EZLock Ag+

Japanese bento boxes have come with anti-bacterial silver ions for some time, like these ones. This helps to prevent your food from going bad, especially in hot weather.

Now Lock n Lock’s EZ-Lock range also some with Ag+ ions. After you remove the cardboard packaging, the Ag+ boxes can be distinguished by their lids of a slightly lighter shade of blue compared to standard EZ-Lock. View the latest 2009-2010 Lock n Lock catalogue here (only works with Internet Explorer).

Here are some suitable sizes for bento.

EZlock Ag+: 520ml & 620ml

EZlock Ag+: 890ml & 965ml

I was terribly flattered when my food blogging inspiration, Maki of Just Hungry/Just Bento, recently asked me to contribute a guest post to Just Bento. I’ve learnt so much from her and am really glad to be able to share something with her too.

I decided to write about my general approach to bento-ing, which you can read here on Just Bento. It’s thanks to Maki that I made the effort to collate and summarise the basic principles that inform what I do and so fundamental are these to my blog that I have also included the information here as a series of “bento primer” tips.

One year and ten months since I started Main-Main Masak-Masak, and things seem to have come full circle :). This blog has matured and my food journey has slowed down, no longer the hectic, frantic pace to find ways to deal with my food sensitivities and the excitement of sharing new discoveries on this blog. I now know what works for me and there are reliable strategies and recipes I can turn to repeatedly. Hence the lower frequency of postings of late, but I will continue to add notes and ideas that are worth sharing — time permitting also!

I’ve loved the cooking and the world of ingredients, perhaps even the challenge of working around of food restrictions, but these things have now become internalised and my journey of food discovery has reached a plateau (for now). However, instead of having my mental and emotional energy consumed by thinking about food, I can turn my time and life to other pursuits. I was going to say ‘I got my life back’ but food & cooking is a still a wonderful and treasured part of my life, something I wish I could slow down and savour more *^_^*.

When I first started making bento, I would spend ages planning the combination of foods and how to pack them. Now, I don’t bother much with the intensive planning, I use the same foods from regular meals served at home and just try to pack them with a little bit of thought to presentation. After a while, you will develop better instincts at quickly sizing up the right box to choose and the best way to pack the food into the box.

Part of managing food sensitivites is also about developing a routine to make sure that you always have home-prepared food with you. This involves setting aside the time to cook and bake in large quantities, freeze them in individual portions which can then be quickly reheated and packed to go, as well as setting aside time before leaving the house to get it all together. Ever since I made the extra effort to always have food on me, even a small snack so that I’m never caught out, I hardly ever suffer unpleasant food reactions from eating something I wasn’t supposed to anymore. Feeling well makes the effort all worthwhile.

More bento tips:
Bento primer part 1: foods for bento
Bento primer part 2: planning bento meals
Bento primer part 3: packing bento
Bento primer 4: stocking up on bento equipment

It might seem indulgent to buy lots of different plastic boxes, but given the importance of choosing the right box, it is worthwhile to do so. Daiso and Lock n Lock provide good selections at affordable prices. Wherever possible, choose airtight boxes as they will prevent spillage of any sauce or liquid contents (I’ve packed soups and yoghurt before), while also keeping dry foods like biscuits crisp in humid weather.

Beside the main lunchbox, I also have a selection of other plastic boxes: smaller ones for pieces of cut fruit (which accompany every meal bento I have), a round box for a single muffin, a deep, rectangular box for two muffins, and shallow rectangular boxes for angular snacks like pieces of cake. Most of my plastic boxes are not reserved for bento use only as we use them for storing all sorts of foods at home, such as dried goods removed from plastic packaging or leftovers in the fridge/freezer. With a large variety of plastic boxes on hand, I can easily find one to suit anything I want to pack into my bento bag.

Aside from boxes, I regularly carry a small insulated mug/flask, and always have a wet towel (oshibori) and plastic cutlery –either a fork and spoon in a ziploc bag or foldable chopsticks which come in their own case.

You’ll need a bag to hold all these things. Again, it’s good to have bags in different sizes to accommodate the amount of food you’ll need. The bags I use most of the time hold my lunch, fruit and a snack. I also have one larger bag, which can also fit a one litre water bottle, and several smaller zipper or drawstring bags from Daiso which hold a single plastic box and cutlery and sometimes also an oshibori. Usually, the small zipper/drawstring bag will go inside my main holdall or backpack, where it helps to keep the food items together and hopefully, prevent the food boxes from being knocked open as well.

