Archive for October, 2007

Tocino and simit sesame bread lunches

Tocino bento lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler lunch: Sesame bread (Turkish simit or Greek koulouri), Filipino pork tocino (sweet cured pork), grape tomatoes, wrapped cheese triangle, and Sabra roasted garlic hummus from Costco. This was from the first batch of tocino I’ve cooked (from a frozen package); it was sweet like longanisa sausage and Bug downed it happily (he passed on the traditional vinegar accompaniment). Next time I’ll try packing it with some fried rice and fried egg to make Filipino comfort food…

Morning prep time: 3 minutes, using all leftovers.

Packing: I tucked a little pick into the center compartment for the pork, and the box’s built-in dividers and watertight lid contained the thick hummus without leaking. Lunch packed in one 350ml tier of a Lock & Lock lunch set.

Hummus sandwich bento lunch

Contents of my lunch: Sandwich of hummus, ham and thinly sliced cucumber on Turkish sesame bread. Venezuelan eggplant, grapes, and grape tomatoes.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover eggplant.

Packing: The tiny tomatoes act as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch during transport, and the eggplant went into a reusable silicone baking cup to keep it away from the grapes. This was a bit of a poor choice on my part, as the lunch got shaken around before eating, and some of the oil from the eggplant leaked out of the cup. It didn’t get on the rest of the food, but with a little more shaking it probably would have. If I were to repack this, I’d either put the eggplant in a disposable lidded plastic cup or drain and dry the eggplant before packing it in the silicone cup. Packed in a 500ml Leaflet box with movable divider.

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Published by Biggie on October 23rd, 2007 tagged beans, bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, sandwich or wrap | 9 Comments »

Salmon cake lunches & mini mandoline

Bento lunches are the perfect small stage for miniature foods: baby vegetables, mini burgers, cocktail sandwiches, mini frittatas, tiny shepherd’s pies, you name it. Not only are they cute, kids love them and can be tempted to try new things they might not otherwise find interesting. My son ‘Bug’ and I made speedy cornbread mini muffins with an instant mix from Costco (Marie Callender’s brand) that I tried for the first time — just add water and bake for 10 minutes. Granted, the muffins weren’t the same quality as savory Southern-style cornbread we usually make with stone-ground cornmeal and a cast iron skillet for dinners, but overall I found the quality quite acceptable for a super-instant product (very slightly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so). This now puts freshly baked cornbread in my reach in the mornings when I’m packing lunch — a good product for when my new toaster oven arrives! I made a batch of 15 little muffins and froze the remainder for future lunches.

Salmon cake lunch for preschooler v1

Contents of preschooler lunch: Pan-fried salmon cake, cornbread mini muffins, super-fast cucumber and cream cheese salad (recipe with tutorial here), grape tomatoes, mango and raspberries. Instead of making my usual slow-cooked salmon, I diced a side of salmon and made it into salmon cakes using a recipe (for paid CI subscribers) from Cook’s Illustrated’s The New Best Recipe cookbook.

Salmon cake bento lunch for preschooler v2

Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover salmon cakes and cornbread muffins.

Packing: I cut a single salmon cake into quarters and stacked them two high so Bug could eat them easily with his fingers. The speedy cucumber and cream cheese salad went into a reusable plastic food cup shaped like a dog’s head, and was covered with a “surprise animal cap” to keep it from spilling out during transport. Grape tomatoes act as a gap filler to stabilize the lunch and keep the plastic food cup from sliding around during transport. Fruit went into a reusable silicone baking cup to keep the moist mango away from the dry cornbread muffins. I’m liking the regular round silicone baking cups for their ability to squish into different shapes to match the available space (and be reused, of course). A disposable plastic food divider (”baran”) from Daiso separates the salmon cakes from the corn muffins; it’s disposable but I tend to wash and reuse them (yes, I’m cheap). Lunch packed in a 360ml Disney Cars-themed bento box with both sub-containers removed.

Verdict: Mixed. Bug ate everything except the cucumber salad and mangoes at preschool. The mango was a little stringier than the champagne mangoes I usually buy, and something about the texture didn’t work for Bug. He inhaled the salmon cakes and mini muffins, though, and requested them again for the next day’s lunch (which I won’t show, too repetitive).

