{"id":1062,"date":"2008-08-13T11:20:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T15:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgetful.ca\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2008-08-13T11:20:25","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T15:20:25","slug":"bento-fabulous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=1062","title":{"rendered":"Bento-fabulous!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan travels to Asia for work.\u00a0 Not all of us can claim the same.\u00a0 My work trips have taken me to far less exotic like locations including (and limited to) Toronto, London (ON) and…drum roll…Winnipeg.\u00a0 So each time Dan packs his bag to head to Japan, China or Thailand, I can’t help but feel a little envious.\u00a0 The thing is, and most people who travel a lot for business tell me, it’s work to them – not a vacation.\u00a0 I don’t buy it.<\/p>\n

Dan has been to Thailand twice in the past year and a half and he has yet to really check out the sights.\u00a0 With the 2 days it takes to get there and the 2 days it takes to get home, extending the trip to explore the country is rarely an option or a preference, especially now that he has Jaia at home waiting for him (I’d like to think that I was a draw home before her arrival, but I think she has me beat.\u00a0 Hands down.)<\/p>\n

My favourite part of Dan’s return home (besides his return home) has been the ridiculous souvenirs he seems to find.\u00a0 If you know Dan, you know this is self-explanatory and completely…Dan. The most ridiculous\u00a0have come from Japan.\u00a0 One such example\u00a0was a cheese-shaped tape dispenser with a mouse sneaking out the side that came with a warning that read, “Once inserted, DO NOT remove mouse from cheese”.\u00a0 We heeded the warning and haven’t tried to remove the mouse.\u00a0 Though I’m not sure what could actually happen if we did – but I do as I’m told.<\/p>\n

On one of his last trips to Japan, Dan returned home with a bunch of little plastic trinkets.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There were Winnie the Pooh and Piglet shaped…toothpicks(?)\u00a0and little coloured boxes with adorable cartoon animal faces on them.\u00a0 Very cute, but oh so useless.\u00a0 I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, and Dan never explained.\u00a0 And mostly, as Jen can attest to, we were used to Dan bringing super random (tape dispenser), very poorly translated things home from these trips.\u00a0 So they went in the drawer without another thought.\u00a0 For 2 or 3 years.<\/p>\n

And then yesterday, I came upon a happy little surprise in the blogosphere.\u00a0 A site<\/a> I check regularly because of the author’s AMAZING photography pointed me in the direction of this site<\/a>.\u00a0 This mom of 1.5 kids has been making\u00a0these adorable Japanese inspired bento-style luches for her\u00a0son\u00a0since he started preschool.\u00a0 She posts weekly pictures of\u00a0her\u00a0creations.\u00a0 Has food ever been cuter?<\/p>\n

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I\u00a0HAVE to start making them for Jaia.\u00a0 Yes, she’s still a couple of years away from preschool, but can we not have bento dinners?\u00a0 Bento snacks?\u00a0 Bento lunches – Weekend Edition?\u00a0 Besides…I think I might even enjoy\u00a0meals a little more if\u00a0they were this cute.\u00a0 Bring on the elephant-shaped cheese and teeny star-shaped sandwiches.<\/p>\n

And even though Jaia is a phenomenal eater as it is (we are SO lucky!), I’m thinking I can actually convince her to try eggs (her nemisis) if they looked a little like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as you may have guessed, with this little trip to Bentoland, I finally figured out what the little plastic boxes\u00a0are actually used for.\u00a0\u00a0They\u00a0are take-with-you spice, sauce and condiment containers.\u00a0 In the perfect, individual, single-serving size.\u00a0 Brilliant.\u00a0 If only I could find where we put them in the move…<\/p>\n

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Dan travels to Asia for work.\u00a0 Not all of us can claim the same.\u00a0 My work trips have taken me to far less exotic like locations including (and limited to) Toronto, London (ON) and…drum roll…Winnipeg.\u00a0 So each time Dan packs his bag to head to Japan, China or Thailand, I can’t help but feel a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[14,15,50],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}