Zojirushi’s Mr. Bento Lunch Jar is a modern spin on the Japanese bento box. However, it will keep cold things cold and hot things hot. Mr. Bento features four microwaveable containers: a watertight soup container, a large main-meal container with an insulated lid, a smaller container I use for salads, and an even smaller container for snacks like cheese\/grapes. All these containers stack neatly inside a stainless jar in a specified order that creates a seal, keeping the soup\/main container hot or cold while the other containers remain at room temperature. <\/p>\n
Mr. Bento also comes with a spork, so you don’t have to carry extra utensils; the spork even has a cover. Mr. Bento himself fits inside a nice bag (included) that has pockets for napkins and the like, and enough extra room for another small food container should you desire a bigger meal. In my case, I typically take a small container of oatmeal to work, so I just place Mr. Bento on top and put the entire stack in the bag. A fully-packed Mr. Bento with bag and utensil weighs around 3 lbs. <\/p>\n
As for how long things stay hot: Typically, I pack my lunch around 6:45 a.m., then don’t eat until 12 noon. I never feel the need to microwave. For example, recently at 7 a.m., I microwaved a frozen burrito and cut it in half to fit in the meal container. At 11 a.m., the burrito was still hot and steam came from the container when I opened it. Zojirushi advises preheating the jar with hot or cold water for maximum temperature retention, though I’ve never tried that.<\/p>\n
When you first look at Mr. Bento, you might worry you’re going to walk away hungry. Your mileage may vary, but I am a whopping 240 pounds of man and sometimes I wonder if I should have purchased a smaller Bento like the Ms. and mini (I also have Zojirushi’s rice cooker<\/a>). <\/p>\n My impetus for buying a lunch box was that I discovered I was spending over $100\/month going out to lunch. I wanted to save money and did not want to get bored eating-in. So far so good! I also found Mr. Bento has a cult following, including the “Mr. Bento Porn<\/a>” group at Flickr (Despite the name, it’s safe to look at during work). This is what really sold me on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Compact culinary travel kit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[26],"tags":[1320],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}