Thing One’s Bento

Here’s the interesting thing about bentos…for as small as they are, they hold a deceptively large amount of food. This is a good thing when packing bentos for adults. It can be a challenge when packing bentos for kids.

You see, Thing Two has an appetite like a 12 year old, despite being five. That boy can out eat me on many days, and his bento comes home empty pretty much every day. Thing One on the other hand is a pretty light eater. At seven, she still barely weighs 40 pounds and hits time periods where I swear she subsists on air.  So when her bento came home half full of leftovers yet again yesterday, I asked her what was up.

“I’m just not that hungry at lunch. Can you pack me a smaller bento?”

Fair enough.

So I hunted through my bento stash for something smaller than the pretty small bento I already use for her. Turns out, I DID have a smaller one that I almost never pull out. The box above is about the size of the oversize Old Maid cards kids play with. In other words, it’s not very big at all. So we’ll see how today goes.

She has…one piece of cinnamon swirl bread sliced into three pieces and buttered, a strawberry, a few slices of apple, a few segments of clementine, a grape, a dill pickle, a few olives and some cheese and pepperoni. Hopefully, it all gets eaten.