Archive for April, 2007

Stromboli lunches and travel food

Bug and I returned safely from our trip to Philadelphia last night. On our trip, we brought along a couple of small bento boxes, a collapsible sandwich case, and a couple of sauce containers so that we could have freedom on the road instead of needing to break to find a restaurant mid-day. This turned out to be a good approach, as the boxes neatly held our lunches on the plane going out (no purchasing nasty airline “snack boxes”), restaurant dinner leftovers for the following days (held overnight in our hotel room mini fridge), cheesesteak sandwiches, and fruit and hoagies (Philly submarine sandwiches) from Wawa for the plane trip back.

Morning prep time: 3 minutes. While hoagies and cheesesteak sandwiches are pretty well known Philadelphia food, I rediscovered strombolis this trip. Essentially a stuffed pizza, a stromboli is like a loaf-shaped calzone that is supposed to have originated in the Philadelphia area in 1950. There are many variations, from the no-sauce classic Italian (with meats and mozzarella), to sauced strombolis like meatball, steak, chicken steak, pizza, etc. They’re also wonderful eaten at room temperature, making them tasty lunchbox food. Here it’s paired with a sliced nectarine, grapes and cherry tomatoes (plus leftover marinara sauce in a container for Bug to dip his sandwich into).

Stromboli lunch Italian stromboli

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Published by Biggie on April 20th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids, meat, onigiri or sushi, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap, tips | 22 Comments »

Travel, and speedy meatball lunches

First off, I wanted to let everyone know that Bug and I will be traveling to Philadelphia for a week starting today (4/13/07), so my blog updates will be sporadic during the week. I’ll try to check in and respond to comments, but won’t be as responsive as I usually try to be. Second, thanks to everyone who has voted for this blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards so far — my goal is to hang around as a non-vegan blog on the top page for a while. Wish me luck! (November 2007 update: Open voting for 2007 has closed with Lunch in a Box in 3th place. Thank you! 2008 voting is here is you’re interested.)

Morning prep time: 10 minutes each. A combination of frozen food, store-bought food, and refrigerator staples made Bug’s quick lunch possible today. The meatballs were store-bought (Aidells teriyaki chicken pineapple) with extra teriyaki sauce, I had a small batch of shaped hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for snacking (more below), and the little rice balls were from the freezer and wrapped with pre-cut nori for maximum speed. Grapes, blackberries and grape tomatoes round out the meal — and I packed a tiny toddler fork for the meatballs (cut in half for Bug).

Speedy meatball lunch for toddler

Earlier this week I made rice to eat with Thai curry at dinner. I only make rice every 10 days or so, so when I do, I make a big batch and freeze the excess as individually wrapped rice balls (see my prior entry on frozen onigiri). I mixed a bowl of medium-grain rice with furikake (rice sprinkles), and popped it into rice ball molds to shape before wrapping and freezing. A quick spin in the microwave brings these back to life.Bug really enjoys the shaped hard-boiled eggs, but I can’t be bothered to make just one in the morning specially for lunch. Instead, I make a batch of 5-6 at once with cheap egg molds that I picked up at a local dollar store (Ichiban Kan, US$1.50 for two), and store them in the refrigerator in the molds. You boil the eggs, peel them while they’re hot, pop them into a mold and throw them into cold water for 10 minutes to take on the shape (Cooking Cute has a tutorial here). If you don’t want to fork over money for a uni-tasker, you can also use ice cream sandwich molds for the same effect, available from Amazon and Williams Sonoma (my tutorial here).

Frozen rice balls Molds for hard-boiled eggs

My lunch is the same as Bug’s, but with larger rice balls and a cheese triangle that Bug seized when he spied it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to eat the cheese triangles that I pack in my lunches…

Speedy meatball lunch

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Published by Biggie on April 13th, 2007 tagged bento, eggs, for kids, freezing, meat, onigiri or sushi, rice | 35 Comments »

Speedy tamale lunches

Morning prep time: 2 minutes each (4 min. total). I’m almost embarassed at how little time it took to throw these together. These are frozen tamales that were leftover from dinner a couple of nights ago; I steamed extra when making dinner and just packed the spares directly into these lunch containers after we ate. After-dinner cleanup also provided a tiny bit of undressed salad, and sauces (ranch dressing, cooked salsa and crema — like sour cream) which I packed into little containers during cleanup. So in the morning all I had to do was grab the semi-packed boxes, throw in some grapes, blackberries and raspberries. Done.

A word on packing fragile fruit like raspberries, though. Although it’s tempting to use them to “plug the gaps” in your lunch, they’re really too delicate to stand up to shifting food during transport. Pack delicate berries in a separate container or in hard, non-flexible food cups to minimize the chance of finding berry goo in your lunch.

Speedy tamale lunch

Speedy tamale lunch for toddlerBug’s lunch is the same as mine, but without salad or hot salsa (only crema for his tamale). We ate this one with a big group of Japanese moms and kids after playgroup and it was a big hit with them as well as Bug (the other kids were hovering over the grapes and berries). Bug’s lunch is loosely packed in a two-tier 600ml box, and mine is packed in two 350ml Lock & Lock containers.

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Published by Biggie on April 11th, 2007 tagged bento, corn tortillas or masa, for kids, poultry | 6 Comments »

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