Sanrio Trip and 04/27/09 Bento

Over the weekend, my boyfriend, Kyle, and I went with a friend of ours to the Sanrio store at one of the big malls south of Denver.  It's the only official Sanrio store in the area, and it's not too far away so it made for a nice Sunday afternoon excursion.  I had been there in February, but didn't buy anything.  This time, though I found three bento boxes and a slew of stationery items to use for swaps and pen pal correspondence. 

I was excited to use the new boxes for my bento on Monday.  We went out for dinner at Noodles & Co. Sunday night and I tried their potstickers for the first time.  They were fairly tasty, so I saved two to have with lunch.  I also saved most of the tofu and vegetables in my Med Salad to have as well.

The side box has celery with hummus in a sakura-shaped silicone cup and sliced kumquats on top of quartered strawberries.  On the far left is a mini bar of chocolate with almonds and cranberries.

Top container (which is actually the bottom tier of the Sakura box) has the leftover Med Salad ingredients with extra diced celery and a quail egg.

Bottom container (which is the top tier) has the two potstickers, grape tomatoes and a little panda full of the sauce that came with the potstickers (it was sweet and spicy, but not salty enough for my tastes).  

Everything is on a bed of green leaf lettuce, mostly for decoration because I discovered that I don't particularly care for the taste of it.  It's possible that I didn't get a good head of green leaf lettuce, but I also don't know much about leafy veggies since I grew up in an iceberg-lettuce-in-chef's-salads house.  Does anyone have any other recommendations for tasty leafy greens?

I was worried when I bought the bento boxes that they wouldn't be big enough for my lunches.  The bento box I've been using is a little bigger than the Sakura Hello Kitty box, but using the Mashumaromitaina Fuwafuwanyanko box as a snack/fruit box is perfect.

Kyle is understanding and encouraging when it comes to my bentoing and even my budding kawaii obsession, but I realized as we were headed toward the overwhelmingly pink Sanrio store that not everyone understands why people like bento or kawaii.  Our friend was a little wary of all the pink, and I gave both of the men leave to go to a more manly store if they wanted.  They did, of course.  I understand that kawaii isn't everyone's cup of tea, but since it overlaps with bento so often, it has definitely grown on me.

"Falling cherry blossoms

settle on Kitty's ear,

and put a dance in her heart."

How could you not love that?  I think more people need dances in their hearts!

Afterwards, on the drive back home, I was trying to explain bento and aside from "cute, healthy lunches" couldn't come up with anything that would do it justice.  How do you explain bento to your friends, family or coworkers?