501 Bento Box Lunches: 501 Unique Recipes for Brilliant Bento

When lunchtime comes around in Japan, people don't generally pull out brown bags with sandwiches. Instead, they eat Bento- Boxed lunches of rice, veggies, and various other treats. If you can't make your own, you can buy them from Bento Box Vendors just about everywhere.

Bento boxes can be one-tier, two tier, or three tier, and are generally beautifully arranged, because in Japan, a beautiful presentation is just as important as what is being served. Japanese Mama-sans will make their children's lunches resemble pigs or pandas, bears or a beautiful garden. But older people will sometimes also make their lunches look like something, and its this tradition that this book plays to.

Here, you can thrill your senses with a day-spa Bento, or a Geisha Bento, or go for the cute Pirate Bento, Peeping Mice Bento or Pac-Man Bento (with a yellow tomato with a wedge cut out of it as Pac-Man, and red, orange and green bell peppers for the ghosts. Or a Ducky Bento, with two Nori (black Seaweed) ducks on a lake of rice with a second tier that resembles the "water" at a duck-shooting gallery. Or a beef stew bento with a carrot flower and Nori Stars on rice.

And these recipies don't just use japanese ingredients, though many of them do. You can make them with everything from morning sausage, eggs, hotdogs, Chicken fingers, mashed potatoes, pancakes and more. The recipes are separated into six different categories: Art Bento, Cute Bento, Colorful Bento, Traditional Bento, Stylish Bento, and Holiday Bento, with a small section at the front devoted to Bento Basics. But even the ones put into other categories end up being cute.

I love this book, and the Bento presented in these pages. While most of these Bento will appeal to kids (eating a meal that looks cute or cool could be the way to get them to eat their vegetables or try things they might never have tried on their own. And it can enliven anyone's lunch, even yours!

With 501 recipes, you could have a different Bento every single day for almost two years and not eat the same thing twice. Tired of the same, boring old lunch? You don't have to be with Bento- a feast for the eyes and the stomach! Nor are you limited to the recipies you see here- many more abound on the internet. And while many use traditional Japanese ingredients like Edaname, Gyoza, rice and so on, many more use western ingredients.

I honestly loved this book. Yes, making these things take time, but the cuteness factor and wow factor greatly overwhelm the annoyance of having to make up these dishes every day. If you are looking for something cute and different, and don't mind people exclaiming over what you are eating, this is the one to try. Highly recommended.