If you do mostly rice bento rather than sandwiches, it’s much better to find a bag that will allow you to hold the bento boxes horizontally. Briefcase-style lunchbags tilt your boxes on their side and may disturb the arrangement of food or increase the chance of spillage. It’s not necessary to go hunting for dedicated lunch bags, any small tote bag with a large enough flat base will do, although I am very partial to two-layer bags that enable easy access to the main lunchbox itself.

More bento tips:
Bento primer part 1: foods for bento
Bento primer part 2: planning bento meals
Bento primer part 3: packing bento

Perhaps the first thing many people associate with bento culture are the elaborate kyaraben (character bento), but everyday bento don’t have to be that difficult. However, the fundamental ideas of packing bento can take your lunchbox from unappetising mess to something to look forward to. It feels really good when instead of being pitied for one’s food intolerances, people think your food looks better than theirs!

You don’t need to do cutesy or complicated, but it helps to have some aesthetic sense to guide you in composition, arrangement and the juxtaposition of colours and shapes. Frank Tastes provides some excellent examples of simple, almost Zen-like bento arrangments. As with developing any kind of artistic sensibility, exposure to as many examples as possible will build up your visual ‘vocabulary’ to facilitate creativity. Apart from the plethora of bento websites, if you have access to a Japanese bookstore, do browse through Japanese-language books on bento for  inspiration — the bento examples and the overall art direction are usually absolutely excellent.

It’s also important to choose a box of the correct shape and size. A shallow box is better as it allows you to lay out the foods horizontally, almost like a painting. Also, if the foods come up to the lid when the box is sealed, they won’t move around during transportation and your bento will still be intact when you come to eating it.

Just Bento oftens discusses the usefulness of bento in controlling portion sizes, and Japanese guidelines on the optimal size for men, women and children are very useful. However, I have also discovered that the volume I can finish in one meal differs according to the type of food. The type of rice makes a huge difference, not so much in terms of managing the caloric value, but in terms of how much is enough to make me feel full. With brown rice, I eat much less than the half-box portion of sticky, short-grain Japanese white rice recommended for standard Japanese bento, and it’s likely you’ll find that with long-grain white rice typical of Southeast Asia and in southern Chinese cuisines, you’ll need quite a bit more than that. Any kind of glutinous rice would be the most filling of all.

Noodle dishes are a different ball game because not only do I consume a larger volume than if I had a meal of brown rice and side dishes, you need some empty space in your bento box to allow you to loosen the noodles and pick up the strands, or to toss the noodles with the topping ingredients (in terms of presentation, noodles look much nicer with the toppings heaped on top than ready mixed).

More bento tips:
Bento primer part 1: foods for bento
Bento primer part 2: planning bento meals

More bento tips:
Bento primer part 1: foods for bento

Although this is primarily a food intolerance blog, quite a lot of readers end up here whilst searching the term ‘bento’. It was because of increasingly complex food sensitivities that I was motivated to learn more about cooking and bento culture, so as to be able to adapt recipes and to make my packed meals from home more appetising. The principles of bento culture go a long way in making our food-intolerance-friendly lunchboxes more tasty and attractive. Learning to be creative in those two areas is particularly important when one is faced with the limitations of food restrictions.

So it’s about time I articulated my approach to making bento and this will be the first in a series of posts with my top tips.

Foods for bento

Food intolerances and special diets (including vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher etc.) vary greatly from individual to individual, so only you know best what you can or can’t eat. Even if you do not have food sensitivities, one of the great advantages of making your own bento meals is having the opportunity to provide yourself with healthy, nutritious, fresh food that is free of processed products, preservatives and artificial additives.

Bento don’t have to be filled with Japanese food, as Lunch In A Box demonstrates. My main suggestion to managing food intolerances would be to seek out ingredients and cooking methods from a broad range of food cultures. For example, many gluten-free flours are commonplace in Indian cooking, so I head to an Indian supermarket to stock up on flours for western-style gluten-free baking, and also have the option of making Indian snacks from these same ingredients. Trying new foods and new tastes may take some getting used to but the more cosmopolitan your palate is, the wider your options for finding foods within your restrictions.