Mini mandoline

Gear: I found this funny little Korean mini mandoline slicer and grater at Kamei in San Francisco for about US$2, and used it to slice cucumber for the cucumber salad shown above. Folded, it’s the size of the palm of my hand, and it looks like it’s meant to be used for beauty: to slice cucumbers to put on your eyelids. So funny, I couldn’t resist, even though I’ve already got a larger slicing multi-tool that does the same thing.

Salmon cake bento lunch
Contents of my lunch: Salmon cakes with lime chipotle cream sauce for dipping (recipe here), mini cornbread muffins, broccoli and sweet potatoes in mirin/soy simmering sauce, raspberries and mango.

Morning prep time: 4 minutes, using leftover salmon cakes, cornbread muffins, broccoli and sweet potatoes. I filled the sauce container when cleaning up from dinner a couple nights prior, so in the morning all I had to do was cut the mango and pack up the leftovers.

Packing: I left out half of a salmon cake to make room for the little Clickety Click sauce container. Packed in two 350ml tiers of a Lock & Lock lunch set with built-in dividers that kept the sauce on the vegetables totally away from the muffins and fruit.

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Published by Biggie on October 21st, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids | 22 Comments »

Train-shaped nori seaweed

First off, I’d like to welcome new readers making their way here from Yahoo, where Lunch in a Box was fortunate to be Yahoo’s Pick of the day for October 17. Feel free to comment or ask questions even on old posts; I keep up with recent comments.

Shinkansen pre-cut nori for bentos

A while back a friend from my son’s playgroup gave me a package of novelty nori seaweed that she brought back from Japan. I tucked it away, thinking it would be a handy way to add some fun to a child’s meal with minimal effort. Each package has a number of sheets of nori that have been die-cut into Shinkansen train-related shapes. (Shinkansen is a Sanrio character that tends to be popular among young boys in Japan.) The package shows the nori decorating rice in a bento lunch, onigiri rice balls, and atop chirashi zushi. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Shinkansen pre-cut nori

I’ve seen pre-cut nori on eBay shaped like Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and other fun shapes, but there’s no need to order specially from Japan if you don’t have money burning a hole in your pocket. You can make your own using scrapbooking punches or scissors (Target often has different punches in their Dollar Spot, craft stores stock them, as does Amazon). I wonder if die cutters for scrapbooking would work too, but it wouldn’t be cost-effective to go buy one just for nori. If someone already owns one for scrapbooking, could you run a sheet of nori (or mamenori) through and let us know what happens?

Storing nori for speedy lunch prep

This packaged pre-cut nori is really just a cute but pricey variation on a theme that I explored in my earlier post on making a stash of pre-cut nori to save time in the morning. Store it in an airtight container or freezer bag with dessicant packs that you can scavenge from other foods, new clothing, sporting goods, etc.

Contents of preschooler lunch: White rice mixed with shrimp-flavored furikake rice seasoning, topped with Shinkansen pre-cut nori. Shrimp, broccoli and sweet potato in mirin and soy sauce.

Shinkansen bento lunch for preschooler

Cooking: The shrimp, broccoli and sweet potato were all actually leftover from a spicy Thai curry that was too hot for Bug (curry master recipe here). Sometimes when I make a curry that’s too spicy for my son, I just stir in yogurt to tame it. For some reason, though, Bug is sensitive to Thai spices and my yogurt trick doesn’t work. To deflame it, I picked out some shrimp and vegetables, put them in a strainer, and ran water over it to rinse off the spicy curry sauce. Having washed the flavor away, though, I quickly tossed them with some mirin and soy sauce that I’d simmered other vegetables in a few days before. Bug was able to eat the doctored leftovers, and I didn’t have to spend extra time cooking something totally new in the morning. Win, win!

Morning prep time: 4 minutes, using fresh rice and leftover Thai curry.

Packing: Because all of the non-rice items were flavored with the same sauce, there was no need to keep them from touching. I put the green broccoli between the two similarly colored foods for contrast. The lunch is packed in a 360ml Cars bento box.

Verdict: As I expected, the Shinkansen nori was a big hit — Bug was really excited about it when I showed it to him in the morning. He ate everything but the sweet potato and a a couple bits of broccoli at preschool, and finished the broccoli in the car. Thumbs down on the sweet potatoes; something about the texture seems to bother him (mashed is fine).

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Published by Biggie on October 18th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, glutenfree, lactose free, rice, tips | 18 Comments »

Orange and green lunch

Without thinking about it, I managed to pack a lunch almost entirely with two colors: orange and green.

