Bento gear on the cheep
I've been reading a couple of bento blogs and also a community here on lj since I took an interest in them. One thing I've seen several times is a post that reads something like "I really want to get into bentos but I'm waiting on all the stuff I ordered from Ebay to arrive" This seems ass backwards to me. Because if you order $50 of stuff off Ebay and then find you don't like making bentos, well that's $50 of wasted money. I love many of the things that I did get off Ebay (especially my Toy Story Three Eye Alien box) but the vast majority of stuff I do with bentos I could do with stuff I either a) had already kicking around my kitchen or b) could buy at local stores like the Dollarama.
So I here by present, bento gear from my Dollarama... total cost was about $15.
In this photo, I have four cold packs (three to the left and the cute pooh bear on in the middle). I don't actually feel that most bentos need a cold pack. Not if they are just traveling from fridge to air conditioned office, but I thought they'd be handy for outings and when Kate is at camp. There are two lunch boxes. The orange lock and lock style box is a good size for Andy's lunch and the pig box is a good size for Kate. The pig box also comes in ladybug, frog and cat. (We've already got the cat one). At the top there are two stacks of silicon cupcake liners. These make great dividers to keep foods apart. You can use paper or foil cupcake liners but I like the colourfulness and re-usability of the silicon. I bought four snack boxes from the baby section. They also had really cute monkey ones, but I wanted to see how useful these four are first. You sometimes see these type of contains referred to as side cars on bento blogs and they are useful for something that just didn't fit or you didn't want squished (like strawberries). I have some pretty jeweled picks. Finally, I have two dozen tinfoil cupcake pans, which I will likely use to make funky meat loaves or frittata for my freezer for those days when I just don't have time to make something else.
I haven't yet found suitable Dollarama finds for sauce bottles. Some people have reported that they bought the little plastic fruit that have powdered candy sugar in them and used them. I tried that and found they leaked at, what was for me, an unexceptable rate. I bought a pack of pill boxes at Shoppers that I think could substitute for mayonnaise boxes. It's also been suggested in one blog I read that you could steal a handful of the paper ketchup cups from a fast food joint or save some of those little plastic cups with lids and wash them out.
So I here by present, bento gear from my Dollarama... total cost was about $15.
In this photo, I have four cold packs (three to the left and the cute pooh bear on in the middle). I don't actually feel that most bentos need a cold pack. Not if they are just traveling from fridge to air conditioned office, but I thought they'd be handy for outings and when Kate is at camp. There are two lunch boxes. The orange lock and lock style box is a good size for Andy's lunch and the pig box is a good size for Kate. The pig box also comes in ladybug, frog and cat. (We've already got the cat one). At the top there are two stacks of silicon cupcake liners. These make great dividers to keep foods apart. You can use paper or foil cupcake liners but I like the colourfulness and re-usability of the silicon. I bought four snack boxes from the baby section. They also had really cute monkey ones, but I wanted to see how useful these four are first. You sometimes see these type of contains referred to as side cars on bento blogs and they are useful for something that just didn't fit or you didn't want squished (like strawberries). I have some pretty jeweled picks. Finally, I have two dozen tinfoil cupcake pans, which I will likely use to make funky meat loaves or frittata for my freezer for those days when I just don't have time to make something else.
I haven't yet found suitable Dollarama finds for sauce bottles. Some people have reported that they bought the little plastic fruit that have powdered candy sugar in them and used them. I tried that and found they leaked at, what was for me, an unexceptable rate. I bought a pack of pill boxes at Shoppers that I think could substitute for mayonnaise boxes. It's also been suggested in one blog I read that you could steal a handful of the paper ketchup cups from a fast food joint or save some of those little plastic cups with lids and wash them out.