constance | My First Bento Box (tm)

I had a post all planned, a profound entry about blogging and motherhood and friendship and such, but I got my new Bento Box ^(TM) in the mail yesterday, and it was good, and so today's entry is all about lunch. Which in its way is also profound. Anyway, I will keep that other post in mind for a later date.

First of all, my Bento Box ^(TM)! It's black and shiny, and it has iridescent pink butterflies and waves of golden grass, which is frankly in itself enough to make me happy; but also, it's a miracle of good design, both stackable and nestable. And so I felt compelled to make my first lunch right away, despite the fact that once I wrote out my shopping list and went to the grocery and made the lunch--and friends, I had a most specific lunch in mind--it was going to be, like, midnight or so. But you know those compulsions. Or maybe you don't! And if you don't, how lucky you are!

So I did go to the grocery, and bought most everything on my list, and mastered my compulsion enough to make a couple of substitutions because (1) the seafood counter closed at 8pm and there was no lobster to be had and (2) there were no cherries in the whole store unless I was willing to eat pie filling with a spoon which I was not and (3) I really am not a fan of pudding. And came home and assembled my lunch with reckless abandon, and here it is:

Frances the Badger's lunch, from Bread and Jam for Frances

The next day, when the bell rang for lunch,
Albert said, "What do you have today?"
"Well," said Frances, laying a paper doily on her desk
and setting a tiny vase of violets in the middle of it,
"let me see." She arranged her lunch on the doily.
"I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup," she said.
"And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread.
I have celery, carrot, sticks, and black olives,
and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery.
And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries.
And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles
and a spoon to eat it with."
"That's a good lunch, said Albert.
"I think it's nice that there are all different kinds
of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks.
I think eating is nice."
"So do I," said Frances,
and she made the lobster-salad sandwich, the celery,
the carrot sticks, and the olives come out even.

A few more notes:

No doilies. No violets. I thought briefly about searching them down, but I think I'm going to have enough to explain at lunchtime without the vase and the violets.

No extra salt. The tiny shaker does appeal, but do I really need extra salt in my diet? No.

The sandwich is salmon salad with cream cheese and dill, cut out using a tiny apple-shaped cookie cutter.

The pudding is not pudding at all but vanilla yogurt, with grated semisweet chocolate on top.

The soup is tomato basil with a dollop of sour cream and grated parmesan cheese. No thermos; I do not own a thermos.

Two plums is a hell of a lot of fruit. What you see is not even two plums--it wouldn't all fit in the box, and so I had three or four slices tonight for dessert.

In fact, even with the soup and the yogurt in little four-ounce containers, this is altogether a veritable truckload of food. That Frances, she was a furry little bottomless pit.

Also, Mrs. Badger must have done nothing but make lunches all the freaking livelong day, because Good Lord. I predict lots of leftovers in my future as a bento-er, or maybe nice little pre-made sushi rolls, because I can't be staying up every night till all hours making my lunch, no matter how satisfyingly purty it is when it's all done, and no matter how much extra time I have on my hands with my internet connection (temporarily) gone away.