When it comes to unfamiliar cuisines, it’s worthwhile doing some background reading on the properties of ingredients and how to handle them, the principles of cooking methods, as well as to understand how tastes & textures are combined. For example, you might want to find out which dishes taste good at room temperature if you don’t have the opportunity to heat up your bento. Also, don’t forget that some ingredients turn rancid quickly, especially in hot weather, including coconut milk.Once you understand the fundamental principles of cooking across different food cultures, it will open up many possibilities for almost limitless experimentation. I’m not a purist when it comes to cuisines and tastes — one can’t afford to be when faced with wide-ranging food sensitivities — I’m only interested in creating a dish that is palatable to myself.

Dual Lock 550ml

On Boxing Day last year, my Asvel bento box died. The sad thing was, it wasn’t totally dead, just that a miniscule knob that held the hinge mechanism of the lock-tight lid broke off and that was the end of the lid.

So instead I turned to using this shallow Dualock box from Lock ‘n’ Lock. The shallow shape is ideal for packing bento, as I explained here. At 550ml, it’s relatively close in volume to the 630ml capacity of the Asvel one, and it has a watertight lid.

Japanese guidelines state 630ml as about the ideal size box for an adult woman’s meal, hence this is a standard size for many Japanese boxes. That’s true if I have white rice or a noodle dish. However, I’ve found that for a meal with brown rice, I usually can’t finish that amount of food, and instead, this 550ml box provides exactly the right amount for me.

I’ve since acquired a brand new Asvel box, but I shall continue using this one a lot more from now on, especially since I have brown rice for most of my meals.

Curious what’s for lunch inside the box :)?

Aubergine & pork brown rice bento

Brown rice, stir-fried pork (shabu-shabu or sukiyaki cut from the supermarket), with pan-fried brinjal (local aubergine).

If your bento aesthetics lean towards zakka (such as FrankTastes), and you are hoping for Shinzi Katoh items to appear in your Christmas stocking this year, you might want to hint to your friends and family with these Singapore Shinzi Katoh shopping tips (^.^).

Maameemoo (Orchard Cineleisure, 02-09) is a tiny zakka heaven, with a selection of Shinzi Katoh items, including bento boxes and bags. Short totes (which can double as lunch bags) cost S$39 and there are regular new shipments, according to the sales assistant. I’ve seen a much larger zakka shop at Cathay Building, but can’t remember if they actually had Shinzi Katoh or bento items.

However, an online search turns up a few Singapore-based online zakka stores:
The Little Happy Shop
Zakkaart.com

Both of these seem well-organised at very similar prices: lunch totes at S$26.90 (The Little Happy Shop) and S$26 (Zakkaart.com), double-tier bento boxes at S$29.90 (The Little Happy Shop) and $$28 (Zakkaart.com), single-tier boxes at S$17.80 (The Little Happy Shop) and S$24 (Zakkaart.com). Don’t forget to factor in the delivery charges (pretty minimal if by standard mail within Singapore).

There is also Momo’s World, which seems to be a new online shop, less professionally-organised website than the other two and with a limited selection.

Or perhaps you want to order directly from Shinzi Katoh’s Japan online shop; prices vary according to design. Here’s a guide for English-speakers to navigate the site. Shinzi Katoh’s UK website also does international orders (currently 25% off lunchboxes): lunch totes are £18, single-tier boxes on sale at £7.50, double-tier ones – £8.65.

Don’t forget: if ordering lunchboxes, do check the size as the double-tier ones come in 460ml and 540ml. If the lunch bags are too small for you, another option could be the short tote bags which are the same height but twice the length of the lunch bags (W315×H160×D110mm).

N.B.: I haven’t purchased from any of these shops myself so no comments on the actual level of service. I’ll just keep wishing hard for my Christmas this year… or next.

Tzu Chi double-layer bento bag

Quite often I carry food for more than one meal and it’s a real hassle to get to the largest box (usually the main meal, lunch) at the bottom of the bag. Sometimes this involves unloading everything on top first, and going through the same process all over again to put the box back in!

After struggling with this a few times, I realised how much the two-layer bag from Tzu Chi Foundation would help me. Earlier, I wrote about the range of 便當 biangdang /bento equipment from this Taiwanese Buddhist organisation, which promotes concern for the environment. I’m a huge fan of their folding chopsticks.

[Speaking of folding chopsticks, I found a couple of varieties, including a screw-type similar to the Tzu Chi one, at NTUC Finest Bukit Timah, near the Chinese dried foods. However, they didn't seem to be very well-made, so I would hesitate to recommend them.]

