Stash Pic

I want to apologize for the lack of posts. I was sick all last week and half of this week so sleep was winning out over bento. I'm off work for a few months, which means a lot of my time is freeing up so I decided to organize my bento 'equipment' today.

Previously I was just keeping everything in a wicker basket because my kitchen cupboards are filled to capacity. That was fine at first but it's gotten to the point that I would spend half of the morning digging around for stuff and as a result, I haven't been using most of my bento tools.

I found these plastic boxes as Michaels. They're made for scrapbooking but I find them great for organizing my bento stuff as well as my cake decorating tools (one of these days I'll post up a pic of those too) because of how wide and shallow they are. There's room for lots of little items, and since they're all in one layer, you can see everything at a glance (which is very helpful when you are half asleep.

As always, click on the picture to see the big version.

Believe it or not, there is some method to the madness.

The right hand box is filled almost entirely with onigiri molds so that I only have to take out one box when I'm making onigiri and one box for when I'm making bento in the morning. It also has some egg molds. Generally I put eggs in the molds the night before, so I shouldn't need them in the morning. There is a baggy on the bottom with my extra sauce bottles (I keep some prefilled on my kitchen counter to save time in the mornings), as well as a pack of longer skewers and some sushi grass.

In the left hand box are all of my punches, cutters and cups. My nori punches are all along the bottom. There are foil cups, paper cups, silicone muffin cups and plastic cups in all different shapes. To the right are my cutter wheels. Its a set of three and each wheel has several cutters on it, they're great. Above those are a couple of Hello Kitty veggie cutters that I've had for over a month and not used yet.

On the top, from left to right are my plastic cutters, my metal cutters, some fabulous tiny bamboo sporks I got at P'lovers, an eco-friendly sort of store, more egg molds (and quail egg molds) and my cute little animal skewers.

So now I have no excuse not to make cuter bento lunches. I'll be back to bento making on Monday.