No recipes tonight – we went to a friend’s house to watch Heroes and were treated to a delicious vegan dinner – but I did snap some pictures of my bento lunch yesterday. That’s not even exciting since it was just leftovers from the night before, but I thought I’d show off the bento box I got in Japantown.

Here’s the inside. The bottom layer is leftover sushi rice; yes, it’s best fresh, but it’s okay gently re-heated the next day. Up top is some ume plum paste and furikake (dry seasoning) to mix into the rice and cabbage pickle.

There’s a tight-fitting lid for the top layer …

… and a band to keep the two layers together. What I liked about this box is it is not “cute” like many of them are.

Upon hearing that I was interested in furoshiki, a friend brought me back several from a trip she took to Japan a couple of years ago:

I used one of them to wrap and carry the bento box.

This isn’t a very good bento lunch because it doesn’t contain a protein, but I was very pressed for time and just grabbed what was in the refrigerator!

I’d like to write up a much more informative and interesting post on bentos, but in the meantime, Maki of Just Hungry and Just Bento (both of which often feature vegan recipes) has a very good article on selecting a bento box. One of the things I find fascinating about them is that the number of milliliters the box holds is supposed to be an indicator (on a one-to-one scale) of the number of calories it contains when full (using traditional proportions of starch, vegetable, and protein).