I'm usually glad to peruse tomorrow's New York Times headlines when it comes to food as I did last night. I say usually because last night the news I learned was rather disturbing. The FDA has issued an alert about the safety of five types of farm-raised seafood imported from China. It seems that multiple tests showed contamination from carcinogens and antibiotics.

The five types of seafood in question are shrimp, catfish, eel, basa (a type of catfish) and dace (Chinese mud carp). These fish will have to be tested before they can be sold in the U.S. The FDA noted that there's no immediate health threat, but that prolonged exposure could cause health problems. Somehow that doesn't make me feel very safe, probably because I've consumed more than a few cans of canned dace with black bean sauce in my day. And the ban may not be such good news for fish eaters in general, either. Chinese seafood accounts for 21 percent of all seafood imports. Shrimp lovers may be hit especially hard since it's the number one seafood imported from China.

Hasn't it been beaten to death yet? Everywhere you look, the most hyped movie of the summer that stars Samuel L. Jackson has infiltrated our language so that all we can say is "[something] on a [something]." Even here at Slashfood, we've had Snakes on a Cake, and Snakes on Some Toast. Both were cute, but you know, not as frightening as real snakes on a real plane, right?

But Deep End Dining's Eddie Lin has really done it on his blog, which, unlike other mini-spoofs, are real snakes on something that sounds about as close to "plane" as you can get - a plate. Phong Dinh Restaurant in Rosemead, CA put the snakes on the plate, and Eddie ate them. Granted, he was disappointed that the snake meat was ground and wrapped in leaves, but the restaurant redeemed itself by also presenting him with whole eels on a plate. Close enough.

See Eddie's post for the details of his encounter with snakes on a plate.

Sounds terrible - an ice cream made from fish, but it could make an ice cream that won't pile on the pounds as you eat.

The Times has a report that Unilever, which produces Wall's, Magnums, Carte D'Or and Ben and Jerry's ice cream has applied to the UK's Food Standards Agency for permission to use a fish protein in a range of ice creams and fruit ices. The North Atlantic Pout is an eel-like fish whose blood, using GM technology, has been made into a protein that will cut the fat and calories in ice cream.

If accepted it could be 2008 before the protein appears in products.

Despite the fact that the technology leaves no edible traces of GM material in the finished product - rather like the use of vegetarian rennet in cheese the use of a GM product has been criticized by many as a "stealth" way to introduce a GM product.

Want a chance to taste smoked and jellied eels? Or maybe more conventional food such as s hog roast is more your bag?

The Ely (its a small city just north east of Cambridge) Eel Day this year is on the 29th April. It will be eels all the way with displays from the Environmental Agency and Ely Perspective Riverside Group as well as information and artefacts from the art of eel catching.  I also hear there will be a special beer brewed for the occassion as a one-off!

If the thought of an eel throwing competition is more a kids event and not for serious adults (swing that eel baby!) then Ely’s Boathouse Restaurant, beside the river, is offering a variety of eel dishes on the menu throughout the weekend.

So I was mistaken. I called uni the best, and thought it would be the ultimate, but alas, it was the penultimate. It is everyone else in my family who order uni last because perhaps to them, the luscious, creamy flavor of sea urchin gonads truly is the best way to end a meal of sushi. For me, I make it unagi - freshwater eel that has been broiled or barbecued, then glazed with a sweet sauce. It really is sweet, and that is what makes it the best for last. If you're squeamish about raw fish, unagi might work since it is cooked, but then again, it is eel.

I love it when the unagi is charred to almost black on the edges, and inevitably end up burning the roof of my mouth with its soft, fatty flesh because I can't wait patiently for it to cool slightly from the oven. There is also saltwater eel, called anago, which is not barbecued like unagi. I have had it several times before, and it just fish filler. I'd much rather have the unagi.

Previous lessons at the School of Fish:
Saba - holy mackerel!
Hirame - white fish, sometimes halibut
Tai and Suzuki - snapper and sea bass
Maguro - tuna
Toro - fatty belly of tuna
Shiro Maguro - "white" tuna, aka albacore
Ahi tuna
Hamachi - amberjack, aka yellowtail
Sake - salmon
Gai - the bivalves, i.e.clams, scallops, and oysters
Ebi - shrimp
Ika and Tako - squid and octopus
Kani - crab
Masago and tobiko - roe, roe, roe your boat
Ikura - salmon roe
Uni - sea urchin (but not roe!)