In this issue:

• A personal story from Karen Yoshino

• Watch it all come together (video)

• Designing your best life: Furoshiki

Filled with love

Karen Yoshino is one of our brilliant colleagues at Tapestry — a perfect example of what it means to live an active and interesting life. We’re thrilled to share a sliver of her creativity with you, with the hopes she inspires you as much as she inspires us. Now, her story…

I was flattered when my foodie daughter asked me to prepare a pre-concert dinner for her and three friends. The only "must" was that the meal include Spam musubi. 

They were celebrating my daughter's birthday at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where BTS, a South Korean boy band, was performing on their Arirang World Tour. She reserved a black SUV and, of course, wanted to include food for the driver. 

You need to understand that my daughter and her friends are typical BTS fans — joyful, enthusiastic, and inclusive. What made this event truly special was that my daughter and BTS vocalist Jung Kook share a birthday. It was a special occasion indeed; she even had a T-shirt made to announce their joint birthdays.

For me, nothing beats the happiness I get from feeding others. That's probably an Asian mom thing. But hey, it's how I express love and affection and avoid a lot of kissing and hugging. The concept also fit perfectly with my standard approach to life: whatever it is, make it a project. 

I love planning, designing, identifying resources, knocking out milestones, implementing, and delivering. The planning broke down into three key issues: what packaging would travel well, what food they could eat conveniently on the way, and how I could make it feel special rather than just a bunch of stacked Tupperware containers.

It’s all in the packaging

There were many fun discoveries, but the best was bento boxes — you know, those black-and-red "lacquer" trays you find in Japanese restaurants. This choice was inspired by the Spam musubi, whose origins trace back to the post–World War II Japanese, Hawaiian, and Korean experience. 

To me, the bento boxes felt perfect, tying together the cultural backgrounds of my daughter's friend group and the performers. Bento boxes also solve practical and presentation problems: they let you include a variety of foods without everything running together, suggest natural portions, and make an ordinary portable meal feel special. 

They do us planners another favor, too — they guide the whole menu development process. 

When shopping for the boxes, I considered overall size, container height, number of compartments, and appearance. The ones you'll see in the video below include a lift-out tray, chopsticks tucked underneath, and space for thin cold packs.

The Menu

The bento box had six compartments. One was reserved for the Spam musubi and another for birthday cake. A third would hold a napkin, wet wipes, and a bit of rice cracker snack. That left three open compartments; the Spam musubi guided the rest of the choices. 

For this portable celebration, every item met the criteria for dinner on the go: good cold or at room temperature, unlikely to spill, prep-ahead friendly, and offering contrast in taste, color, and texture:

• Chicken skewers (yakitori), since one piece of Spam isn't quite enough protein.

• Potato salad because it travels well. 

• Japanese cucumber salad (namasu) for the vegetable component. 

The preparation took me from shopping online to H Mart, my local Vons, the Dollar Store, Sur La Table, Smart & Final, and Michaels. The bento boxes were key, so I bought those three weeks ahead of time, giving me plenty of time to imagine what the final presentation would look like. 

Along the way, I learned to fold napkins into roses, experimented with sheet cakes and biscuit cutters to make individual mini cakes, and tracked down tiny forks for the cake (the boxes already came with chopsticks). I even made little bento box menu labels.

Food shopping began about four days in advance, with prep done the day before and the morning of delivery. 

• The day before, I chopped, skewered, and marinated the chicken; made my favorite vegan potato salad; made the cucumber salad; and frosted the mini birthday cakes. 

• On delivery day, I cooked the chicken skewers and made the Spam musubi. 

The final flourish came once the boxes were filled. I put a special label I created on each box and wrapped it in a bright red flour-sack dish towel, furoshiki-fashion. It gave every dinner a festive little lift. Read more about this ancient way to gift-wrap below. But before you do…

Watch it all come together

Here is how my BTS concert bentos went from a simple ask from my daughter to five portable dinners ready for the road. Watch the video

Designing your best life: Furoshiki

If you’re unfamiliar with this ancient Japanese art of wrapping items in cloth, furoshiki eliminates tape, ribbon, scissors…and paper cuts. It involves just a few clever folds and a knot to wrap gifts, bento boxes, and otherwise hard-to-wrap packages. The results can be stunningly simple or beautifully complex.

I love it for two reasons: it turns an ordinary square of fabric into something that feels intentional, and the fabric itself becomes part of the gift — a dish towel, a scarf, whatever you have on hand. Give it a try