In a perfect world, we would eat well-balanced meals during our busy work week. We wouldn't subject ourselves to questionable "frozen entrées" in green boxes that seem to smell of something that is not food, or out of desperation stop at Taco Hell for a $0.79 bean burrito because hey, it's got to be better than something with greasy ground beef, right? We would have specifically portioned delightful lunches that would taste wonderful and make us feel full and energized and loved. (In this perfect world, we aren't sure what we do, but we suspect we just might be Oprah.) And whatever those lunches involved, it would certainly trump one of those slimy burritos, which are always a little indelicate to eat, you know, with the squishing of the filling up to the top so that you don't end up with a fist-sized ball of refried beans at the bottom. In fact, the entire enterprise seems a little porntastic to us.

Lunch might not be such a chore if you could turn it into an art form by filling a delightful Bento box.

Photo Credit:  Jeff Vespa/Wire Image

Bento boxes have been around for centuries and are a très chic version of your childhood Mickey Mouse Club metal lunch box.  Who wouldn't want to dine on delicate slices of Asian pear, strawberries and lychee, stacked onto another box full of shrimp spring rolls, some tiny nibbles of string cheese and a few cucumber straws? So much better than a slimy old burrito! And then imagine, like a Russian nesting doll, you lift another tray off of your neatly packed Bento, and there is a third little box with an unexpected Rice Krispie treat? Ok, so it wouldn't be unexpected, since in theory, we would have packed it for ourselves either the night before or that morning, but maybe you could suspend disbelief for a moment.

The Internet is filled with ideas to make lunch fun again, from Bento supplies to folks who log their daily Bento lunches. We love the way that each dish is portioned just right, deliberately and in delicate bite-sized pieces. When we're picking through our albacore sashimi lunch, we like to imagine that we are Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation and also that we have her very cute see-thru underwear.

The best part? Your coworkers won't be able to hide their jealousy as they slink back to their desks with their stinky Lean Cuisines entrées.