My Pinterest wall has been flooded this week with pictures of Bento lunches. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a Bento lunch, according to Wikipedia, is a simple Japanese method of packing a boxed lunch. These pictures on Pinterest are anything but simple. They are works of art, like this Angry Birds inspired lunch from mymealbox.

Or this one, from bentozen,


Cute, no?
I agree, they're adorable.
But here's my question... who has the time (much less the ingredients) to create these things every day? Or are they only for special occasions?

To be honest, they remind me of Molly Ringwald's lunch in this scene from The Breakfast Club...

Seriously. I have evil flashbacks about school lunches... If the "cool" kids had sack lunches, I had hot lunch. If I had sack lunch, I had the wrong lunchbox, not to mention the wrong lunch. Parents, never send your children to elementary school with liverwurst sandwiches, no matter how much your children like to eat liverwurst.

So I can just imagine the child who shows up at school with a wadded up brown paper sack containing a slightly smushed PB&J, a couple of leftover cookies, and the inevitable banana that has successfully flavored the sandwich and the cookies with eau de banana in the space of a few short hours. Said child slides into a seat, only to find herself surrounded by children whose lunch boxes expose carefully handcrafted 3D scenes of popular TV and movie and cartoon characters. Sorry... it's a future school-related nightmare waiting to happen.

Lunch. Do it right and avoid social nightmares. With Bento, the stakes have been raised.

 For more (and probably much more inspiring) "L" posts, check out the a2z meme.