Need help with Bento ideas and recipes thank you?

If you live in Japan, your best bet is to ask someone in your community: Neighbor, friend, school teacher, housewife etc.


They'll not only be able to provide you with Bento ideas but the cheapest places to purchase the ingredients needed.





You can also try asking the local Junior High School students. They may have a book or two on the subject as "家庭科” Kateika or home economics is usually a required course and if my memory serves me right, I've seen them with obento books in class.





If you don't live in Japan, you can look into different "Bento Box" books on amazon but beware as a lot of the books labeled "bento" are not actual about Japanese Bento but Western Cuisine presented in a bento format. It all depends on what you're looking for.





Here are some book recommendations:





Japanese titles


-作っておくと、便利なおかず―スピード・作りおきおかず


-5分でできるカフェべんとう





English titles


-Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go





There aren't too many good Bento lunch books in English out there but I can make a recommendation for a general Japanese cookbook which I own:


Quick %26amp; Easy Japanese Cuisine for Everyone





There are plenty of pictures and the explanations are pretty straightforward.





Good luck!|||It's so funny that bentos are going mainstream. My mom is Japanese and she used to make me bento lunches but I was always so embarrassed to take to school...i wanted to be like everyone else with some sort of sandwich and chips but now I see my mom was ahead of the game!





My mom used to make me rice balls - use Japanese white rice seasoned with salt and wrapped in dried seaweed. Sometimes she would put something in the middle, usually pickled plums or cooked salmon. She would also add some sort of fruit. She always cut them into some sort of cute shape.





Here's some more ideas: http://www.cookingcute.com/recipes.htm