avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom in San Francisco, & former expat fluent in Japanese.
Archive for October, 2007
Weird Pokemon lunch bag cloth
When I was shopping at Ichiban Kan in San Francisco the other week, I stumbled across a strange Pokemon lunch bag that I initially thought was an ordinary lunch cloth (like a cloth napkin or furoshiki wrapping cloth). When I got it home, however, I discovered that it was actually a weird cross between a wrapping cloth and a lunch bag.
The bottom and sides are sewn together so that you can just drop in a bento box and any other lunch gear, then simply knot the top to close it securely (similar to the Otsukai Tsutsumi illustrated in this cool wrapping chart). I’ve used furoshiki, cloth napkins, and dish towels to tie flimsy bento lunches together and throw into a backpack before, but I can see this being a fun way to ease a child into lunch wrapping without a lot of skill involved. I’d seen a similar Shinkansen-themed lunch bag on Amazon before, but it hadn’t really sunk in that this was how it was supposed to be used — now I get it! Ingenious. (Click on any of the photos for a larger view.)
Here I put Bug’s two-tier pasta lunch inside (shown below), along with a fork, cloth napkin, and damp oshibori hand towel and case. It looks cool, but he went on strike when I asked him to practice opening it, and requested his new Cars lunch bag instead (”I can use just two fingers to open that one!”). We’ll practice some more before I send him to preschool with it so I can be sure he can open it by himself, but it’s hard to compete with Cars!
Contents of Wednesday preschooler lunch: Radiator-shaped radiatore pasta with leftover slow-cooked salmon (salmon recipe here) mixed with tomato-based sauce and sauteed onions with bell peppers. The fruit tier holds gold kiwifruit, tangerine slice and a strawberry.
Morning prep time: 4 minutes, using leftover pasta. The night before, I packed the pasta tier when cleaning up from dinner. So in the morning I just cut the kiwi, cut another wedge off the rapidly shrinking tangerine from the fridge, and quickly microwaved the pasta to restore texture. Very simple lunch this day, nothing fancy.
Packing: Packed in two tiers (180ml and 100ml) of a 4-tier nesting and stacking Thomas the Tank Engine bento box set. I included a small Anpanman pick for the kiwi.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Bug ate everything at preschool except the kiwi, which he ate in the car afterwards.
Contents of Thursday preschooler lunch: Half of a bagel sandwich with cream cheese, grapes, grape tomatoes, and a tiny Manzano banana (smaller and drier than a baby banana, with a slight apple flavor).
Morning prep time: 4 minutes
Packing: I started peeling the banana by cracking open the stem end to make it easier for Bug to peel himself. The interesting thing about this lunch is that I lined the child-sized Snoopy collapsible sandwich case with decorative aluminum foil to keep any cream cheese from escaping through the holes in the bottom or sides. Although I usually pack sandwiches directly in these kinds of ventilated sandwich cases without any kind of lining, my friend Mami (Japanese mother of one of Bug’s classmates) tells me that she always lines hers with colorful plastic wrap to keep things tidy and clean. Her theory is that Japanese-language bento cookbooks don’t often show photos of the plastic-wrap-lined boxes because it looks nicer without the wrap. What do you think?
Verdict: Bug ate the bagel sandwich and a couple of tomatoes at prechool, then ate the banana and remainder of the tomatoes in the car afterwards. For some reason the grapes were uninteresting to him, so I wound up eating those myself.
READ MORE:
- Full review of a collapsible sandwich case
- Feel at Ease sandwich case
- Long $1 sandwich case
- Top 7 things to do with leftover food scraps
- Hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations
- Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews
Published by Biggie on October 13th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, leftover remake, pasta or noodles, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap, tutorial or how to, vegetarian | 13 Comments »
Carnitas lunch in Disney Cars gear
Okay, so I gave in to my son’s fixation with the Disney Cars movie and got him some Cars-themed bento gear for his third birthday. Listen to me preach that you don’t need cute, expensive gear to pack lunch, and then watch me do exactly the opposite. D’oh! Seriously, I have a problem: “My name is Biggie and I’m a bento-holic.” In any event, the box is well designed for little hands and the lunch bag is now Bug’s favorite, so expect to see more lunches in Cars gear.
