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Review ------ Wow what a journey I've been on this week. Quirk Books sent me 'Yum Yum Bento Box, Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches' to review and it is has taught me so much. I'm thinking about food and food presentation in a totally different light.Now let me explain... A Bento Box is a Japanese lunchbox, presented in such a way that it becomes more than a packed lunch but a thing of beauty and interest. It is the current craze in Japan for Mothers to produce these boxed lunches and the ideas for them are endless. This book gives over 100 ideas to get you started on making your own Bento Box and believe it or not these are so inspiring that my mind has been in a whirl thinking of all the possibilities. Nevertheless, I have to be truthful, when I read the brief for this book, I was interested but skeptical. I thought that Mums in the 'real world' wouldn't have time to produce a Bento Box, but when the book came and I actually gave it a try I changed my mind. I realised rather than a Bento Box taking a lot more time it is about a different mindset. You can still put in the usual suspects, sandwiches, a yogurt, some fruit or a pasta salad, but you just need to think about the presentation. Cut the your sandwiches with a interesting cookie cutter and you have animal shaped sandwiches, slice and arrange your fruit in a fan and it just looks better. The principles of the Bento Box go further than just presentation, they make you consider portion control too. The Bento Box works on the concept of 4 parts vegetable, 3 parts meat/protein, 2 parts grain and 1 part fruit, dessert or condiment. Having the 4, 3, 2, 1 principle to work from focuses you on what you're actually eating for lunch, and I say YOU, because Bento Boxes can be for adults as well as children. Using this principle it is easy to recognise when you are eating too many carbs and not enough vegetables, or too much protein and not enough fruit. The Bento Box really does get you thinking, and on so many different levels. I'm so pleased I got to read this book. I'm going to work on it, maybe not everyday but now and again, and the ideas can expand to how you present your everyday food, making your plate look prettier, especially for a birthday or dinner party....ilovemealplans dot com, December, 2010... Oh, boy obento! These cute, yummy, y lunches are all the rage in Japan, where mothers think of them as an expression of love for their children. Yum-Yum Bento Box is one of the first cookbooks in English devoted to these y and adorable meals they re fresh, they re tasty, and they re almost too cute to eat! Each step-by-step recipe in Yum-Yum Bento Box is simple and adaptable. Readers will learn how to form their favorite foods into a variety of shapes from zebras, panda bears, and monkeys to kitties, piggies, and puppy dogs. Chapters include instructions for classic bento boxes and character-driven bentos (called Kyaraben), plus shopping advice, general tips and tricks, and much more. Stop wasting money on prepackaged lunches and start making beautiful, y bentos ...Vals Kitchen, November, 2010...a superb example of how adorable bento food can get The instructions are easy to understand and each entry has a detailed list of ingredients and recipes. Also on each page are tips which provide guidance for those who are new to charaben creation or the basics --Lapa bento, November, 2010 If you re new to making bento boxes, it s an initial investment to gather up the tools that create the darling flowers and precious animals. But you re in luck... because included in the end pages is an index of resources for stocking your bento tool-kit!I also like this cookbook because it features more than just how to cook delightful foods. The recipes are can be prepared without bento in mind. Easy and quick, you ll be preparing teriyaki meatballs in a snap!Other cool stuff about Crystal and Maki s cookbook is that it describes all components of bento making. Colors, balance, and inspiration! With these uncomplicated instructions...it s a cinch to pack CUTE bento ...Bento central, October, 2010...The book opens with a great intro guide to bento--an intro into the foods, the boxes and the tools you might need to create fun lunches. As well, I'm especially fond of the "Happy Face" guide which suggests ingredients and shows pictures of things you can use to make faces on your food. I picked up a ton of great ideas from that section alone--did you know that corn kernels make cute beaks for bird faces? I didn't! Want to guess what I am going to try soon? Inside the book are simply amazing bentos. Pikko & Maki do a wonderful job of walking you through, step by step, how to create the cute element of each box, then suggesting ideas of wonderful foods to go along with them. They even include the recipes if you wish to duplicate the boxes. With the directions, a lot of the meals are much more manageable (I'm a big fan of instructions). Plus, everything is just so cute, why wouldn't you want to penguins or piggies instead of plain food? My favorite point, I think, is that their step by step directions allow you to follow their patterns with slightly different foods. We may not use a lot of rice in our bentos (F&B prefer it directly out of the steamer), but tons of the ideas could be adapted for a roll or biscuit or pasta salad, really anything you want! There are simply so many ways of using their ideas to make the cutest lunches for your kids (or you!)