I made Jon a bento...

but he eated it.



Back before I met Jon I became fascinated with bento lunches, ordered a bunch of extremely cute supplies online, and then decided it was far too much work to make cute lunches just for myself. Now that I have a test subject... er, audience... I once again find myself wanting to experiment. Luckily Jon is a good sport about it (or has been so far--he gets to try my first attempt for lunch tomorrow, so we'll see what he thinks after that). The idea of a tasty, attractive boxed lunch is very appealing to me, and I admit that while I've been making sure my darling husband gets a good breakfast and dinner, I've been leaving him to fend for himself on lunches, which means he either comes home hungry or ends up buying lunch at work. If I can get the hang of this, it'll be a great way to use up leftovers, keep Jon fed, and save us what he would have spent on burritos and sandwiches. Besides, it's a great excuse to look at cute bento accessories online (not that I really need an excuse, of course).

My old bento box is just a little bit small for Jon, so for this Lolcat lunch I just used a basic sandwich-sized container. I used lettuce for dividers since I don't have any plastic ones; I have no idea if Jon's going to eat it, but it looks pretty and keeps things neat. I tried to stick with what I know about proper proportions for this kind of lunch--3 parts rice (leftover), 2 parts fruit and vegetable (cucumber, tomato, and carrot mini-skewers with a layer of red grapes underneath), and 1 part meat (leftover meatloaf). Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be 2 parts just vegetables, but given how many carrots this guy eats, I'm not going to stress over it. ;) With the lid on, nothing moves around (except a lone, rebellious grape) so I'm feeling pretty good about the whole lunch.

I wasn't planning on decorating it, but once I'd finished, everything but the veggies did look a little plain. I cut a slice of cheese with some vague notion of adding a bit more color, then realized it was roughly cat-shaped and knew just what I was going to do. :) I managed to get the cat shape and all of the letters out of just one slice of cheese (the paws, for instance, are each half of the triangle from between the ears), the cat's eyes are coriander seeds, and the nose is a carob chip. Pressing the nose into the cheese made it crack, but I covered that up by making a few extra cuts to show whiskers--I'll have to be more careful next time. And there will definitely be a next time, I'm already having fun thinking of what I'll make for Jon's lunch on Wednesday!