Thursday, July 24, 2008

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.

5 comments:

Dominique said...

Hey Jacki,

I do hope you're feeling better because I miss your bentos and I think everyone else does too.

I love your stash pic! It's so organized *swoons* Where do you order most of your molds/cutters/sauce containers? I haven't been able to find a place that doesn't charge an arm and a leg to ship 4 sauce containers.

I'm looking forward to your bento on Monday!

Dom

Par said...

wow, you got such a large collection. I hope to build up my bento accessories soon. I put all my bento stuff in a big plastic drawer, it's pretty good.

Jacki said...

Hi Dom!

A lot of what I have came from eBay,Bento Crazy and J-Box. Shipping can be expensive, so I usually only place orders when there are at least 5 or 6 things that I'm planning to order so that the shipping cost per item isn't quite so bad.

Everything is reusable, so I figure that if all my little bento accessories make it easier for me to make bento lunches, I'll do it more often, so in the long run I'm saving money by not eating out very often.

allthingspurple said...

aww..you poor thing. sick too?

and wow, look at your stash. True, with a stash like that, you have no excuse not to indulge in bento. ha ha. did u enter the Bento Pet competition? Better do fast. closing date on 29 th this month. check it out.

www.onabentofrenzy.blogspot.com

my digital is spoil so i am sending in toddler's bento

Jacki said...

Thanks for the reminder! I totally forgot about it.

I just submitted an entry, and put a link to the contest in my sidebar.