How To Bento 101: Tools Of The Trade: Basic Containers

This is a subject that a lot of bento sites cover in detail. If you're new like I was, you're not going to have a collection of cute bento making items. You're also not going to want your bento supplies investment to be more than a mortage payment. I'm with you there and I'm here to help! In this first installment of our ongoing series: How To Bento 101, we're going to cover basic containers.

Part One: The Box

There are a lot of very very cute Bento boxes that you can buy. I didn't buy any of them. What I went with instead was something I've seen at Target (but ended up buying off Amazon). The Rubbermaid LunchBlox Sandwich Kits. We went with these two:

These boxes are great. They're easy for Tiny Bee to open, but form a tight enough seal that it prevents leaks. They fit great inside her lunchbox. The included ice pack attaches to the lids and base of the containers. Let me emphasize that: the ice pack attaches to the containers. This is my favorite feature. The ice pack keeps everything cool. It also keeps the each container from floating around and messing up the food items. I cannot recommend these enough, and for the price you won't get anything better for bento.

Part Two: Food Separators

A traditional way to do this would be to use cut decorative leaves called Baran to separate foods. If you've ever bought grocery store sushi, you know that you can get bright green plastic fake baran. But, we're not going to use either option. Instead we're going to take a page out of some other bento creator's books and use cupcake liners. My favorite and good old stand by are these Silicone Cupcake Liners:

I've also used a variety of decorative paper cupcake liners, but only if there were no sauces I had to worry about

Part Three: Lunchboxes

Now, I'm going to offer a suggestion here. This is about our favorite type of lunch boxes for the LunchBlox containers, but if you already have a box, use it! This year we bought this Finding Dory Lunchbox.

It's worked great, but I don't much like buying branded items. Young children grow out of them fast, with each new movie that comes out their favorites change. Next year I'm thinking about getting either this Unicorn Lunchbox or Fox Lunchbox. This brand also has many different animals suitable for girls or boys.

The feature we are looking for to use with LunchBlox is this upright shape with handle on top. It's a popular design for lunchboxes and should not be hard to find. We pack the lunchblox system in the top compartent. In the bottom we put a juice box, plus a fork and/or spoon and napkin.