Bento contents:

• 1 cup (about 220ml) sprouted brown rice (220cal)
• 2 Tbs. salmon furikake or flakes, 1sp. gomashio (60cal)
• Tofu nuggets made from about 2/3rds block (200g) of soft tofu (160cal)
• Carrots and celery cooked in bouillon (30cal)
• Steamed asparagus spears (20cal)

Total calories (approx): 490 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed: 5-10 minutes in the morning, 20-30 previously

Type: Japanese

This is an almost completely make-ahead bento. It uses these staples that I've shown you how to make previously:

• Salmon furikake or flakes, that can be made 1 to 2 weeks in advance
• Poached frozen tofu made into mini-cutlets. I've called them nuggets here because I cut them fairly small. The tofu keep in the cooking broth for a few days, and the nuggets or mini-cutlets can be made the night before. I even used the vegetables that I used to make the poaching liquid.
• Gomashio (sesame salt), which can be made up to a month before.

To this I added cut up steamed asparagus, which was just set aside from the asparagus cooked for dinner the night before.

All you have to do then is to stuff everything into your bento box, and you're done! If you use frozen rice you have even less work to do. So all it takes is 5 to 10 minutes in the morning.

Here is the bigger portion dude-ish version of the same bento:

The soup-vegetables are a bit moist, so they are in a paper cup to stop the tofu nuggets from getting soggy. You can bring along a small squeeze bottle for the tofu if you want to, or do what I did and tuck in a small sliver of lime or lemon to squeeze over the tofu and the asparagus.

To turn this into a vegan bento

Just use gomashio or another vegan/vegetarian furikake instead of the salmon.

Stash, stash, stash!

I hope by now you do see how building up a stash of _johbisai_ or staples can help to put together a bento box with lots of variety inside, without having to spend too much time in the morning!

What if you haven't had time to build up a stash yet though? Never fear...next time I'll feature a bento that only uses freshly made ingredients (except for the rice), and takes only 15 minutes.