"lunch in a box" news and stories

I've always enjoyed the energy and care that people put into packing bento box lunches. I love checking out the stuff that Biggie creates on Lunch in a Box and Jennifer McCann's Vegan Lunch Box was once one of my daily blog stops (she doesn't update as regularly as she used to). Today's bento image comes to us from Kate, a regular commenter and photo uploader around these parts. She's packed up a delicious and abundant lunch that has me wishing she'd come to my house and pack me a mid-day meal.

Thanks for adding your image to the Slashfood Flickr pool, Kate!

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This picture isn't quite as delectable as some of the other images I regularly post in this space. However, it's such a great idea that when I saw it, I thought to myself, "That's just the sort of thing I have to share with the world of Slashfood readers."

From Biggie of Lunch in a Box, her image shows how she uses plastic water bottles to store frozen veggies like corn, peas and chopped onions. It makes it really easy to pour out a small amount, which is perfect for those times when you are pulling together meals for one. This not only works well for the prepacked frozen veggies that you buy, also for the veggies you freeze yourself. I imagine that the wider mouth bottles would work really well for frozen berries (great for when you make smoothies).

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Do you ever find yourself in the situation where you want to make dinner quickly, but the ground turkey or beef you wanted to use is frozen in one large, solid hunk? Maybe you just want to add a little bit of Italian sausage to the pasta sauce for flavor, but there's no way to scrape off enough to be useful.

Lucky for us Biggie at Lunch in a Box is always thinking creatively and has offered up an idea (that she plucked from one of her Japanese freezing books) that makes it easy to break off a little bit of frozen meat in order to make quick work of meals. She advises that when you put the meat in a freezer bag, press it as flat as possible (squeezing out all the air). When it is sealed, gently score it with a chopstick or other long, flat utensil so that it's easy to break off pieces without defrosting the whole thing. This also works well with thick sauces.

Thanks Biggie!

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The packed lunch has come a long way since the days of the simple brown paper bag and a sandwich wrapped up in waxed paper. There were the metal lunchboxes of my childhood that are now collectibles (I still have my Strawberry Shortcake one). Then came the reusable canvas bags that were designed to look like the paper bags of yore. The insulated lunchbags arrived next and recently bag constructed from neoprene entered the scene. Here are a few places to check out as you look for something to pack your child's (or your own) lunch into.

Laptop Lunches makes a really cool bento-style lunch boxes with the dimensions of American food in mind (i.e. they are designed to hold a sandwich, something that other bento boxes don't do as well). Their website also has a page of helpful lunch suggestions .

Lunchboxes.com sells lunchboxes for school, work and play. Despite the fact that these days I don't have much use for a lunch transportation devise (as I spent most of my days within ten feet of my kitchen) I am currently coveting their Chinese takeout lunch bag.

Lunch in a Box, the very cool website on which new, gorgeous pictures of creatively made bento box lunches are posted nearly every day, has an Amazon store on which you can buy many of the cute containers she uses to build her toddler's lunch.

Reusablebags.com devotes a sizable section of their website to lunch bags. Additionally, they carry lots of small, reusable water bottles that are terrific to send to school with your kids in place of disposable plastic ones.