August 22 - Mom and daughter lunch

I want to start off with a correction.  I mentioned an Ina Garten roasted eggplant spread in my last post.  I realized later that I did not post the recipe I used but instead another recipe from her trove of instructions on delicious dips and spreads.  The one I like is very similar to the one I posted but it calls for a few extra things like lemon juice and tahini.  I added the correct recipe to the post; you can also see the correct recipe here.

A number of friends and acquaintances have sent me really cute lunch ideas for the coming school year which I promise post about soon.

Today's lunch includes leftovers from last night.  Whenever I haven't planned for dinner, I make an old standby from the Moosewood cookbook, Spinach-Rice Casserole.  I usually have all the ingredients at home (I use frozen spinach if we don't have fresh spinach on hand) so it's pretty easy to make last minute (though you do have to cook the rice first and then back the dish for about 35 minutes so you can decide too last minute).  We had fresh spinach from our CSA box so it made sense to make this dish.  Incidentally if you live in LA and you have a baby, this is likely the dish I will bring to your house.  It's vegetarian and kosher friendly and it's a really big portion which you can eat for a few meals.  It's great food for sleep-deprived new moms and dads.

In addition to the spinach-rice dish I served avocado, cucumbers, carrots, and green and champagne grapes.

Last week I went somewhere that required me to pack a lunch for both me and Juju.  Our mother/daughter meal included leftover almond crusted chicken, string beans and mini heirloom tomatoes for me, and an egg salad sandwich, grapes, cucumbers, strawberries, and carrots for Juju.  I also gave her some sunflower seed butter for dipping the veggies (not shown).