bento-versary!!

Today marks one year since I officially renewed my bento obsession with bento 2.0 baby!, resulting in about 130 bento lunches and breakfasts in the last year. It's safe to say, I think, that my plan has been a success. I've eaten out for lunch only a handful of times, stopped my (very bad) habit of not eating at all during the day, cut down on lunch expenses, eaten better, felt better, refined my bento routine, and converted a few people to the bento way of life along the way. I've even had a few pretty lunches here and there.

If it weren't the first of the month -- the busiest time of my very busy life -- and if I had my act more together, lunch today would have a bit more panache (and be a tad less monochromatic) to mark the day than simply using the same container as my lunch from a year ago. Then again, that wouldn't really be in keeping with my way of bento-ing, where pragmatic takes precedence over picturesque. Still...there's always room for a few carrot shapes!

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• garden vegetable soup, with a julienned carrot lattice" and heart and star carrot cutouts for garnish
• wraps: herb roasted turkey breast and cream cheese in a flour tortilla
• heart and start carrot shapes, grapes

1,600+ food items filling our lobbySpeaking of food and doing very good things, our office just completed a month-long canned food drive for the Oregon Food Bank and we were, as you can see, mightily successful.

pumpkins from the decorating contest that ProcrastiGirl handpainted with the company mascotOur office is divided into teams so to make things interesting, the food drive was actually a competition among the teams to see who could bring in the most items, with a prize for the winner at the end of the month for the winning team. We also challenged our vendors to try to beat us, and as a result, we ended up with over 1,600 food items.

And finally, just randomly...a week ago, I was on my way home late after an especially stressful day, rushing to pick up my CSA before the deadline and thinking about all the things I needed to take care of when I got home afterward. As I got onto the freeway, I remembered I needed to put gas in the car lest I be stranded on I-5 NB waiting for Comet in busy Tuesday evening traffic. So it was right back off the freeway at the next exit, wading through traffic to a gas station and waiting for the busy attendant to get to me, all the while thinking, "and miles to go before I sleep".

We'd had some impressive storms throughout that day and the three or days before, with dark, dark clouds and rain that came down in a torrent, relentless. But as I was sitting at the light waiting to get back on the freeway, the sun had come in under the the clouds as it was setting, lighting everything up -- including the array of trees in many colors in front of me -- against a backdrop of sky so dark blue gray that it was almost black. A reminder when I probably needed it to be mindful of the now and not to lose sight that life is happening in this moment, and this one, and this one.