I had a quasi bento 1 style lunch today. Considering what I often each for lunch, I’m pretty pleased with the food I had. Some sliced turkey and cheese, a few chips, and some grapes and tomatoes. I had intended to bring along some sliced cucumber and carrots too, and also the fixings for a quick miso soup but forgot to grab them on my mad dash out the door. I’ll plan a little better next time. The disappointing part of the meal though was two fold. When it was time to eat I dumped a pile of food in individual plastic bags from my lunch sack, and then proceeded to devour all of it in under 10 minutes. I can do better.
I have two thoughts on this.
- I think presentation is important! I know its just ‘me’, but darn it … I deserve better! And so does the earth. It seems silly and wasteful to use up 4 or 5 plastic bags every day for a lunch and then throw them away. Its true that I could re-use them and that would be better on the environment, but that still leaves me snatching bites of food from a littering of plastic bags strewn onto the desk. What if instead I packed my food into a reusable container? Like a traditional bento box. (I know many of you are rolling your eyes with a “Duh!” expression on your face, but I can be slow sometimes and this is me being real. Go easy on me.)
- I ate so fast I hardly even tasted the sweetness of the grapes or felt the texture of the turkey in my mouth. It was over and gone in a flash. What if I tried eating with chopsticks? Hmm. I think that would actually work really well for me, because I’m terrible at eating with chopsticks! I think that would slow me down enough to be both mindful of the food I’m choose to eat next and would also keep me from shoving 5 at a time of anything into my gaping piehole.
Looks like I’m on a quest. Stay tuned for the results.
- If you are familiar with traditional Japanese Bento you’ll know I’m using the term extremely loosely here. What I really mean when I say ‘bento’ is an interesting variety of foods that could be eaten picnic style with the fingers. ↩︎