My First Blogoversary

This four-square box is a Lock-n-Lock which to me sounds an awful lot like lock and load but no matter.

No those are not black olives.

I made these cute little meat pie purses filled with cooked chicken and mashed potatoes. They work really well in lunches. They can be eaten warm or cold in just a couple of bites. Super yummy!

Yes they are black grapes supposedly seedless, but they do have something hard inside that I have to spit out.

Watercress with baby carrots (true baby carrots) and Juliet tomatoes from my garden.

Cottage cheese, that I tend to eat immediately when I get to work.

An Asian pear - lordy I love Asian pears!

My First Year of Bento

On my first week of bento, my true love said to said to me,
"Seriously! Are you taking pictures of your lunch!?!"
(little did he know...)

After that, my second week of bento I knew I'd have to separate my bento life from my foodie life or else I would be overwhelmed. And back then my foodie life was and still is connected to my garden, so my favorite links are different than my favorite bento links. Oh well, another day, another blog.

So I launched Judy's Bento Box on 9/10/09, and my first post was a bento I made for The Mister to share with a co-worker.

Also in making the header to my new blog I had to add a few pictures of Si because I didn't have enough bento pictures in Flickr to make the checkered banner that I still use. I am thinking of changing the banner soon because I like to redecorate. What do you think?

My second post on Judy's Bento Box (which the title I've now learn is redundant because bento means box) was an attempt at Donburi. Seriously I don't know what I'm doing, but as usual, I'm full of it, that is, information, from Just Bento and I even link to Maki's recipe and her site.
I think I'm totally hot taters!

On my third post and my third week's worth of bentos, there were zero comments. Zero.
Bam! My little bubble went pop!

(And that's all right. I don't need comments. I don't need followers. I don't need friends. Just a pillow to cry myself to sleep.)

Turns out this past year has been super, and this little bento box community is full of wonderful people.

We have artists and fantastic photographers. Inspirational chefs and entrepreneurs. The number of bento books that came just this year is wild crazy. It feels like I've jumped on board just in time, and there's so much more to come.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing. And most of all Thanks for understanding that cute little boxes make eating more fun!

ps the bento pictured above was made in late July and the picture was altered in Flickr.