You may eat a healthy bento lunch, but what when you get hungry in-between meals? You could eat some fruit or something, but you may want something a bit more substantial yet easy to transport without succumbing to the lure of Krispy Kreme donuts or a bag of potato chips. These not-sweet cookies are one option.

These dense, shortbread like cookies are not sweet - they are indeed a bit salty, from the gomashio (sesame salt). They are very filling 'in-between' snacks, clocking in at around 80 calories each. They are sort of homemade, not-sweet versions of Calorie Mate Block (see Notes) - they're just as filling with none of the artificial vitamins or sugar.

I've made them in three variations. One is made with white flour and butter, and is arguably the tastiest but least nutritious. The second is made with whole wheat flour, olive oil and sesame oil, and rivals the white flour one in taste - but is a bit crumbly. The third is a gluten-free, vegan version that uses chickpea (gram) flour, tahini and sesame oil. It is quite firm and tasty, and definitely the most nutritious, but may not be to everyone's liking.

[Updated: Originally published back in January 2008, this is one of the most popular articles on Just Bento. I've updated it with a much more hands-free oven method for making gomashio.]

Gomashio (ごま塩), sesame salt, is the most basic furikake. This is the best way I know to make homemade gomashio, where each sesame seed is coated with its own fine salt mantle.

No patience or time to make cute bentos? How about using stickers?

There are already several mini-burger or tsukune dumpling type of recipes here, but here's another one. What can I say - mini-burgers are just perfect for bentos: they taste good when they are cold, can be made in quantity, and usually freeze very well.

This time it's a shrimp and tofu version, adapted quite a bit from a recipe in a recent issue of Kyou no ryouri: Beginners (Today's Cooking: Beginners) magazine. It's best when made with fresh shrimp, but uncooked frozen shrimp is fine. You probably don't want to be messing around with shrimp paste in the morning, so it can made it the night before (have some for dinner too - it's great hot) or freeze a batch. The sweet-hot red pepper jam I've used as a sauce goes very well with it, but if you don't want to go to the trouble of making the jam, use a sweet or hot bottled chili sauce.