Making A Bento Box Is A Breeze With Kokoro Care Packages

Kokoro Care Packages’ are seasonal care packages handmade and filled with premium quality, authentic Japanese foods and ingredients. You can subscribe to get monthly nourishing essentials or quarterly seasonal delights delivered right to your door, or share the love and send a package as a gift to someone you know—shipping to 43 countries in the world and now including Japan (for a discounted price)!

Locally-produced, chemical-free, and delicious

Working directly with regional farmers and producers across Japan, Kokoro Care Packages are filled with unique and high-quality Japanese products. Unlike other care packages from Japan that are often filled with colorful sweets and treats full of harmful chemicals and artificial who-knows-what, Kokoro fills their packages exclusively with products that are free of all such chemicals like MSG.

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COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: SynRa – Connecting the World and the Oneness of Nature . Connecting you to the local organic farmers in Japan and supporting these communities is one of our missions at Kokoro Care Packages. . To that end, we couldn’t be more excited to introduce you to Yoshiyasu Kaji, the founder of SynRα . He’s an entrepreneur and organic farmer with a dream of connecting people to the oneness of nature through his local organic Japanese tours. . He brings together farmers and communities, and reminds as all of the beauty and importance of our earth. . Learn more about his dream in our Community Spotlight. —————————————- #kokorocares #japan #japanese #japanesefood #food #eatclean #health #healthy #wellness #subscriptionbox #subscriptionaddict #subscriptionaddiction #farm #farmer #nature #oneness #entrepreneur #dream #local #ココロケアパッケージ #ココロケア #ギフトボックス #日本食 #サブスクリプションボックス

A post shared by Kokoro Care Packages (@kokorocares) on Aug 2, 2019 at 3:23pm PDT

Thanks to its healthy eating habits, Japan is known to be one of the healthiest countries around, in fact, Bloomberg ranked Japan as the healthiest nation in Asia earlier this year. Striving to uphold that reputation and provide a nutritious product, Kokoro works directly with local farmers who not only produce fresh, healthy, and local food products, but each has a unique background and story to share, giving you a bit more insight as to why it’s so special to the locals of the area.

The theme for the September Nourishing Essential care package was Bento!

We were lucky enough to receive the Nourishing Essentials box for September 2019, and the theme this month was Bento Box Essentials. The box was filled with many bento-related ingredients such as Nikomaru rice, healthy 16-grain rice mix, hijiki flakes, dried pickle flakes, soy sauce simmered butterbur, nori (Japanese seaweed) paste, mulberry tea, and tasty dashi chips called Daships. 

So what do you do with all the products when you get them? Conveniently, the package comes with a handy ‘how-to’ instruction pamphlet for each item and also lists all the ingredients in English. We followed along and made our own little bento box! 

Putting our bento-making skills to the test

One of the main items in the package was the Nikomaru rice, the ultimate essential for any Japanese bento. The recommendation was to use the rice to make onigiri (rice balls), so that’s precisely what we did! 

Mochi mochi: the only way to describe this fluffy, soft, cloud-like rice.

We used the other ingredients in the box to make three different onigiri flavors: a healthy 16-grain mix, hijiki, and dried pickle flakes.

Making the onigiri was quick and easy—with the 16-grain mix onigiri, we just steamed the rice in the rice cooker with the contents of one of satchels in the pack. We then balled up the rice (our hands were pre-washed and clean) and voila! You’ve got yourself one scrumptious onigiri.

The other two onigiris were just as simple; after the rice was done cooking, we separated it into two bowls, added the hijiki and pickled veggie flakes, and made two more varieties of onigiri.

Hijiki and rice make for the perfect meal combo.

Rice is a staple ingredient for bentos, but we decided to fry up some crispy karaage (Japanese fried chicken) to accompany the onigiris. Add some fresh veggies, juicy fruits, and the sweet soy sauce flavored butterbur for the perfect okazu (side dish) to go along with the onigiri. 

Ta-da! Feast your eyes on this Savvy bento made from locally produced, healthy, and tasty ingredients!

Onigiri from left to right: dried pickle flakes, hijiki, 16-grain

The extra crunchy and savory dashi flavored chips were extra crunchy and the perfect side to the soft rice balls, and the mulberry tea (hailed as a superfood) was the most refreshing way to wash it all down.

These dashi chips were everything—brb, going to order some more because we ate them all.

Savvy Tokyo X Kokoro Care Packages Giveaway

We loved making our own bento with these fresh ingredients and we want you, our readers, to have a chance to get creative in the kitchen too. Savvy Tokyo is teaming up with Kokoro Care Packages to give away three November Monthly Nourishing Essentials packages!

All you have to do to enter the giveaway is follow the instructions below:

1. Follow @SavvyTokyo and @KokoroCares on Instagram
2. Tag a friend (Instagram or Facebook) who you think would also love a Kokoro Care Package
3. Share this giveaway on Facebook or repost to your Instagram page/story and tag us so we can see!

The giveaway ends at 12 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 25—good luck!

The Deets

Kokoro Care Packages
Pricing: 

• Monthly Nourishing Essentials: ¥5,880 (International Shipping), ¥5,346 (Japan Shipping)
• Seasonal Delights: ¥10,157 (International Shipping), ¥9,088 (Japan Shipping)
• Discounts for prepaid subscriptions. All prices are converted using the current fx rate from USD.