Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches [Paperback]

Maki Ogawa (Author), Crystal Watanabe (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 1, 2010

Oh, boy—obento! These yummy, healthy lunches are all the rage in Japan, where mothers create them as expressions of love for their children. With Yum-Yum Bento Box, Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa devote an entire cookbook to these delicious and adorable meals for all ages! Learn how to craft your favorite foods into a variety of shapes—from caterpillars, cars, and puppy dogs to pretty flowers, princesses, and kitty cats.
 
Yum-Yum Bento Box features chapters on Cuties & Critters, Fairy-Tale Friends, and Special Day Treats, plus a handy shopping guide, easy recipes for mini snacks, general tips and tricks, and so much more. Stop wasting money on pre-packaged lunches—and start making beautiful, healthy bentos!
 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Move over, brown bags. Bento box lunches are prettier, eco-friendly and just plain fun.”—Working Mother

“Jazz up your child's lunch box with cute little bento that are easier to make than you think.”—Mother Nature Network

“Yum-Yum Bento Box is too cute for words.”—Modesto Bee

About the Author

Crystal Watanabe (a.k.a. Pikko) started making bento boxes for herself as a way to eat small, healthy portions, and she enjoyed it so much that she now shares her hobby with bento fans worldwide at her blog Adventures in Bentomaking (www.aibento.net). She lives in Hawaii with her husband and two children. Maki Ogawa (a.k.a. Luckysundae) is a Japanese mom who loves to make cute bento boxes for her two young boys, her husband, and herself. She shares her creations on Flickr and at her blog, Cute Obento (www.cuteobento.com).

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Quirk Books; 1 edition (July 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594744475
• ISBN-13: 978-1594744471
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Japanese
  • #42 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Culinary Arts & Techniques

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 83 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Bento Newbies May 28, 2010

By M. Lowisz

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have been making bento lunches for myself & daughter for two years, and became a fan of Adventures in Bento Making blog during this time. So, when I heard Pikko was co-authoring a bento book, I was thrilled. Yum-Yum Bento Box is full of instructions, recipes and tips on how to make these fun, colorful and healthy meals. One of the best features is that most of the ingredients used are readily available, even in my small rural town.

The book has a brief introduction to bento, guidelines on how to pack a healthy bento lunch, and a section on boxes, accessories and tools. Also included is a helpful shopping guide and glossary at the end of the book. The pictures are a delight to the eye and demo photos make it easy to reproduce these adorable characters. I definitely recommend Yum-Yum Bento Box to anyone interested in learning to making bento lunches

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun adorable ideas, a good place to start February 5, 2011

By Cheryl DC

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

As someone who's always been interested in not only preparing delicious and healthy meals but also presenting them beautifully, I was delighted to come across the idea of obento. I'm so looking forward to trying these ideas out for my little girl!

The book is very informative about the concept of "eating with your eyes" before you eat your meal, and also discusses the proportional nutrition of veg to starch to protein to fruit/sweets that is aimed for in the bento lunch concept. The sample pictures are oh-my-goodness adorable and extremely creative and instructions for each idea, as well as where to find extra materials (egg shapers, food picks, etc.) and cheaper but serviceable alternatives (hole punches, toothpicks, etc.) are clearly written. All concepts are defined and all recipes are clearly written - these ideas will take a bit of time to prepare, but are not at a difficulty level to make them something most people couldn't take on.

Personally I think this book will be just for ideas and instruction. The recipes were small portions (not practical in my household) and all but a few included meat (also not happening in my household). No big deal because they didn't write it to be a family-sized meal or vegetarian cookbook so I can't fault them for either. Just mentioning it as a heads-up to others who might be in the same situation (vegetarian and/or too busy to cook a tiny separate meal instead of simply including a portion of the whole family's larger meal).

The only critique I have of the book is one that another reviewer mentioned and that is the repetitiveness. For as adorable as the obento features in each recipe are, all are made of either egg, rice, lunch meat, hot dogs, or sliced cheese. Most of the facial features are made of nori.... Again, I like the overall concepts and instructions but especially for a book that is supposedly super health-concsious, I was surprised at overprocessed foods being such staple ingredients and for my own creations plan to improvise with lower salt, nitrate, food coloring, and fat content items. There were some tiny decorative veg garnishes, but there weren't any recipes that didn't use the above mentioned items as the main part. The eggs & rice are healthy things, I just note them because it seemed like a repetitive use of ingredients, but even so was also glad to see a variety of options for shaping and presentation.

I love reading this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in getting the basics of really cute obento theory and presentation. Read more ›

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Cute, but repetitive and unhealthy ingredients June 30, 2012

By Booklover

Format:Paperback

This is a beautifully photographed and presented book. However, the "recipes" rely primarily on unhealthy ingredients such as processed bologna, salami, american cheese slices and white bread. The "formed" pieces are made from white rice, colored with natural ingredients in general. The recipes are repetitive--basically the same ingredients re-worked into cute little characters. This book was clearly written for the American market (one of the only Asian ingredients used is nori (seaweed)), otherwise it's just a cutesy version of typical American fare.

67 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars EITHER DISREGARD NEGATIVE REVIEW OR READ ITS COMMENTS! June 29, 2010

By R. Plana Alcuaz

Format:Paperback

As a public school teacher, it's easy to see how kids are not at all enthused about eating their meals, or being picky about veggies. You would too, if you were faced with bland, colorless, unappetizing fare on a daily basis (no offense meant to our hardworking cafeteria staff, I'm perfectly aware it's hard to cook for hundreds of kids with different tastes on a certain budget everyday!). However, if their parents used a resource book like this to create nutritious meals for them, chances are very high that these aforementioned problems will go away. Love is in the making, and there's hard evidence to eat! Yum!

As an Asian, it seems to me that bento is one of the super kid-friendly meals we have. I remember growing up using bento boxes as baon and eating every single grain of rice! Too bad the characters - if there were any - weren't as cute as the ones in this book, but at least I'll have ideas for my kids. It's so easy, we can make these when my students have a lesson that involves cooking & nutrition! They actually had a taste of it when we had a hanami by the Tidal Basin this past Cherry Blossom Festival - and even those that professed a dislike for veggies ate the cucumber pickles!

This book allows people who are first-time bento makers to have an idea of how easy it can be to make, given easy-to-follow instructions and colorful graphics that enable one to see the finished product. The only problem is, having to give it away before you eat all of the kawaii food you just made.

There aren't too many English bento books that are this clear and "idiot"-proof. It even gives you a time frame so you can work it into your busy schedule. Try it, you'll like it!

Below is my comment for Ms. Negative Reviewer, in case you don't get to read it.... To think that the authors she mentioned are close friends of Maki-sensei and even recommend this book - why would they do that if they were copied, right?

* I would think that kyaraben & oekakiben aren't copyrighted - even those authors mentioned by Ms. Negative Reviewer may not even have had the most original designs - and if a book is useful and allows English speakers to access making kawaii bento better, it should have a place on any bento fan's bookshelf. Now that I've read this review and comments, I'm buying this book (good thing the store is within walking distance) as well as recommend it to others, so no fear, Maki-sensei! <3
d(^3^)b Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly cute book with very good instructions. September 12, 2010

By V. Fallon

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

My daugher bought a Panda Bear Bento Box recently to make her own lunch to school. Rice balls with meat inserts. She's 15. She loves all the cute pictures and ideas from the book. Great for anyone who has the time and artistic in mind.