Bento Love: Snacks!

Saint's Alp 005
Originally uploaded by mariacallas

I love putting snacks in my bento box. I think that's the best part. I especially like Japanese snacks because the wrapping is so colorful and the flavors so interesting. My fave is this package of little cakes meant to be eaten with tea. Each one is individually wrapped, and there are different flavors such as red bean, white bean, green tea and milk. I feel guilty about all of the packaging, but they taste so good. One of the joys of living in a culturally-diverse area with lots of Japanese businesses is that one can buy things like this without having to go to Japan.

Bento Love: J-List and Lunch In a Box

I've mentioned 'bento' a couple of times, and some of you might be wondering what it is. To put it simply, it's the Japanese term for what we would call 'lunch box'. However, that's like saying both filet mignon and Wendy's are beef.

The Japanese are as obsessive with making lunch cute and pretty as they are about styling pretty much everything. Instead of a plain soup and a sandwich, a lot of Japanese (especially children) eat lunches packed in special containers that are chock-full of foody goodness and which incorporate ideas of shape, color, and seasonality. I became interested in bento a few years ago by accident when I stumbled across J-List, an online store that has both gorgeous and adorable boxes of different sizes for both men and women.

However, to really understand bento, you have to look inside the box, and that's where my favorite site Lunch In A Box comes in. Biggie, who is the brilliant proprietress and a former resident of Japan, takes you by the hand and explains everything about bento- what kinds of food carry well, how to maintain food safety, how to pack healthy fruits and veggies that even the most persnickety child or adult will eat. Because I have such a bizarre work schedule where it's hard to buy non-starchy food I've taken to packing my lunch almost every night, and reading Biggie's site has helped me keep from getting bored. the essence of bento is variety- a little meat, some veggies, some fruit and maybe a small dessert, all packed to be as enticing as possible. Bento, as Biggie points out, lends itself to using up leftovers and to make-ahead dishes, so that a fully-stocked box can usually be assembled in 15 minutes, more for less.

Eating bento style has helped me lose weight- no small feat when you consider that the average night-shift worker gains weight and is more prone to heart attack than those who work during the day. But if you're still not convinced, you might want to go over to Flickr and search for 'bento'. There are tons of people photographing some of the most beautiful homemade meals you've ever seen, and sharing recipes with each other. You'll also find that not everyone is using fancy containers from Japan to store their meals- chances are if you have a couple of takeout containers, you too can put together some amazing bentos.

Bento box lunch set- the pattern

Please keep checking in as I refine this pattern.

Bottle Carrier - DK weight yarn, size H hook.

Ch 4 sts, and join with sl st in first ch.

Round 1- Ch 3 (counts as first dc); 11 dcs into ring. Join with sl st in top of ch 3. (12 dcs)
Round 2- Ch 3 (counts as first dc) and dc into top of ch 3. 2 dcs in each st around; sl st in top of ch 3. (24 dcs)
Round 3- Ch 3 (counts as first dc) and dc in top of ch 3. Dc in top of next st. *Make 2 dcs in next st, dc in following st**, repeat from * to ** 11 times and join with sl st at top of ch 3. (36 dcs)
Round 4- Ch 3 (counts as first dc), and dc in top of ch 3. *Dc in each of next two sts. Two dcs in next st, dc in each of next two sts**; repeat from * to ** 11 times and join with sl st at top of ch 3. ( 48 dcs)

Round 5- Ch 3. In back loop only, dc in each dc around; join with sl st in top of ch 3. (48 sts)
Round 6- Ch 3. *Dc in each of next two sts. In third st make popcorn st. ** Repeat from * to ** to ch3 and join with sl st.
Round 7- Ch 3. DC in each dc until end; join in top of ch 3.
Round 8- Ch 4. *Skip next st, dc in following st. ** Repeat around, and join in top of ch 3. This will give you the net stitch which is wonderful for making carryalls and bags. Repeat round 8 unti you have reached the height desired for our bottle or other liquid container.

Round 'A'- Ch 3. Dc in every st around. Join at top of ch 3.
Round 'B' - ch 3. *Skip next st. 3 dcs in following st. ** Repeat until end and join in top of ch 3. This will give you some nice shells.
Round 'C'- Repeat Round 'B'. join with st st in top of ch 3 and fasten off.

Chain 60. turn, sl st back along ch. Fasten off. This is your drawstring. Thread throughevery other four dcs in Round A. Join the ends. Make another, and do the same thing. you'll now ahve a carrier for your soda, water bottle or tall coffee thermos.

Tomorrow or later this week, i'll add the bento box cover pattern, and then the embellishments.

Bento box lunch set- finished!

Bento box lunch set- finished!
Originally uploaded by mariacallas

I don't even want to tell you how long it took to finish this project. It started as a simple bento box cover for my night job, when I was temping from place to place. Then I decided I needed a carrier for my water bottle.

I am usually not very girly with flowers and all, but I love Victoriana. At the time I started this project I was making flowers a lot and selling them to a local hatmaker to pay the bills. I was constantly doing piece work in between working two regular jobs, and I did it two holiday seasons in a row. However, doing this massively improved my crochet skill. Since I was sick of the flowers I was making, I went online and found some other patterns for myself- I'll try to find the link to give credit. And somehow, those flowers and leaves (a combination of large and small roses, violets, and matching leaves) ended up on my project.

