So I moved to our new datacenter today, and, anticipating few choices in the way of lunch, I made myself a bento box.
It was not a resounding success.
Those chopsticks — the reason I got this particular box (“OOH! Wee chopsticks, how CUTE!”) — are too short and too smooth. I dropped more rice in my lap than I ate, until I gave in & got a spoon from the lunch room.
The rice got hard. I packed it last night, so I knew that could happen, but I wasn’t prepared for how unpleasant it was. Clearly I need to do that wrapping-in-cling-film thing.
The snow peas needed badly to be blanched. Raw snow peas are not as awesome as you’d think. The carrots were ok. It’s hard to fuck up carrots. The string cheese was unpleasant at room temperature.
The best thing was the sauce — eel sauce in a tiny bottle that had held a sample of garlic olive oil. It’s actually a wee bit too big for the top layer, but I … didn’t think of putting it in the bottom until just now. Shut up.
The salmon patties were just ok. They dried out badly, too; clearly I need to pay more attention to the moisture levels in things, although you can go too far in the opposite direction: too much moisture will make a bento go off while it sits at room temperature.
So this is something I need to work on, since, while our chefs do bring lunch to the datacenter, it’s prepacked box lunches of whatever meat-stuff is on the menu, and I mainly ate salad at Headquarters.
On the plus side, there are a ton of good bento resources out there. I just need to … get better at it =)
![shiny new roasting pan [click to embiggen]](http://splinters.suriel.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/20081105_roaster_0557-300x225.jpg "shiny new roasting pan [click to embiggen]")