This bag fits a rectangular lunchbox in the bottom zippered layer, the precise size of my Asvel box. I usually squeeze my plastic cutlery or folding chopsticks into this section too.

In the upper compartment, I’ll put my fruit box, tea time snacks and oshibori. There is also a small zipper pocket inside the upper layer – just nice for paper napkins but I have given those up in favour of the more environmentally-friendly oshibori. Sometimes I slip in a teabag if there’s going to be hot water at my lunch destination.

Once I put in all these, there’s no space for my 300ml insulated mug though, unlike with my Muji and Reisenthel bags.

Unfortunately, Tzu Chi in Singapore has moved from a convenient downtown location in Chinatown to Pasir Ris. So it’s worthwhile to call ahead and ask if they have stock. They were out when I wanted to buy this bag about six months ago, and I ended up getting a friend to buy it in Taiwan for me, where it cost about S$10.

********

My other bento bags: cream-coloured Muji and green & orange Reisenthel.

Reisenthel lunchbag

The German brand, Reisenthel, is mostly known for its folding, environmentally-friendly shopping bags. Whilst browsing the colourful designs at Tangs one day, I chanced upon these small tote bags intended for young children – going by the photographs on the tags. However, they are a perfect size for bento too. I can’t seem to find this bag on the official Reisenthel website though.

Tangs had them in three colours: kiwi green with orange trimming, sky blue with lime trimming, and if I remember correctly also pink with sky blue trimming. The price was S$12.95.

Features I like are the zip closure, the zippered inner side pocket, and the square base, which makes this ideal for square bento boxes that don’t fit so well into my Muji and Tzu Chi bags which are designed for rectangular boxes.

This is big enough to hold a lunch box, extra boxes for fruit, teatime snack, cutlery, oshibori as well as my 300ml insulated mug.

*******

My other bento bags: cream-coloured Muji and double-layered Tzu Chi.

It being the Christmas season and with plenty of sales in the shops, you might be looking to buy an insulated mug. I just saw a newspaper ad for a Thermos warehouse sale this weekend — sorry, I can’t remember the details because I already have enough insulated mugs & flasks and don’t intend to buy anymore (^_^) !

Insulated mugs

These are three stainless steel insulated mugs that I have: 290ml Thermos food/soup jar, 300ml Tiger brand slim mug, 450ml Tiger mug with compartment on top of lid for storing tea leaves. Not in the photo is a large 1 litre Thermos food flask I have in which you can make congee (rice porridge).

I’ve learnt that one of the very important thing to look out for is whether the screwtop grooves are on the inside or outside.

Tiger mug - grooves inside

Thermos jar - grooves outside

Initially, I used my 290ml Thermos food jar for hot beverages such as tea and powdered grain drinks but soon found that the drink would seep down the grooves and drip down the outside of the mug, making for a very sticky experience. With solid foods, or if you only open the mug once or twice, this is not a problem, but with hot powdered grain drinks, I would replace the lid and shake the mug in between sips throughout the day and every time I opened the lid, I’d end up having to wipe my hands and the mug with a wet tissue (or oshibori, if lucky enough to have one on me ^.^).

To solve the problem, I got my second insulated mug, the burgundy-coloured 450ml Tiger brand one, where the grooves are on the inside. I discovered that of all the stainless steel insulated flasks on sale in Singapore, only Tiger brand has the grooves inside. The bad news is that the big sales – sometimes storewide at department stores or for individual stainless steel brands such as Thermos and La Gourmet – usually exclude Tiger brand. Tiger is also the most expensive of all the brands T_T.

This particular Tiger model has a ‘take-apart stopper’ where the rubber parts can be removed to make cleaning easier. Tea-drinkers can also use the screw compartment on top of the lid for storing tea leaves. However, I’ve never used it as I usually brew tea in a pot and pour the ready-made tea into the mug.

After using my 450ml Tiger flask mostly for carrying tea, I realised that almost half a litre of tea is simply too much caffeine for me, resulting in stomach discomfort (and insomnia if drunk in the evening). And with no/low caffeine or herbal teas, such as kukicha, mugicha, or oksusucha, a large amount of strong brew can produce a rather unfortunate laxative effect on me!

Which led to the purchase of the 300ml Tiger slim mug. This is about the volume of a normal coffee mug, with an elegant, lightweight design that makes it perfect for the lunchbag. I use this flask almost everyday now. It’s so well-used that the charcoal-coloured coating has been scratched in a few places already.

