*tap tap* Is This Thing On?

Okay, so, big yikes: It’s been more than two years since I posted anything on Adventures in Bentomaking. I think mentioned back then why that was. I work full-time from home as a freelance editor now, meaning I don’t have to take my lunch anywhere. I dusted off the child factory and have another offspring named Mr. Destruction (Mr. D for short).

And yet even with him being in preschool for the last three years, I still had no real chance to bust out my big bad bento skills because lunch at school was included in the tuition price, which was almost enough to rent a studio apartment here. So why waste that, right?

Fast forward to today, and he’s been in kindergarten about a month and a half. I didn’t want to plunge him right into taking home lunch to school, because kindergarteners have enough on their plates with a big new school with giant kids and new classrooms and new teachers and new everything, so adding one more thing to the mix just didn’t seem right.

Plus I wanted him to get a feel for what he likes and doesn’t like on the school lunch menu. I finally asked him this past week if he’d like home lunch, and his face lit up. And so, we’re going to give this a go, and I’ve thus fired up the WordPress dashboard here again. I have some big plans for some things on this site in 2020, but I need to get back into the groove first.

First up is shopping, because while I do still have a ton of bento boxes lying around, they’re not exactly 5-year-old friendly, and all of my bags are either thrown out or quite gross after sitting in a cabinet for literally years. After looking around, I settled on this bento box:

I had to look for something sturdy and leak-proof, and yet it couldn’t be anything huge, because then I’d just struggle to fill it, and he probably wouldn’t eat everything.

For a bag, I can’t use a bag that tilts a bento box, so it had to be something upright. I ended up getting this one:

It’s got straps, it allows for a bento box to stay upright, has room for snacks, and it’s washable. Ugh. I know I already bought a leak-proof bento box, but little kids are talented little people of mayhem, and I needed to be able to throw it in the wash.

We’ll probably just start with sandwiches, because that’s his current love. Just my luck he doesn’t like rice, so I’ll have to come up with some variety to keep him interested.

I’m in a local Facebook group, and there have been people posting images of the truly pathetic school lunches some kids are getting in Hawaii, so it’s been worrying for me what he’s actually eating. A chicken patty with bun, apple sauce, and a small carton of milk was the latest I saw; another had just three peach slices for a portion of fruit. Needless to say, that’s provided motivation on my end.

Things I have planned for the site include a redesign, some teen-friendly bento lunch ideas, and eventually I hope to launch some courses in time for next summer.

In the meantime, I’m starting up a newsletter for the site in addition to blog posts. Sign up below so that you can get emails from me with updates and announcements!