....Whats for Lunch in our house dot com, October, 2010...Yum-Yum Bento Box Review! ..exceeeded my expectations...cookblog, oct, 2010....think Yum-Yum Bento Box comes as almost an answer to my prayer. It's got a whole variety of cutesy display of food in colors, shapes, sizes and flavor. I doubt I will replicate any bento exactly (limited by food choices) but I should be able to use the authors ideas and variety to pack some 'eye candy' bento Yum-Yum Bento Box even appeals to a non charaben bento packer like me because I see that it provides me a variety of ideas, options, easy or detailed, to expand the way I want to with the availability of food and colors which appeals to my growing child....ona bentonfrenzy, Oct, 2010...breaks down the seemingly intricate process of bento-box assembly with more than fifty recipes and dozens of photos that show how to "style" a successful bento box. The book outlines which tools are necessary to create bento boxes, including condiment pencils (to draw with thick sauces); straws (to cut out rosy cheeks from salami); and toothpicks (to make tiny homemade s). Yum-Yum Bento Box also has a short section entitled "Ingredients for Happy Faces," where heads of characters are made from rice balls, hamburger buns, and hard-boiled eggs, and noses are made from peas, black olives, cheese, and deli meats. (In fact, deli meat seems to be the key ingredient here; with it, bento-makers can fashion everything from bunny ears to ves.) Following the introductory pages, the book is divided into three sections: "Cuties and Critters," "Fairy-Tale Friends," and "Special Day Treats," all which help make the daunting task of bento-box assembly much less intimidating. --Law weekly, October, 2010 contains 55 adorable character bentos, including a bunch of quick and easy bento-friendly recipes. The thing that I love most about this book is all of the beautiful photos that seem to leap off of the pages. Below are two of my favorite bentos from the book, the Piggy Burger and the Caterpillar. If you are into making bentos or cute food, this book is a definite must buy!..Hawaiaan weekly, Oct, 2010....concentrates on the so-called charaben (or kyaraben), featuring a few dozen very cute bento boxes with cute critters and fairytale friends or dedicated to certain occasions, accompanied by recipes and instructions. The book also contains an introduction to bento, an overview of tools and accessories, ingredients you can use to create faces, basic recipes you can adapt for one of the boxes and a shopping list. The book is clearly ed mostly at beginners - I've been making bento for a few months only but most of the basic things were known to me already. Still, I think that it's possible to discover in it some things you hadn't thought of earlier (hole punches! Yay! I think I have four of those by now so I can dedicate one for nori punching ^^). The recipes sound pretty easy and tasty (though there were a few that made me go 'Duh!' - but well, see above :p). In any case it certainly shows that making a charaben doesn't have to terribly complicated! About the only thing that I found a bit annoying was that some things were repeated a lot - for example the tip about the bento diary was coming up at least three times! I know it sure isn't intentional but it felt a bit ... dunno, as if the reader isn't trusted to get it the first time around 0o? The book itself is designed very nicely, presenting the bentos on a whole page with the recipes/instructions on the accompanying page on the right. The binding is a bit weak, though - I only read it through once and the spine already cracked in the back ... I freely admit that I'm not too careful with my books but especially cookbooks should be able to withstand some rougher handling in my opinion as they need to be kept open and around in the kitchen. All in all it's a very nice book - as I don't have any other bento books I can't compare it to anything yet. Still, it encouraged me to try some charaben besides a moulded egg and cookie cutters! --aibento, October, 2010 About the Author ---------------- Crystal Watanabe a.k.a. Pikko Pots makes bento boxes for her two preschool-aged children. She is a contributor to 500 Bento Lunches: 500 Unique Recipes for Brilliant Bento (Korero Books 2008). Launched in 2007, her Web site Adventures in Bento Making (aibento.net) is a popular forum for bento makers worldwide; it has been featured on Boing Boing. She lives on Oahu, Hawaii, the island where Lost is filmed. Maki Ogawa is a Japanese mom famous for the cute bentos that she makes for herself, her two young boys, and her husband. Her lunches have been featured in numerous Asian magazines. She posts pictures of her bentos daily on Flickr, under the name Lucky Sundae.