I love lunch boxes of all types. I always carried one to school when I was younger, before it became uncool.

But now I’m thinking about buying some kind of environmentally-friendly, BPA-fee container to tote around all the food I bring for my kids when we go out, even just to ballet class or the pool.

Twenty years ago, when I spent a couple weeks in Shanghai one summer, my host (my dad’s student’s father) carried a plastic container with him when we went out to restaurants. After we finished eating, Mr. Yuen would ladle the leftovers into his container. His didn’t look like this:

But rather this, minus the cutesy cartoon and Japanese writing, mais oui:

bento box

Here’s a photo of me at a park in Shanghai. My host isn’t in this shot, but I like this photo because it shows a simpler Shanghai, one before people went all crazy for Prada and YSL.

Shanghai, 1991

A couple years after that trip, I started carrying a bento box to work each day. I was no longer a frugal expat, but I could still act like one. I found a bento box at a little Japanese grocery in Washington, DC, that resembled the blue one above.

These containers suit one person, but for three kids and a mom who’s never skipped a meal, maybe we should look into something like this:

Indian tiffin boxes