Real Food Bento Box: Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps

Per Serving: $1.79

Shredded chicken is one of the cheapest proteins available. Mix it together with mashed avocado, fresh lemon juice (or lime), and tomatoes and you've got yourself one delicious lunch! I love lunch.

There are a handful of recipes that we regularly make here in Japan, and avocado chicken salad wraps is one of them. Somehow (import agreements? exchange rates?) we can almost always find avocados for about 100 yen, which is 80 cents (including tax!). Occasionally they jump up to $1.30 or so, but even that is not too terrible. We've been spoiled with our 50-cent San Diego avocados, but if I can find a good avocado for less than $2 here in Japan, I'm willing to splurge every once in a while. Luckily with 80-cent avocados, we can eat them every week.

I like to buy a small chicken for about $8 and cook it in the rice cooker while I go about my day. Then shred it and store some in the freezer. Whenever there's a sale on avocados, I pull some out and mix it up for lunch. So, without further ado, bento box time!

Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps Bento Box

Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps: Shred cooked chicken (rice cooker or slow cooker) and mix together with mashed avocado and fresh lemon juice. Place in lettuce cups/leaves and top with salt, pepper, and tomatoes. Boom, avocado chicken salad! For transport purposes, you can close the lettuce wraps a bit on top to keep the tomatoes inside. (about $1.25)

Banana Bread: I make whole wheat banana bread (in the rice cooker) and banana muffins (in the toaster oven) on a regular basis. This recipe is made with whole wheat flour, and sweetened with super ripe bananas and prunes or date syrup. Slice it and freeze it (in a flat layer) then pull some out to add to your lunch! In fact - you can see in the top picture that the bread is still frozen! ($0.19)

Banana Peanut Butter Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies: Again, super ripe bananas and fruit syrups/pastes go a long way in sweetening this recipe for delicious peanut butter-banana-oat cookies. Mix together rolled oats, mashed bananas, (homemade!) peanut butter, prune or date syrup and your favorite dark chocolate chips! This recipe makes 30-35 small cookies, and they're the perfect bento box dessert. ($0.10 per cookie)

Fruit or Veggies: We happened to have a bunch of pineapple for this one, but you could use any fruit or vegetable, like watermelon, apples, carrots, or cucumbers. (varies - $0.25)

Here are a few more shots of our various chicken-avocado bento boxes. Sometimes we eat the mixture sans lettuce wraps (bottom right), and sometimes we've got mixed greens, so we just make a regular ol' salad (top right). The important ingredients are avocado, chicken, and tomatoes!

This Series: Real Food Bento Boxes

• Monday: Sesame Soba & Green Beans

• Tuesday: Hummus & Dippers

• Wednesday: Stuffed Tomatoes

• Thursday: Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps

• Friday: Salmon Sushi Rolls with Fruit Kebabs