Contents of preschooler lunch: Inarizushi (seasoned sushi rice in abura-age tofu skins, recipe here), prune half, strawberry, steamed green beans with bottled Korean barbecue sauce, and shredded pork carnitas. The carnitas is Del Real brand from Costco (raved about here on Kalyn’s Kitchen) — tasty and convenient, but not low-fat by any stretch of the imagination. I’m thinking about different leftover remakes for the remaining carnitas… Verdict: Good, over time. Bug ate the inarizushi, tomatoes and strawberry at preschool, then the rest in the car when I picked him up.
Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using frozen inarizushi and leftover carnitas. The microwave was busy for this lunch. In the morning I microwaved the frozen wrapped sushi to restore texture, quickly cooked three green beans in my microwave mini steamer, and briefly nuked the carnitas to take the chill off.
Packing: The 360ml box comes with two removable inner containers, and I removed one to fit more food in one half. The beans went into a reusable silicone baking cup (mini), and the carnitas went into a Cars-themed paper cupcake liner that a preschool friend gave Bug for his birthday. All of Bug’s lunch gear (the lunch, a wet oshibori hand towel and case, and a little lunch cloth) went inside of a Cars “kinchaku” lunch bag with drawstring and cloth handles. It’s Bug’s responsibility to carry his lunch into preschool and put it into his cubby by himself, and this bag/box combo is his easy-carry favorite at the moment. Lightning McQueen bento box and bag are from Moritaya in San Francisco’s Japantown.
Gear note: The wings (or flaps) on this box are particularly deep, giving little children extra leverage to make the box easier to open. This is a common issue that parents of preschoolers should be familiar with: is your child able to open and close all of their lunch gear on their own? When in doubt, practice with them beforehand. You may be able to save them some frustration and embarrassment.
READ MORE:
- Top 7 things to do with leftover food scraps
- Hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations
- Need for speed: A mommy’s lunch manifesto
- How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillersâ€
- Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews
Published by Biggie on October 10th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, onigiri or sushi | 21 Comments »
Preschooler lunch round-up
Today I’ve got a couple of my son’s lunches from last week to clear before we get into this week’s lunches. I’m finding that even if Bug doesn’t eat the entire bento at preschool itself, he finishes everything up in the car after I pick him up (15 minutes after his lunch ends). I haven’t yet deciphered the pattern between amount of food packed vs. how much he leaves; sometimes he’ll eat all of a 350ml lunch, other days he’ll leave a third. I previously wrote guidelines on choosing the right size bento box, with a table with the appropriate size box by age group and gender. This is pretty much on target for Bug so far.
Contents of Thursday preschooler lunch: Hummus, pita bread triangles, chicken salad from Costco, kiwi, strawberry and an orange slice.
Morning prep time: 5 minutes, having pre-packed the hummus, pita and chicken salad the night before. In the morning I just cut up the fruit.
Packing: The viscous hummus went into a plastic food cup to keep it away from the dry pita bread, and I used a little plastic food divider between the chicken salad and fruit. I cut between the orange skin and the flesh of the orange almost all the way down the segment, making it easy for Bug to eat. I also partially sliced the strawberry so Bug wouldn’t take a huge bite and choke (you laugh, but it happens sometimes!). I used a paring knife for the strawberry, but egg slicers are also handy for that, as I wrote in this egg slicer post. The lunch is packed in a new 360ml Cars bento box, and the kiwi got a tiny pick for little hands.
Verdict: Mixed. Bug left the pita and hummus, eating only the chicken salad and fruit during preschool. In the car afterwards, though, he happily ate all the pita and hummus after I picked the parsley garnish off. Note to self: don’t bother with parsley garnish in the future! But so much brown or beige in a lunch??? Ugh.
