Discover the magic of the Japanese lunch box with over 50 easy and seasonal recipes for delicious bentos your little ones will love From the depths of winter to the height of summer, a beautiful lunch can brighten any day. Japanese bento boxes are portable and pretty meals packed with healthy portions and plenty of cheer. And they’re outrageously cute! With Yum-Yum Bento All Year Round, you’ll fall in love with 52 tasty, in-season lunches. Spring into make-ahead action with packing tips, tutorials, side dish recipes, and more. From summer Sunshine Smiles to Christmas Gingerbread Friends, there’s a bento just perfect for your lunchbox today, including: Springtime Fun: Easter Chicks Dainty Daffodils Green Pea Brothers Summertime Splash: Rainbow Sushi Cheerful Crab Seashell Fun Fall Frenzy: A Pear Anywhere Fried Rice Jack-o-Lantern Pumpkin Twins Winter Wonderland: Tomato Santas Rudolph the Red-Nosed Bagel Penguin Elves

**2020 Gourmand Food Culture Award Winner** With these fun, easy and delicious recipes, anyone can venture into the world of bento boxes--no special tools or containers necessary! Hosts of popular NHK World cooking show Bento Expo, Marc Matsumoto and Maki Ogawa share their bento-making expertise on the pages of this stunningly photographed cookbook. As a Japanese-American, Marc is ideally placed to help Western readers add Japanese touches to their lunches with easy-to-find ingredients. As a Japanese mom of teenage boys, Maki is an expert at creating simple yet delicious bento box combinations that can be put together easily every morning. Together they have created an accessible, authentic bento cookbook that everyone will enjoy. Ultimate Bento is packed with practical techniques, step-by-step instructions, and useful tips for 85 recipes that can be mixed-and-matched for 25 nutritionally balanced bento box lunches. Each bento in this book costs under $3 per serving, so you and your family can save money while also eating healthier. Recipes include: Summer Rolls Japanese-style Coleslaw Wasabi Chicken Snap Pea Stir-Fry Yakitori Chicken Skewers Mini Stuffed Peppers Ginger Pork

Creating colorful, cute, and tasty Japanese-style bento box lunches has never been this easy and fun! 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 to make the yummy, healthy lunches that are all the rage in Japan. Featuring 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, Yum-Yum Bento Box is the perfect guide for beginner bento makers and expert chefs alike. Stop wasting money on pre-packaged lunches—and start making beautiful, healthy bentos! Includes: • An introduction to Japanese Lunches • Packing a Bento Box • Bento Boxes, Tools, And Accessories • Ingredients • Cuties & Critters • Fairy-Tale Friends • Special-Day Treats

Longing for more than yet another limp salad? Tired of tussling with the kids over junk food lunch kits? Sounds like you’ve got the lunch box blues. J. M. Hirsch has the fix. But it isn’t a cookbook. Because when it comes to lunch, nobody has time to break out a recipe to bang out a brown bag special. Busy people need lunch ideas. Lots of them. And those ideas need to be healthy, fast, easy, affordable, and delicious. That’s what Beating the Lunch Box Blues is—an idea book to inspire anyone daunted by the daily ordeal of packing lunch. Jammed with nearly 200 photos and more than 500 tips and meals, this book is designed to save families time, money, and their sanity. Whether you want to jazz up a grilled cheese, turn leftover steak into a DIY taco kit, or make pizza “sushi,” Hirsch has it covered. And because the best lunches often are built from the leftovers of great suppers, he has also included 30 fast and flavorful dinner recipes designed to make enough for tomorrow, too. Crazy good stuff like short ribs braised in a Rosemary-Port Sauce, Hoisin-Glazed Meatloaf, and kid-friendly classics such as Turkey Sloppy Joes and American Chop Suey. With ideas this easy and this delicious, there’s no reason to let the lunch box blues get you down.

Bento books have been some of the more accessible and popular genres coming out of Japan over the last few years, and Effortless Bento is essentially the bento encyclopedia. Filled with hundreds of full-color photos and numerous recipes this is the essential box lunch book.