A final word on choosing stainless steel insulated brands, I totally wasted my money on a La Gourmet mug. It’s the type with plastic lid that has a small opening with a sliding cover for you to drink from. No matter how I screw the lid on, the liquid leaks out through the screwtop grooves when I try to drink. The leakage is so bad it’s completely impossible to drink with the lid on. In fact, my freebie giveaway stainless steel mug with where the plastic drinking lid is sealed with a rubber gasket, works way better. Will never be tempted by cheap La Gourmet prices again.

Some readers have asked about my bento equipment, which I occasionally – only very occasionally – write about. Perhaps my favourite of all my bento things are my bags, a natural extension of my love of bags in general :). I love the shape of lunch bags and in my pre-bento past, have been known to carry Daiso lunchbags as handbags, even the silver-coloured insulated ones!

To kick off my bento bag series, here is my classic cream-coloured Muji bag (about S$13), which I bought after having busted my third Daiso lunchbag! (They’re OK for just a simple lunchbox but a 700ml bottle of drink will certainly bust those cheapo S$2 handles!). It’s the same Muji bag I wrote about here, but this one came separately, not in a set.

The high quality of this Muji bag was such a welcome relief and indeed a pleasure. The silky, lined interior and botton-clasp top flap are lovely touches.

It also matches well with my white Asvel bento box, and white plastic cutlery.

*******

My other bento bags: green & orange Reisenthel and double-layered Tzu Chi.

Recently, some friends gobbled down two plates of chye tau kueh from the hawker centre in front of me whilst I munched on my gluten-free carob muffin. They felt a bit guilty comparing their fried dish with my healthy snack but actually I really wished I could eat chye tau kueh too!

I came home and flipped through my mountain of cookbooks and finally found a somewhat poorly-written recipe for ‘Singapore-Styled Stir-Fried Turnip Pudding 星洲炒蘿蔔糕’ in a Hong Kong produced cookbook called Asian Snacks Cooking Course 亞洲小食製作教程.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a more authentic recipe in any of my Malaysian cookbooks (an excuse to buy even more :) ?!?). Anyway, it worked really well so am sharing here with you. You may want to compare this recipe with the one from Lily’s Wai Sek Hong.

This is a great snack option that’s wheat- and gluten-free, also no sugar. As long as you don’t find fried foods too unhealthy :).

INGREDIENTS FOR STEAMED RADISH CAKE

960g white radish/daikon
320g rice flour

Wash, peel and chop the daikon.

Use a blender to puree it, then using a sieve, squeeze out as much juice as possible. You need 3 cups of daikon juice.

Mix rice flour with daikon juice in a pot over low heat. The original recipe only uses the juice, but I put in all the daikon pulp as well so as not to waste it.

Stir until it the mixture thickens. This part requires careful attention as it can take quite a while to thicken on low heat but if the stove is too hot, it will clump together very quickly.

Pour the thickened batter into a greased mould, such as an aluminium cake tin. A 9-inch round tin is actually better than the one I used in the photo because it won’t be so full, and because the cake won’t be in such a thick layer, it will take a shorter time to be fully cook. Dark-coloured heavy cake tins are not good for steaming, they don’t seem to conduct heat very well.

Steam for 1 hour. Test for doneness with a chopstick, which should come out clean.

FRIED RADISH CAKE

Cut the steamed and cooled cake into cubes.

Fry ingredients of your choice until fragrant, such as garlic, shallots, minced meat, red or green chilli, spring onions. Add seasonings of your choice.  Traditionally, this is cooked with thick dark soya sauce and preserved turnip and preserved Chinese sausages are a must, with a special chilli sauce for those who like it spicy.

Add the steamed radish cake cubes and fry until browned.

Push ingredients to one side of the wok (or remove from pan), add a beaten egg and when semi-cooked, toss well with all the other ingredients.

My version shown below is cooked with salt (or organic tamari), garlic, stir-fried shallots, green and red capsicums, and topped with raw spring onions and deep fried shallots.

Verdict: close enough to the real thing to keep me happy! Loved the distinct daikon taste in the cake. Now if I can just figure out how to make preserved turnip or chye poh at home, the other members of the family might actually enjoy this as much as me :).

