Bento Boxes for Local Food Lunches

Try a cute and tasty way to eat healthy this school year!

This week’s Making Ripples column in the Free Weekly is about my favorite kind of sustainable lunch – the bento box! I decided a few months ago to learn how to make these, at a basic but attractive level. I ascribe to the policy of creating bentos primarily for environmental and nutritional, not cute, reasons. The cute part just draws me into the culture of portable, fresh foods in a reusable container. 🙂

If you’d like a helpful book on bento box lunches, the two that helped me most were the Yum-yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches and The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go. For more guidance, I’ve enrolled for FREE in this online bento box creation class! Become a student here. You can go at your own pace, which for me is whenever I get the chance to think about bentos and put some together. Slow and steady, right? I committed to packing at least two bento boxes per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Having that plan helps me not forget about eating healthier lunches – today, for instance, I was blindsided by frozen french fries. But tomorrow I will return to vegan sushi!