bento! (or holiday gift ideas for your veg friends)

So recently I've become kind of obsessed with the concept of Bento Boxes. I have a lot of time on my hands and like to cook. And I love anything cute. I joined a community for Bento and I realized a lot of people who are into Bento are also vegetarians. The community on LJ has all the entries tagged so you can click straight through to veg or vegan boxes and there are some really creative ideas in there for packing a more appealing lunch.

With the holidays coming up I thought I would start a series on gift ideas for you to ask for or to give your vegetairan friends! So today's idea is all about the bento.

Some examples of the boxes:



This is a pretty traditional Japanese Bento.
It comes with:
*2 tier lunch box
*Lunch box bag
*Chopsticks
*Erastic belt

Or if you want to go a little more cutesy, there is this Black Sheep box.

And as far as I'm concerned you can't talk bento without bringing Miss Hello Kitty into the mix.

There are alot of extras you can also throw in when introducing someone to the art of bento. Like rice molds, so that they can create rice balls or even use them to make sushi. Some people like egg molds for hard boiled eggs and another almost essential product is a sauce container.

The best part about the bento is its resuable and you save some plastic waste, especially if you make sure to get the sauce/condiment container.

There are also loads of cook books on how to make bento boxes that would make a handy companion for a first time bento maker. The Manga Cookbook comes with a bento box already while Vegan Lunch Box takes a more American and totally vegan take on making and packing lunch.

I'll leave you with some photos of delicious looking veggie bentos. Come back soon for more gift ideas....

A couple of lunches prepared by jokergirl

contents:
Vegan Korean stew, -with sihmeji and enoki mushrooms. Then there's tomatoes, carrots, a dumpling and a mini muffin, and rice in the top layer.

Big box (top): Millet and chili sin carne decorated with parsley. Millet is actually rather tasty, but not very different from couscous texture and flavour-wise. Mmm.
Small box (bottom): Tiny croquettes on picks decorated with oregano; mini chocolate chip muffin (made in a condiment cup with a tiny amount of muffin dough), star-shaped carrots and a cup of tsatsiki.