Packing Lunch Bento Style

As I mentioned in an earlier post one of the things I did to reduce spending was to start packing lunch for myself and my two daughters. My hubby is very fortunate and his job allows him one meal a day for free! Yay!

Below I will show you an example of lunch packed for a 6 year old and a 15 year old. My 6 year old has been using the same one dollar Disney princess container for two years and the 15 year old is using a piece I picked up from Salvation Army for a quarter.

If you have been in a lunch room lately you will notice alot of wasted food going uneaten in lunch boxes or even worse, going directly into a garbage pail. So taking a standard sandwich container divided into four sections works perfectly for Faith. We have a mini heart-shaped peanut butter sandwich in one corner, classic goldfish crackers in the upper right corner, fresh strawberries and carrot sticks in the remaining corners. A pretty balanced lunch that gives her variety without her feeling stuffed.

Now let's take a look at Nicole's lunch that day, which happened to mirror mine too. Her container is divided to hold a typical sandwich on the right and a side item on the left. What we ended up with was an Asian chicken salad on the right, with crispy romaine lettuce, radish and vegan chicken strips on top. On the left she has a mini chocolate chip muffin, a few dried kiwi slices, a little cheese and some crunchy topping for her salad. Her dressing was on the side to insure she didn't end up with Asian kiwi slices :-) after a journey in her backpack. All of the food also came from previous meals. Again, a nicely balanced meal.

My family loves Asian style food and our packing technique is somewhat "Bento" style. Something my teenager ran across during her many hours on the web. I could personally spend hours just looking at the images of true "Bento" lunches. Our packing technique is very simple and could be done by anyone with items in your own home. I estimate packing our three lunches saves us ten dollars a day and can be packed quickly while cleaning up after dinner. My daughters tell me they get tons of jealous tablemates at lunchtime.