Bento fever has recently swept across the West, fuelled not just by an interest in cute, decorative food, but by the desire for an economical, healthy approach to eating in these times of recession. A leading light in the popularization of bento has been Makiko Itoh, whose blog, Just Bento, boasts hundreds of thousands of subscribers, all of whom love her delicious recipes and practical bento-making tips. Now, for the first time, Itoh's expertise has been packaged in book form. The Just Bento Cookbook contains twenty-five attractive bento menus and more than 150 recipes, all of which have been specially created for this book and are divided into two main sections, Japanese and Not-so-Japanese. The Japanese section includes classic bento menus such as Salted Salmon Bento and Chicken Karaage Bento, while the Not-so-Japanese section shows how Western food can be adapted to the bento concept, with delicious menus such as Summer Vegetable Gratin Bento and Everyone Loves a Pie Bento. In addition to the recipes, Itoh includes sections on bento-making equipment, bento staples to make and stock, basic cooking techniques, and a glossary. A planning-chart section is included, showing readers how they might organize their weekly bento making. In a market full of bento books that emphasize the cute and the decorative, this book stands out for its emphasis on the health and economic benefits of the bento, and for the very practical guidelines on how to ensure that a daily bento lunch is something that can easily be incorporated into anyone's lifestyle. This is the perfect book for the bento beginner, but will also provide a wealth of new bento recipe ideas and tips for Just Bento aficionados.

Many people bring their lunch to work to save money, time and to help control what they are eating (with no hidden nasties from processed shop-bought food), but sometimes it's hard to think of interesting, nutritious things to make. Sara has come to the rescue with her vibrant, fun and inspirational approach to lunch boxes. She concentrates on having 5 clear elements: complex carbs, protein, fruit and veg, and sprinkles as well as the 5 colours used in authentic Japanese cooking: red, white, black, yellow and green. With just a few essential ingredients, you add your extras to create highly nutritious, vegetarian, colourful boxes of joy. Sara includes ideas for bento breakfast boxes (Sesame Snap Granola Bento and Mighty Muesli), 15-minute bento (Busy Days Instant Noodles and Lazy Tamago Bento), Everyday bento (Red Velvet Quinoa Bento, Green Theme Bento and Zen Bento) and the Fantasy bento (Starry Sky Bento and Fairy Jewel Box Bento). With tips on how to stock your bento store-cupboard and basic ingredients and recipes to get you going, now is the time for bento to bounce into your breakfast, lunch box, or even into your dinner parties, filling you with Bento Power! www.shisodelicious.com @shisodelicious

The debut cookbook by the creator of the wildly popular blog Damn Delicious proves that quick and easy doesn't have to mean boring.Blogger Chungah Rhee has attracted millions of devoted fans with recipes that are undeniable 'keepers'-each one so simple, so easy, and so flavor-packed, that you reach for them busy night after busy night. In Damn Delicious, she shares exclusive new recipes as well as her most beloved dishes, all designed to bring fun and excitement into everyday cooking. From five-ingredient Mini Deep Dish Pizzas to no-fuss Sheet Pan Steak & Veggies and 20-minute Spaghetti Carbonara, the recipes will help even the most inexperienced cooks spend less time in the kitchen and more time around the table.Packed with quickie breakfasts, 30-minute skillet sprints, and speedy takeout copycats, this cookbook is guaranteed to inspire readers to whip up fast, healthy, homemade meals that are truly 'damn delicious!'

Hearty and healthy recipes straight from an authentic Japanese kitchen! Soup is an integral part of the traditional Japanese meal--whether a delicate miso soup in a lacquered bowl to be sipped as you eat your rice, or a rich and flavorful broth poured over a noodle dish. In this book, Japanese culinary expert Keiko Iwasaki shares the homemade soup recipes that she makes regularly for her family and friends at home--ranging from filling one-pot meals to light and tasty accompaniments. Recipes include: Japanese-Style Oyster Chowder Egg Soup with Shrimp and Napa Cabbage Pork Belly Soup with Vegetables Sesame Miso Soup with Beef and Watercress Summer Vegetable Soup Curried Tomato Soup with Pork Meatballs And many more--66 in all! All the soups in this book are made from homemade stocks that use healthy ingredients such as konbu seaweed or shiitake mushrooms, so that they are natural and additive free. The soup recipes themselves are based largely on vegetables, which are combined with seafood and meat to maximize the nutritional balance. They are also low calorie, and naturally gluten free. One of the main differences between Japanese and Western soups is that Japanese soups are cooked lightly rather than simmered for a long time. By following the recipes in this book, you can quickly and easily rustle up a warm bowl of soup to soothe your soul after a busy day.