Laptop Lunches - Bento Boxes

 It's really annoying to me how sometimes pictures on Blogger turn sideways. *eye roll*.

Anyways, here's a picture of Kera's lunch for today:

Clockwise: lettuce/carrots/tomato w/ ranch in the little box, chocolate powerball, baked snap peas, babybel, blueberries and leftover Asian shredded beef. Oh yeah and there's a fruit leather in the space with the fork. She brought a water bottle (reusable) for her drink.

Notice anything? I mean besides the obvious lack of gluten/grain and sugar.

No plastic baggies. Very little individual wrapping. 

Yep, I invested in some reusable lunchboxes and they finally arrived on Monday. Kera could hardly wait to pack her lunch for Tuesday! Which I think is pretty cool. ;-)

I've been thinking it would be good to invest in something more usable and fun for the girls as we've moved to doing more and more cold lunches. The first kind of reusable lunchbox I saw was the Planetbox on the EverydayPaleo blog. And I thought it looked really cool, but wasn't sure if it would work for us. Lindsay tends to eat a lot and it just didn't look like it would hold enough food for her. So, I did some google/internet research on what types of reusable lunch containers there were available. I lucked out and ran across a great blog entry that basically reviewed three different types of lunchboxes. So after reading all that blogger had to say about Planetbox, Goodbyn and Bento Boxes, I found those respective websites and did some of my own comparisons. 

I finally decided that the BentoBoxes looked like they would be perfect for us. Room for plenty of food, came with an insulated carrier bag and were a decent price. So I let the girls each pick out their own set of bag, box and interior holders. They had to make do with our old lunchboxes for a few days while they anxiously awaited the FedEx to deliver our package.

It was kind of funny, once they got here, the girls actually ended up trading boxes, deciding that the other had chosen a better color. That's fine, whatever works.

So you saw Kera's box full of food, wanna see it empty? I'll give you the "grand tour"....

The insulated bag. It's fairly compact--fits into a backpack, but also has a handle on top.

It zips open and that black mesh part is where an ice pack fits.

It opens easy enough, but I did have Kera practice. I didn't want her tipping it sideways while opening it and causing her lunch to fall out!

This is what it looks like open and empty. These are the containers that came with this kit. They don't all have lids--so you'd put messier things into the ones with lids. See the cute silverware side compartment on the right? It came with a fork and spoon. I hope the girls don't lose them!

I ordered some extra inner containers of other sizes, too. So you could take out those two on the left (like this)

And put the big one in. I'm sure Lindsay will use this big one more than Kera, but its the perfect size for leftovers or a big ol' salad. (Or a sandwich if you roll that way).

I love how interchangeable the inner pieces are, so you can mix and match to get the perfect containers for their food.

And there is a cool expandable mesh holder on the side for a water bottle.

It zips up when not in use! Isn't that ingenious!?

So, that's my first impressions of this lunchbox. I'll be sure to let you know how Kera liked eating out of it and how it cleans up. The inner containers are suppose to be top-rack dishwasher safe, so I'll be testing that tonight!