Contents of Friday preschooler lunch: Pork and leek Shandong dumplings, corn on the cob, plum tomatoes, an orange slice, and lauki bhaji (north Indian dish of zucchini braised in tomato cumin sauce). I got the speedy zucchini recipe from Julie Sahni’s cookbook Moghul Microwave that I wrote about in my post on weekday Indian lunches. The dumplings are my new favorite brand: Wei Chuan. They’ve got a variety of distinct flavors, and the pork in these frozen dumplings was raw so it cooked up juicy and tender upon boiling. Not as fast as some of the precooked varieties (Wei Chuan makes those too), but exceptional flavor.
Morning prep time: 10 minutes, mostly boiling the dumplings.
Packing: I put the zucchini in a reusable silicone baking cup to keep it away from the corn, and put some dipping sauce into a tiny blue sauce container that Bug is able to open by himself. Packed in a 350ml Power Rangers bento box, and the fruit got a tiny pick for little hands.
Verdict: 3-year-old Bug ate everything in the main box at preschool, then ate the fruit in the little container in the car. Dumplings and corn are always a hit with my son, but I was especially pleased that he ate all of the Indian zucchini as he’d been requesting some without cumin at dinner (uh, sorry kid).
(Disclaimer: I have no commercial affiliation with Wei Chuan, I just like their dumplings.)
READ MORE:
- Top 7 things to do with leftover food scraps
- Hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations
- Need for speed: A mommy’s lunch manifesto
- How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillersâ€
- Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews
Published by Biggie on October 8th, 2007 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, for kids, lactose free, meat, phyllo or pancake or other, poultry | 22 Comments »
Tarako spaghetti lunches
Making bento lunches for preschool five days a week is no problem so far, but keeping up with the blogging is! I may have to rethink how many of Bug’s lunches I blog about — not all of them are necessarily photo-worthy, and I’d like to keep quality high and focused on speedy lunch packing. I may write in-depth about three or so a week, and then do a roundup post with the remainder for people just looking for quick visual ideas. The jury’s still out, but it’s something I’m weighing.
Contents of my lunch: Tarako spaghetti with onions, red bell peppers and kaiware (daikon sprouts). The top tier holds a section of corn on the cob, plum tomatoes, broccoli with red wine vinaigrette, black Mission fig, and grapes. Tarako is salted cod roe, but I often use jarred Greek tarama for this dish instead.
Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover pasta and corn. I pre-packed the pasta when cleaning up from dinner. In the morning I briefly microwaved the pasta to restore texture, garnished with fresh kaiware, steamed the broccoli in my microwave mini steamer (speeding up cooking time by 50%), and arranged food in the the top tier.
Packing: I used tongs to twist the spaghetti into two large loose nests, making the pasta tier a little nicer looking. Nothing in the top tier was particularly wet, so I didn’t use food dividers (edible or otherwise). Packed in a 580ml two-tier Urara Dragonfly box.
Cooking: Here’s a tarako spaghetti recipe with good notes. I start by sauteing an onion and bell pepper if I have some on hand for color contrast. In Osaka I often had it with a little Kewpie mayonnaise stirred into it. Other variations omit the cream in favor of sauteing in butter and tossing in mirin/tarako/mayo (that’s what I did here). However you vary it, it’s bound to be good — just get the sauce loose enough to lightly coat the noodles.
Preschooler lunch: Contents are the same as mine. For packing, I used kitchen scissors to cut up the spaghetti into smaller bits (right in the box) that are easier for little hands to manage. Packed in a 270ml one-tier Thomas the Tank Engine box with one hard plastic sub-container removed to fit more pasta, and a 150ml Anpanman side dish container for the fruit. After taking the photo I tucked in a little Anpanman pick for the fruit. Verdict: 5 stars. Bug ate all of this at preschool, nothing left over. Success!
(Cross-posted to The Daily Tiffin parenting and lifestyle blog’s Tiffin Tuesday column.)
READ MORE:
- Freezing unsauced pasta (how-to)
- Using frozen pasta to make quick pasta salad lunches
- Leftover Remake: Curry pasta lunches
- Speed Technique Overview: A mommy’s lunch manifesto
- How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillersâ€
- Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews