Easier Than It Looks:
After getting thoroughly frustrated at eating the same foods five days in a row, I’ve decided to try making bento boxes to give myself a bit of variety throughout the week. With this, I prep smaller amounts of food at the beginning and portion them out throughout the week, instead of prepping one large batch of something and portioning it out on Sunday.
For this week, I am doing a meat/rice/fruits/veggies combo and just doing a different variety of items throughout the week. Today’s meal is a Sanshoku Soboro Don rice bowl I Googled after seeing a friend prepare the same bento box for his kids. One layer is half a cup of rice, with seasoned ground chicken, spinach, and scrambled egg layered over it. The other layer is grapes, sugar kiss melon balls, and star fruit. I included a small bottle of soy sauce for garnish, but this recipe is already cooked with quite a bit of soy sauce in it.
The boxes throughout the rest of the week are going to include items like premade meatballs, sausages, ham flowers, teriyaki chicken, with a side of rice, and various fruits, veggies, and sauces. The rice can be cooked easily in the rice cooker and the meats are either cooked in advance or can be easily cooked the night before. Then it’s just a matter of packing it all into the containers throughout the week.
How I F*d Up:
Maybe it’s just too early to tell, with this only being day one, but so far, I don’t think I did. I think I got this one right. The meal was delicious, much better than eating 3 day old leftovers, and I am looking forward to conveniently packing different varieties of food throughout the week.
If anything, I would say everything I used in todays meal were all sweet. The meat, spinach, and egg were all cooked with sugar, making it a sweet dish. While it was delicious, packing it with sweet fruits made for a very sweet meal overall and didn’t include much variety in tastes.
Suggestions For Improvement:
Adding sides that aren’t so sweet can help to balance out sweet main dishes. Raw vegetables, nuts, cheese, crackers, or boiled eggs can help to add a variety of different tastes and help to prevent meals from being overly sweet, without adding extra work. Focus on adding a variety of tastes, not just a variety of colors.
How I F*d Up 