Nearly 1kg of daikon makes a lot of chye tau kueh and I had this in my lunch bento for days!! Next time I’ll only make half the quantity!

If you want a box with an ice-pack, then the Fit N Fresh might be what you are looking for (although there are some Daiso as well as Lock n Lock plastic boxes that have a section under the lid where to fit in an ice pack).

Some of the Fit N Fresh range is available in Spotlight at Plaza Singapura – great place to shop because if you can also check out Daiso and the Lock n Lock range at Carrefour at the same time!

Just Bento has reviewed a small Fit N Fresh chiller plastic box here. Personally I wasn’t impressed, the lunchboxes aren’t very attractive, don’t look leakproof and don’t seem to be particularly well-made, certainly not of the quality one might expect from a US brand. Anyway, these are not especially useful for me because my packed lunches are almost always rice with side dishes that are best warm or at room temperature, rather than chilled.

Finally! I have found functional bento boxes (as opposed to cutesy and child-sized type which are plentiful in Daiso) in different capacities on sale in Singapore! If you’re looking for a basic bento box similiar in design to my Asvel box, head straight to Meidi-ya.

Lustroware clear boxes in three sizes: 490ml (S$13.90), 670ml (S$14.90), and 890ml (S$18.90). They are microwavable, have leakproof seal, and a movable divider.

There are also dark grey and black, very large men’s style bento, some of which come with insulated slipcase, and which cost up to S$31.90. There are single layer and double layer men’s boxes.

The boxes are all labelled with Ag+, indicating silver ions to give the plastic an anti-bacterial property.

All the Lustroware boxes which I saw in Meidi-ya are manufactured in China for the Japanese market.

After being featured in a Newsweek article about packed lunches for preschoolers, Lunch in a Box wondered if bento are a growing trend in the U.S.

Here in Singapore, I’ve begun to notice an increasing number of recent bento cookbooks published in Malaysia. These are bilingual English-Chinese and feature a range of Chinese, Japanese, western and local Malaysia/Singapore foods. The most commonly-found title is this one:

However, I haven’t bought any of these myself because if you already know how to cook, bento isn’t really about the recipes, but about how to combine foods in an aesthetically-pleasing as well as nutritious way, and how to pack the foods. Learning the principles of traditional Japanese cuisine (based on traditional Chinese medicine), which extend to bento, has been the most interesting and enlightening aspect for me. I’m also searching for unfamiliar foods and new ways of cooking them to extend the variety in my food intolerance-restricted diet, and I love the simplicity and back-to-basics character of many Japanese dishes, which is why Japanese cookbooks fascinate me. The Malaysian bento cookbooks don’t include any of these ideas, being a straight collection of recipes with large colour photos of the food packed into cutesy boxes.

The gorgeous photos are another reason why I love well-produced bento instruction books from Japan, and unfortunately the standard of Malaysian cookbooks doesn’t quite match up.

Another aspect of the reproduction of bento culture is in terms of the plastic boxes. While you can find attractive and reasonable-quality lunch boxes at Japanese stores like Daiso, there also exists a selection of cheap, China-made ones. They are very much bento-style, with dual layers, snap clasps and cute pictures, as well as some insulated containers. I’ve seen them at Mustafa (when I went shopping for the coconut grater), but thought they were not worth mentioning as they are very poor quality and more expensive than Daiso’s $2 boxes.

Random bento porn for your viewing pleasure.

Almost vegetarian if you skip the chicken (^.^) : Wild rice + brown rice mix; shiitake mushrooms & chicken stir-fry; chokos & pumpkin stir-fry.

A vegetarian lunch: wholewheat flat noodles stir-fried with shredded omelette, konnyaku strips, kouya tofu (freeze dried tofu), firm tofu/taukwa, strips of pumpkin, spring onions, chopped garlic and topped with fried shallots.

Another vegetarian bento: Couscous, cooked with garlic, onions, raisins, dried cranberries plus toasted pecans, raw tomato, cucumber and spring onions; Japanese sweet potato, with caramelised onions; stir-fried broccoli with chopped garlic.

Recently I had to pack a series of bento lunches that were vegetarian, as well as taking into my sensitivities to salicylates, glutamates and amines, not to mention avoiding foods that aggravate candidiasis. Now that was a major creativity challenge! I also made an effort to plan more variety between each of the meals than I usually do and also to splurge a bit on as much organic ingredients and produce as possible. Salt is the only seasoning used in the savoury dishes shown here.

