Bentomania

I took the kids out for dinner tonight at the local "Japanese" restaurant and ordered a bento. The food was passably good, but lacked that freshness that the food in Japan seems to have. Of course, it could be my grumpiness and desire to escape my horrible day by running off to Japan that influenced my review. *shrug*

Anyway, I got home and walked into my pantry, looked at my bento supplies and thought I'd do a pseudo-food-o post today. These are pictures of two of the shelves in my pantry. All of my small bento supplies: cutters, picks, baran, reusable cups, sauce bottles, etc. We go through tons of rice in our house, probably 25 pounds/11.5 kilos per month. And soy sauce. Lots of soy sauce :)

The two large containers on the left keep soba, chukaramen, wakame, panko and other bagged goodies. Using the big plastic bins keeps my shelves better organized. The four tall containers in the middle are full of cutters of all sizes. I buy tiny 1 or 2" cutters any time I can find them and am building a decent collection. The kids love cute, tiny sandwiches in their lunch. I have various animals, flowers, basic shapes and seasonal designs. I have hundreds of plastic picks in many many designs. The 100 yen store was like heaven to me in Tokyo. I bought a new suitcase in Japan just for bento supplies. Seriously.

See the two containers on the right, on the lower shelf? The bottom one has a drawer that pulls out. I keep individually packaged snacks in there, like chips, crackers, Pocky, etc. The kids clean it out pretty fast! The container on top has small canned drinks- perfect for the kids' lunches. The cute little container with the bright red cap is full of small jellies (like Jell-O, but good). My family loves them and I can get them easily at the local Korean market. I keep disposable hashi, a.k.a. chop sticks, on-hand, but we all have multiple pairs of reusable sets with cases.

This is a three-drawer bin on wheels that is against the wall adjacent to the pantry shelves. We keep all of the bento, reusable hashi, some of the smaller plastic containers and the insulated bags for drinks in here. A few of our lunch bags and boxes are on top (just for the photo-their normal home is in one of the three very large plastic bins on the lowest shelf of the pantry). You can't really tell from the photo, but we have about 40 bento in the drawers. Lots of Hello Kitty for my daughters (and maybe me), Totoro, shinkansen, animals, and Pikachu. They are pretty much all children-sized. I don't eat large meals, so that size is perfect for me.

Well, that's a partial tour of my pantry and a little insight into the obsessive lunacy that is me!