As I worked on this, I was reminded of how many people see black hair as somehow inferior because it doesn't hang loose on it's own- it's wooly and relatively stiff. Yet African hair has a sculptural quality that lends itself to braiding, fading and geometric cutting. I realized that crochet is the same way. It's in many ways stiffer than knitting. It can drape, but not with the same ease. A lot of people see this as a flaw. But in truth, crochet has a sculptural quality that lends itself really well to the floral motifs on this lunch set. The design is both sturdy and delicate, rugged and feminine. Essentially, this set is my masterwork. It brings together my vision of myself as a worker, a steampunk, a neo-Victorian, a crocheter, a woman, a feminist, and a person of African descent. If for some reason I could never crochet again, I could still be happy- because I came up with these designs on my own and put them together in a new way.

The Wonderful World of Work, or, I Feel like Ripley, Except for the Aliens and the Screaming.

Working from midnight until 8am is very surreal. My day starts at 10pm, when my alarm goes off. The phone usually rings shortly after- it's my boyfriend, calling to wish me a good night as he goes to sleep. I yawn, shuffle past the yarn all over the bed, and go downstairs (I have a loft bed). My alarm is a local radio station that plays really peppy music at this time of night. otherwise, I would never make it to work on time.

I take a shower, figure out what to wear, and have some breakfast if possible. I make a quick lunch or grab a premade one from the fridge. I check Ravelry, write a note or two, and wait for my cell phone to ring. The call comes from the livery service that sends a car to my house every work night. Pretty snazzy, huh?

At 11:30 at night there is relatively little traffic, even in midtown. It usually takes 15 minutes for the driver to get me to work, and as he drives I fill out the voucher from work that pays the far. I'm outside the building at 11:45. I take out my work pass, say 'good morning' to the security guards and walk through a mostly empty lobby.

The floor on which I work is devoid of people except in my work area; four people are usually going off shift when I come in. The second shift people are made up of two proofreaders and two 'operators', or word processors, and a traffic coordinator. There's usually no immediate jobs when I come in. At night I'm the only proofreader on shift in the US. The others who work for the company are in India. I've never even spoken to them.

We have one operator who works swing and leaves at 3am. Three others come in on the same shift as I do, and and so does a fresh traffic coordinator. Except for the cleaning people, we are almost the only ones on the floor of the building until around 5:30am, when a few lawyers with overseas clients trickle in. I have never seen my floor when it's in full swing, except about once a month or so when we have proofreader meetings in the middle of the night (4 in the afternoon ET to you). A few lawyers come into our office from other parts of the building for the first three hours of my shift, bringing documents that need to be ready by morning. In most cases the operators handle them and they are passed to me for proofing; over in India, the same thing is happening, but at a busier pace because the work there is being sent from our law offices in Europe and Asia. when they have too much it spills over to us. Occasionally I get in-house documents- menus for seminar dinners, employee health info- and I get a lot of confidential documents having to do with finances, since we service major corporations whose corporate offices are in New York. What this means is that very often I have a pretty good idea of what companies are merging, which ones are breaking up, and which are about to undergo some major shift- and I can't tell a single soul. I don't even discuss the work with the operators, most of whom aren't interested in the economy anyway. Nor am I allowed to invest based on the documents I see, since I could get in trouble for insider trading.

My office has tons of windows looking out onto Times Square. I see the lights at a distance, but there's no sound. I'm too high up to hear cars, or the tourists who are straggling back to their hotels. The only thing I hear is the ticking clock in my office, the music I sometimes put on, and the conversations of the operators in the next room. The coordinator or an operator will drop in as often as needed to bring me work to proofread, and it's all very slow-paced and sleepy- which is dangerous because that makes it easier to make mistakes. I constantly guard against falling asleep. I only drink coffee during my first work hour, so that the caffeine will be out of my system before I go home to bed. Lunch is around 3am, when I open my lunch container and eat at my desk. Most night workers gain weight on shift, because the only food available is junk, an there are no stores open to tempt one outside for a walk. Bringing lunch keeps me reasonably healthy- I've also lost weight. but it's lonely work, and trying to keep from falling asleep can be difficult. Add to that the fact that the building's thermostat gets turned down; I'm perpetually cold and am usually swathed in scarves and shawls to keep from freezing to death.

When I get off from work I usually can't shop for another two hours- everything is only starting to wake up. socializing is almost impossible, since most people are going to work. My DVR records my favorite shows, and I plan ahead. I have to wait until the weekend to eat out unless I want breakfast. When I go home I force myself to stay awake for a few hours by reading, catching up on my favorite shows, going online, taking a bath. Then I roll into bed at 2pm for a nice night's sleep, and hope a telemarketer doesn't call me. I have velvet curtains at the windows to keep out sunlight.

Why would anyone want to live this way? Well, the money is pretty good. I get to crochet on the job when work is slow and I don't have other talks. I get to avoid sunlight- I've always had very light-sensitive eyes, and this way I'm not in perpetual pain anymore. I get to see museum exhibits in the morning, before they get crowded. plus, I get to pretend that I live in a spaceship. I intend to do this while I pay off some bills, or until I find something that pays more. It would be nice to see movies when they come on tv, or to watch the sun go down. But I get glorious sunrises, fresh bagels, and a chance to live like a vampire. In my book that's not too bad.