The most suitable box for these lunches was the EZ-Lock compartmentalised box, which I described here. In my earlier posting, I commented that it’s normally too big for a single meal for me, but I managed to eat up most or all of the food in these vegetarian bento.

Vegetarian bento 1

* Origins Healthcare wild rice + brown rice blend. My current favourite brown rice, unlike many brands, it doesn’t have a stale & rancid taste.
* fried taukwa (firm tofu) stuffed with shredded cucumber, to be eaten with pureed pumpkin (orange contents of smallest section on left) and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds (inside blue mini condiments container). Based on this recipe, minus all the sauces and seasonings.
* stir-fried broccoli with chopped garlic

Vegetarian bento 2

* Origins Healthcare wild rice + brown rice blend
* stir-fried brinjal and cubes of fried taukwa with caramelised onion
* dhal with onions, garlic and little bit of red capsicum, no curry spices
* raita (live cultures yoghurt + chopped cucumber) — packed with mini ice pack, which I melted and bent into the shape of container, then put the whole bento container into the freezer to solidify the ice pack into shape.

Vegetarian bento 3

* couscous, cooked with garlic, onions, raisins, dried cranberries plus toasted pecans, raw tomato, cucumber and spring onions. This was delicious but not at all a good dish for my dietary restrictions! Anti-candida diets should not include nuts and dried fruit or refined pasta — which is what couscous is; tomato intake must be monitored for salicylate and glutamate levels, although fresh tomato is much better than tomato products.
* Japanese sweet potato, satsumaimo, with caramelised onions
* stir-fried broccoli with chopped garlic

Vegetarian bento 4

* vegetable okonomiyaki with onions, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots, dried soya mince. I happened to find some organic yamaimo, which inspired me to make this.
* dhal, leftovers see vegetarian bento 2 above
* guava fruit

I also had a fifth vegetarian bento but I forgot to take photos ☹. It was Chinese stir-fried noodles (organic wholewheat) with garlic, onions, bean sprouts, carrots, red capsicum and egg. The side dishes were slices of raw cucumber and cubes of guava fruit.

A friend saw me with all this and asked if I had brought the entire kitchen! This is a typical set-up if I want to stay happily-fed for an entire day. It can be quite a lot to lug around if I’m on the move, but it’s fine if I’m staying in the same location all day.

Apart from the rice cooker and the kettle in the background, this is my lunchbag and its contents:
* drinks: 1 litre water bottle, 500ml insulated mug-style flask
* 1 lunch bento
* 4 snack bento
* plastic fork & spoon
* oshibori

The lunch in 630ml Asvel bento box: organic wild rice blend (Origins Healthcare, available at NTUC – my favourite brown rice!); kabocha Japanese pumpkin stir-fried with shallots; fish braised with enoki mushrooms, shallots and a tiny bit of miso.

Left to right (in E-Z Lock boxes): brown rice cookies; butter cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting (the frosted one is a bit smashed on top from the bento box lid; for lunchbox-friendly frosting method, slice out the top, put in frosting and replace the ‘lid’); dragon fruit; oolong tea konnyaku jelly. [Full recipes coming soon.]

Mini sweet potato cupcakes (in white box with orange lid). [Recipe maybe coming soon, these were a semi-disaster, not sure if it’s worth sharing the recipe at all and reinforced my perception that baking recipes in Chinese cookbooks often look rather odd :P .]

Kukicha is a great barely-caffeinated hot drink to sip throughout the day. However, I learnt the hard way that if brewed too strong and drunk in too large quantities, it has a serious laxative effect on me! This could be my particular food sensitivities at work, might not be the same for everyone. The brewing instructions on the packets of western brands of Asian teas can often be completely wrong. While black teas such as English breakfast should indeed be brewed at 100℃ for 3 to 5 minutes, this is never the case for Chinese, Japanese and Korean teas. Kukicha, hojicha and mugicha/boricha should be brewed with 100℃ but only for 15 to 30 seconds. The flavour should be delicate, not overly-strong.

Sometimes I even carry my insulated flask/mug empty to events where refreshments are provided so as to avoid using unenvironmentally-friendly styrofoam cups — plus I also get to sneak my hot drink inside when everyone else has had to finish theirs in the food area ☺ .

Essential equipment:. oshibori from Daiso and reused airplane plastic cutlery. Sometimes I use these foldable chopsticks instead.