I have longed to do obentos ever since my friends at Blogkadahan have talked about it about a year or two ago.  I’m a big fan of Japanese food and with Sachiko giving us insights on what it takes to make those yummy lunch packs, i’ve always dreamed that I’d be able to concoct my own.

So again, the obento topic came up, and this time around, I know I really have to do some.

An obento (or sometimes called “bento”) is a boxed meal that can be taken anywhere.  Like a lunch box, or “baon” in Pilipino.  It can be homemade or store-bought or ordered from restaurants. There are some rules as to how to create obentos but the basic ones would be:

1. The food should be easy to eat.
2. The presentation of the food must be pleasing to the eye.
3. The colors must be coordinated.

Obentos were made by moms for their school kids.  It takes them a lot of time and creativity to create these lunch boxes that their kids will enjoy.  Thus, an obento signifies a mother’s love to her kids.  Now that obentos are not just for kids but for adults also, I think this symbolism still holds true for the preparer and the receiver of the obento.

So it goes that I’ve decided that I’ll be preparing obentos for my hubbie. I had to scour the internet and our local asian stores for some of the ingredients I’ve used.  I did some research on how to create them and even visited craft stores to buy cookie cutters for cutting the fruits and vegetables.  I even went to Walmart and Target to look for what could pass as good obento boxes that could be microwaved.

So after days of what seemed like a treasure hunt, I had to do a trial before I made an actual bento for hubbie.  Thus, one Saturday night, I made some onigiris and a fruit salad for him.  I also cooked some chicken teriyaki to complete the presentation.  Here is what I came up with:

Test Obento Fruit Salad

Test Onigiri and Chicken Teriyaki

My fruit salad consists of pineapple slices, cherries, kiwis and cantaloupes all cut with a cookie cutter.

My rolled balls of rice, called onigiri in Japan, are seasoned with furikake (rice seasoning) .  I seasoned 3 of them with an Ebi Fumi Furikake, and the other 3, seasoned with Seto Fumi Furikake.  Inside the rice balls is century tuna mixed with that delicious Kewpie Mayonnaise (a Japanese kind of mayo).

So what was hubbie’s reaction to all these?  He had a big smile on his face the whole time we were eating and couldn’t stop saying “soooo good… sooo good.”

Hmmmm, that was enough for me