I packed the panfried lemon chicken strips and coleslaw Jac cooked the day before in our bento boxes on Monday. This was my bento box:

To go with the chicken and coleslaw, I threw together quick salad. Here’s Jac’s bento box:

I really can’t recommend this chicken recipe enough. It’s simple to prepare, and really delicious. We had around one and half chicken thighs each in our bento boxes. We went to K-Mart recently and I bought a couple of sets of Wiltshire “bend ‘n’ bake” silicone moulds – a set of 6 cupcake and a set of 12 mini cup cake. I love that these are reusable and safe for fridge, freezer, microwave and conventional oven (dishwasher too, but we don’t have a dishwasher!), and I love that they are bendy, which allowed me to maximise usage of the space in the bento box – I placed our coleslaw in cup cake moulds. Oh, and of course I’ll be able to bake muffins and cupcakes with the silicone moulds. And mini ones, too!

For our salad I used mixed lettuce leaves, red capsicum, cucumber, grape tomatoes and carrot (cut into flowers).

I’d been looking forward to using my latest Shinzi Katoh bento boxes! I’d bought two of these domed lid bento boxes from ILoveObento. That top tier with the domed lid is designed to hold onigiri (rice balls). Of course, you don’t need to use them for rice balls at all. I packed us wholemeal bread and butter in the domed top tier, and fresh fruit (strawberries, seedless watermelon and papaya) in the bottom tier.

The domed section easily held two slices of buttered bread cut into two.

I can take or leave bread, but Jac craves it. I’d probably be happy with meat and a big salad, but Jac will always prefer meat, a little salad AND some bread. She doesn’t need fancy sandwiches; I’ll either give her bread and butter or plain bread with nothing spread on it – she has a selection of spreads at work she can use (peanut butter, butter, Vegemite, jam etc).

I find these animal food picks not only cute but very effective utensils for eating the fresh strawberries and cubed fruit.

Jac’s lunch in two bento boxes:

My lunch in two bento boxes: