Category Archives: Getting Organized

I’ve been promising pictures of my obsession for a while.  Picks and cutters are my worst offences.  I have a fair amount of mayo cups and soy sauce bottles, mostly purchased before I actually started packing Kidlet meals.  Once I realized how little use those would get for us right now, I stopped picking those up, no matter how adorable.  Picks and cutters though — those I can use everyday in our american style food meals.

My pick collection.  At least most of it.  I’ve got some bamboo picks and some long pinwheel picks that don’t fit in here.  There wasn’t space to separate everything.  So all my animal picks are dumped in one container.  All the primary color, non fork picks are together, and so on.

Soy sauce bottles, furikake containers and mayo cups.  As mentioned, they don’t get used too much.  Also my stash of baran.  I find that I don’t use them much as food separators, but I like the small ones tucked in his lunch to add a little happy and a little color (as in today’s waffle breakfast).

These are the other assorted non bento specific tools that I use.  The brushes are used with food coloring (not shown) or to brush on the luster dust (little bottles in the middle) for a shine.  The purple handled tools are the quilling tools that I’ve mentioned before that I use for cutting cheese/meat out.

Miscellaneous stuff.  Nori punches, egg shapers, sandwich imprinters, various paper, silicon and plastic cups.

This is the Go To box of cutters.  It’s got most of my mini sized cutters as well as all the bento specific cutters I have purchased, used for making figures and such.  These (and the rest of the cutting tools) are stored in 12×12″ flat boxes meant for storing scrapbooking papers/pages.

The next box of cutters mostly is stored away.  It’s got a lot of theme cutters that I would spcifically go looking for to fit a particular lunch, so it doesn’t need to sit out.

Finally are the large cutters that I use often enough (not necessarily just in bento.  I might dino or rocket up his snacks and things too) to keep out.  This also has the seasonal items in it.  After halloween/fall I will take out those and bring out the christmas ones, etc. (Yes, sadly it is true, there are even more cutters not pictured because they are seasonal and packed away elsewhere until its time to bring them out).

I think I need to make a collage of these photos for my desktop; next time I feel like browsing online bento stores, maybe seeing all the stuff would put my urge to spend in check 😉

Posted by Kristen in Bento, Getting Organized

I’ve mentioned that I plan out / sketch my bentos before and someone asked me about that.  Basically I have a three ring binder and I jot down my ideas for a bento on a piece of paper and stick it in there.  Sometimes I actually trace around the box I’m going to use and sketch it to scale, other times I just roughly freehand the shape to get the general idea.  I put in some ideas of how I want to fill the space.  If I’ve planned it out specifically down to the last blueberry, I’ll make a list of what I need for the content — which makes it really easy for gathering up my supplies all at once, and speeds up the assembly process.

I don’t have a scanner, so I made do with my camera.  It’s not ideal, but you should be able to see enough to get the general idea.  You can click the thumbnails for a larger version of the photos.

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This is the sketch that I did for the Sonic bento.   You can see comparing the sketch to the reality that they aren’t identical.  I ended up with less room than I thought I’d have and cut out the broccoli, spread the carrot rings in a half circle around the sandwich, etc.  Lower left of the picture has my list:  Blueberries or Grapes, Strawberries, Melon or Mango, Broccoli, Carrot, Lettuce, Quiche or Circle Sandwich, Bologna, White Cheese, Nori, Ranch.  Next to that is the list of tools:  Heart Picks, Scissors, X-acto, Quiller, Tiny Circle Cutter, Small Flower Cutter. 

Click for larger picture

This is the sketch  of the “Shy Little Kitten” that the kidlet wanted me to actually do when he spotted it on Thursday.  Unlike the Sonic sketch, where I was really specific, this one didn’t get that far, since I didn’t think I would be able to do it.  I didn’t make a list of supplies and tools, for instance.  It ended up quite different, as you can see from yesterday‘s post.

This doesn’t take as long as it might seem.  I do it while the baby is sleeping.  She’ll be sprawled scross my left shoulder and I’ll have a clip board sitting next to my right side.  I work on it during the few hours that she will sleep NOT on me, as she sleeps near by and I’m watching TV.  Eventually, I *hope* I’ll be able to do my bentos, even the character / cute ones without this kind of preparation.  But hey, I’ve done fewer than 30 total so far and it’s not second nature.  Yet!

Posted by Kristen in Bento, Getting Organized

Bento-ing can be contrary to my current frugal goal of tightening up my food budget.  It could be very wasteful.  I cut away a lot of bread to fit sandwiches to the box,  Fruit and veggie shapes leave a lot behind, cheese buses and sonics leave tons of scraps, and so on.  What do you do with all the leftovers from decorating bentos? 

1. Unless I know I can dice them and use them in another meal that day, stock-suitable vegetables (carrots, zucchini, celery, etc), go into a gallon bag in the freezer along with other cooking scraps (parts of onions, celery tops, etc) to make stock.  Since I’m planning on roasting a chicken a week for the next month, I’ll have plenty of carcass for making stock.

2. Cheese bits are saved in a baggie.  I sprinkle them on my taco soup lunches or use them to make grilled cheese sandwiches.  They can be tossed into scrambled eggs or omelets.  I also use them in savory meat and cheese corn muffins.

3. Meat bits go in those same corn muffins and egg dishes, or tucked into a sandwich if he has one that day.

4. I’ve been bad about bread, but I’ve started to save the crusts and extra bits.  If I collect bread scraps a few days, then whiz ’em in the food pro, I can use those homemade breadcrumbs for meatballs (one of the few non lunchmeat proteins I can count on the kidlet to eat) or breading cutlets for dinner.

5. Usually the fruit scraps get eaten right away by me or the kidlet.  I suppose you could save them and make a fruit salad, but I’m happy to let the kiddo gobble them up with breakfast for a little more nutrtion.

6. I don’t save nori bits.  I don’t use much of it; he doesn’t actually LIKE it, and peels it off anyway.  Just sometimes you just have to have a little black!  No one here (including me) likes seaweed in any form.  Truthfully, opening the bag I have the nori stored in to pull out a little bit to use makes me want to gag with that sudden fishy sea aroma that assaults my senses.  So, bits left after punching out eyes or whatnot just plain get trashed, with no apology.

Posted by Kristen in Bento, Getting Organized