Dumpling lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler lunch: Pork and leek Shandong dumplings (full review here) and dipping sauce, grape tomatoes, kabocha squash simmered in mirin and soy sauce, steamed broccoli, and an odd fish fillet with built-in tartar sauce under the breading. The side dish container holds tangerine slices and kiwi.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, mostly boiling the dumplings in a tiny pot to speed things up. The kabocha was leftover from the night before, and I used the simmering liquid from the kabocha to flavor the microwave-steamed broccoli. In the morning I briefly microwaved the frozen fish fillet and broccoli (in a microwave mini steamer), and sliced the fruit.

Packing: I fully drained the kabocha and broccoli before packing to keep stray juices away from the fish, and stood the broccoli florets upright in a mini silicone baking cup. Grape tomatoes acted as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch in transit. Packed in a Packed in a 270ml one-tier Thomas the Tank Engine box with one hard plastic sub-container removed to fit more dumplings, and a 150ml side dish container. The panda pick was part of a larger set for US$1.50 at Daiso, and I also used a little pronged Anpanman pick for the kabocha.

Verdict: Mixed. Bug ate most of this at preschool, leaving two pieces of kabocha, a bit of broccoli and the kiwi. Afterwards in the car, though, he ate the broccoli and the kiwi but passed on the kabocha. He said he really liked the dumplings and the fish. I’m starting to think he’s finding it difficult to eat kiwifruit pieces on his own — that’s coming back regularly until I help him with the pick. Something to keep in mind as I pack foods that are easy for him to eat on his own…

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Published by Biggie on October 16th, 2007 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, meat | 11 Comments »

Lunches with pork mole sopes

To keep lunches from getting boring, find ways to transform dinner leftovers into different dishes (”leftover makeovers” or “leftover remakes”). Earlier in the week we had pork carnitas tacos for dinner, so I mixed the leftover carnitas with some instant mole sauce and made it into sopes. Sopes are little discs of corn masa (like tiny thick tortillas with a lip around the edge) with toppings, typically something like refried beans with grated cheese, onion and hot chili sauce. I ran these under the broiler to make them neater to eat on the go.

Sopes lunch

Contents of my husband’s meal: Homemade sopes with leftover pork carnitas (Del Real brand carnitas from Costco, full thoughts here), mole sauce and Monterey Jack cheese melted on top. Side dish of berenjenas con vainitas (Venezuelan dish of eggplant with green beans) and grape tomatoes. Not shown: a little sauce container with crema (sour cream) for the sopes. I got the recipe from award-winning cookbook The Book of Latin American Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. From the book jacket: She “describes how the Spanish, Portuguese, African, and Middle Eastern influences have combined with the indiginous cooking of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.” An interesting read with extensive commentary on each recipe.

Prep time: 18 minutes, using leftover carnitas and eggplant with green beans. The masa discs for the sopes were ready-made from my local Mexican market, so I heated them up to soften, mixed the already-shredded carnitas with instant mole sauce, assembled and ran them under the broiler to melt the cheese.

Sopes lunch

Packing: I put the side dishes in reusable silicone baking cups to keep the moisture away from the sopes, and used grape tomatoes as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch during transport. Packed in a 500ml Leaflet box with movable divider.

My meal: Contents are the same as my husband’s, with the beans packed in a smaller disposable food cup (”leisure version” — ha ha) to fit the smaller space. Lunch packed in my 470ml Afternoon Tea box without the removable divider (box bought for US$2 at Irving Housewares in San Francisco).

Sopes lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler’s meal: Homemade sopes with chopped carnitas mixed with a little Lizano sauce, topped with cheese. Side dishes of green beans (he was not a fan of the olive-laden eggplant dish), an entire miniature Fuji apple, and a little cup of creme caramel (Kiku brand “Petit Pudding”). Not shown: a little squeeze bottle of crema (sour cream) for the sopes.

Packing: I cut the sopes into quarters to make them easy for little hands to eat, and cut off a thin slice of the apple at the bottom so that it would fit inside of the bento box. A tiny clear plastic spoon for the pudding cup is tucked in alongside the sopes. Lunch packed in a 350ml Power Rangers bento box.

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Published by Biggie on October 15th, 2007 tagged bento, corn tortillas or masa, for kids, glutenfree, leftover remake, meat, phyllo or pancake or other | 6 Comments »

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