弁当生活: a week in my bento life

Before I move on to last December's trip to Taiwan, here is an ode to my daily bento, and the occasional special bento.

Every day at my main school I eat a bento for lunch. In the main teachers' room there is a sign-up clipboard and a box for the 500 yen payment; around 10am one of the teachers calls up the bento shop and puts in our orders. Somewhere around noon a delivery person shows up and deposits the stack of bento on the counter right by the clipboard.

In the US, I often brought leftovers for lunch and heated them up in the microwave or the toaster oven, but my main school has neither of those, just a hot water kettle for tea and coffee. I went through a konbini-sandwich phase, and a cafeteria-bento phase, but got tired of those options pretty quickly.

The delivery bento has the advantage of convenience, relative affordability (really 450 yen because every ten orders earns you a free bento), and variety. No two days' bento are exactly the same. The various side dishes come in small portions, only a few bites each. I read somewhere that our tastebuds get tired quickly, and you only fully taste the first few bites of an item. In practice I've found this to be true. The daily bento has just the right amount of each dish to keep your tastebuds awake.

What's in this magical bento? Here is (a bit more than) a week's bento photo journal, plus yesterday's extra-special bento:

Day 1: Mapo tofu, fried fish with mustard sauce, grilled fishcake with teriyaki sauce, meatball in cream sauce. Preserved vegetable salad, nimono with carrot, konnyaku, lotus and fish cake.

Day 2: Omelette, preserved vegetable salad, pork stir-fry, igamenchi, eggplant, teriyaki pork, grilled mackerel. Shiso salad, spaghetti with scallions and basil. I confess that although I love mackerel, that little piece with the bones in, is beyond my ability at the moment...

Day 3: Potato salad, marinated vegetables, beef (!!!), steamed spinach, fried fish cake, chicken nugget; bbq eel, eggplant, pork in tomato sauce. The other teachers got very excited about the inclusion of beef, which is not typical.

Day 4: Marinated burdock, shiso and bacon, roasted chicken, sausage, tempura fish; cabbage roll, okra, glass noodle salad.

Day 5: Vegetable omelette, carrot kinpira, cheese-filled hamburg, egg roll, white bean and hijiki salad, tempura kabocha, wonton, steamed spinach, vegetables in sauce.

Day 6: Chicken leg, vegetable and konnyaku nimono, breaded fish, eggplant, mashed potato, teriyaki meatball, potato nugget, carrot kinpira, noodle salad.

Day 7: Potato salad, steamed vegetable and chicken, baked fish, asparagus wrapped in pork, teriyaki meatball, crab claw, root vegetable and hijiki salad, agedashi tofu.

Day 8: Agedashi tofu with pork, stir-fried onions and pork, mushrooms, sausage, breaded fish, cabbage roll; steamed root vegetables, daikon nimono.

Day 9: Special Bento Day 1 - fried chicken, tonkatsu, omelette, sausage, salted salmon, chicken vegetable roll, chicken tsukune, shrimp dumpling, tsukemono, yakisoba.

Day 10: Special Bento Day 2 - In a lovely bento box which I just realized might be rotated in the wrong direction. In honor of the teachers' all day entrance exam-grading extravaganza.

Day 10: Special Bento Day 2 - Chirashizushi, raw fish on rice. My first time eating actual raw shrimp, surprisingly soft.

Footnotes:
I didn't mention that each bento contains a portion of rice with black sesame seeds and a pickled plum, but I'm sure you can see that's true. I always ask for the smaller portion of rice, but I can never finish it. Each bento also has one little broccoli tree with a dab of mayonnaise on a bed of shredded cabbage, and some kind of tsukemono (pickled vegetable) tucked into the smallest cup.

Also included are a soy sauce packet, and a miso packet that is sometimes aka (red) miso, sometimes shiro (white) miso, and sometimes awase miso (a combination of red and white). I don't usually eat it because it's so salty.

On special occasions we get a little treat too- on Valentine's Day, the delivery included little individual packages of chocolate, which got even more enthusiastic response than the time there was a piece of beef... : )