my first bento

i've heard the cautionary advice on not posting what you had for lunch on your blog, but it doesn't seem as if my very first bento fits into this category.

doesn't bento transcend the mundane disclosure of a lunch's contents? is it not also an art, akin to arranging flowers or writing poetry? isn't it a medium of its own that must take into account harmony of color, flavor, texture, and travel-ability?

why make excuses for my bento photo? it's silly, really. if i have broken a blogging rule, may my sentence be reduced owing to my deeper delvings into the nature of food itself.

if i am to prepare good and deeply satisfying food i have to remain in the moment the whole time i'm making it. i can heat up food absentmindedly, but the act of really preparing it-- washing and peeling, chopping and combining various elements of a dish-- requires that i stay focused on my tasks or else the dish ultimately fails. it either burns or reveals in its final flavor some absence or buried glitch, like a dropped stitch in a piece of knitting.

for this dish i patiently de-meated a whole crab, something i've never done without eating half of it while i was working, then mixed the crabmeat with chopped chives and lemon juice, sliced paper-thin potato rounds on the mandoline and baked them until crisp, sliced cucumbers and slipped them in sideways all around the soft mache salad and voilá. i only used half of the crabmeat, and figured i'd use the rest at breakfast. wow. i never knew before the deep sense of anticipation that can be created simply by having half a crab's worth of crabmeat waiting for you in the refrigerator. try it sometime.


well, besides my bento i wanted to share:

a delightful photoblog called running from camera, in which all the pictures in it are of this guy in the netherlands running from his camera after he sets the self-timer for two seconds,

and the george w bush speechwriter. go there to write a speech for bush to repeat back to you. it's scary and fun. thanks to readymade blog for the link.