Itoh Makiko. The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go

Kodansha USA, 2010. — 297 p. — ISBN 978-4-7700-3124-2bento is a meal that is packed into a box. While in Japan there are several kinds of bentos, including large, elaborate presentation bentos served in restaurants, this book is about the compact, portable bento-box meals that anyone can make—the Japanese equivalent of a packed lunch.
Bento-box lunches were a part of my life growing up in Japan. My mother used to make bentos for my sisters and me to bring to school almost every day, as well as for family outings and picnics. One of my earliest food memories is of peering over the edge of a table, watching my aunts make dozens of onigiri rice balls for a big family gathering, their palms bright red from the salty, hot rice. I can still recall opening up my first bento box—a bright pink plastic one with matching chopsticks—on my first day at kindergarten; having my grilled salmon stolen out of my aluminum bento box in fifth grade by the boy sitting next to me; the great gabfests my friends and I had at lunchtime in high school as we swapped delicious morsels of food from our boxes.
After living most of my adult years in the United States and Europe, I turned back to bento lunches a few years ago. My aims were to use bento boxes to relearn portion control, to help with my weight-loss efforts, to eat healthier lunches, and to just get out of the fast-food rut I was in. Perhaps most of all, I wanted to reacquaint myself with this often creatively challenging way of presenting a variety of food in such a compact container.