About

First for a short introduction…

I’m a Sinology (Chinese studies) student and I live in Leiden, the Netherlands. My boyfriend is in the Japanology department so I guess we kind of (miss)match. I first learned about bento through a friend who sent me a link to “cooking cute“. I was taken with the concept of pretty lunches with things that would appeal to the eye and scream to be eaten. Also I like to eat something else than just the standard sandwiches with cheese or peanutbutter (we don’t do peanutbutter/jelly overhere, though I do like ‘em, sometimes). And besides all that, I really really like cooking and experimenting in my tiny kitchen.

But… after browsing through the cooking cute site for several hours, I found myself thinking that this woman must either have too much spare time on her hands, or she would be getting up really really early (no offense intended). As I seriously like my pillow, I thought the making of bento’s wouldn’t be a thing for me. That was until I stumbled upon the “lunch in a box” site, this is the site ofa mom making bento for herself, her husband and her toddler, and she does all that with amazing dishes and with spending as little time as possible. I was immediately retaken by the whole bento thing so I decided to give it a go. I made a whole batch of sushi, onigiri and yaki onigiri and noticed I was really getting the hang of it. After running test-bento’s on my boyfriend/testbunny I decided this would be my latest addiction.

Now we’re over a year later, I still make bento’s, for myself and a few times a week for my boyfriend too. I thoroughly enjoy making them and opening my bento in the afternoon knowing that there will be all kinds of yummy stuff in there. But as I progress in making bento’s, I noticed that there is little to none information about making bento’s or obtaining bento stuff from the Netherlands, so I decided to give it a go and fill that gap.

Besides giving local information about products etcetera this site will be about speedy, nutricious and most of all cheap (I am a student after all ) bento’s, with maybe sometimes a touch of cuteness. Occasionally I’ll be giving recipes and reviews. Also, if any of you have any good ideas for recipes, cooking or whatever floats your boat, you can always leave a comment or reach me at info.bentobento@gmail.com.