Leap day lunch

Tomorrow is leap day.  I thought about coming up with some sort of fun leap-themed lunch but Juju is 3 and a half which means she doesn't even know tomorrow is a Wednesday, let alone a day that only happens once every four years.  I think I'll just include a cute drawing in her lunch and call it a day.

Leaping off an idea from one of Leemore's lunches, I made star avocado and muenster cheese sandwiches.  They are joined by Persian cucumbers from the Hollywood Farmer's market that are among the best cucumbers I've ever had, HFM fresh peas, strawberries, kiwis, heirloom tomato slices and pomegranate seeds for dessert.  I also packed some Greek yogurt (not shown) for snack.

Today's lunch was leftover chicken and rice (the KOAM made a roast chicken again on Monday, I'm starting to feel like the Jeffrey to his Ina Garten. . .and I like it!), plums, strawberries, avocado, clementines, cucumber teddy bears and a caramel wafer cookie for dessert.  The cookies came to me from my friend Lynn, and not Leemore as previously reported (I can not credit Leemore with everything here!  Thanks Marisa for the heads up!).

Happy leap day everyone!

Lunch on July 29 - Chicken, broccoli and pita

I decided not to send tonight's leftovers to school tomorrow.  We had spanakopita which was great but I don't think it would taste very good cold.

Instead I am sending plain chicken, broccoli, grapes and clementines, and pita bites filled with leftover spinach dip from Mah Jongg night.   (Incidentally, if you play Mah Jongg and you live in LA (anywhere between West Hollywood and Echo Park), please let me know, I'd love to find more people to play with!)

Next week I'll get a packet from Julian's new school which will give me some information about the hot lunch program when she starts in the fall.  I think I might decide to order the hot lunch on some days depending on what's offered and how expensive it is.  I'll include the info here when I have it.  I wonder what it will all mean for the fate of this blog.  We'll see. . .

Lunch on June 14, 2011 - cornflake cuteness

I was just looking at my earlier entries when I made use of cookie cutters and other lunch accessories.  Lately I haven't been putting as much effort into lunchmaking and today's lunch proves it.  I'm serving leftovers again today.  Maybe this summer I'll get more inspired and work on some new recipes and play with presentation.

 

Lunch today is leftover cornflake chicken, pasta with vodka sauce, grapes and carrots, and half an avocado (not pictured).  

I don't usually have cornflakes in the house but I needed them for a recipe last month (noodle kugel) and the rest of the box has been sitting on a shelf ever since.  I remember my Grandma Ada used to make cornflake chicken when I was a kid.  I don't have her recipe but I was sure it wasn't very complicated so I figured I would make it up.  When I was in the kitchen crushing up the cornflakes I suddenly remembered a great honey fried chicken dish I had in February at the new restaurant Craig's here in LA and decided to incorporate honey into what I was making.

So here is what I did:

I cracked two eggs into a bowl, added some salt, pepper, and honey and beat it together.  I took chicken tenders (or you can do chicken breasts) and dipped each one in the egg wash and then into a bowl of crushed cornflakes.  I put all the coated pieces on a cookie sheet (sprayed with Pam) and baked them at 350 for about 30 minutes or so.  I didn't bother to turn them.  When they came out I melted a little honey in the microwave (watch out, it's hot!!) and poured a touch on top (you can also leave it on the side for dipping).  The result was pretty good.  Maybe not as good as at Craig's but pretty good for at home.  Let's hope Juju thinks it works cold.

Lunch on June 6, 2011 - Leftovers for lunch and leftovers for blogging

I've been a bit behind on blogging.  Last week I decided to focus my energies on my actual day job.  If only I got paid to do this blog; it could be really good.

But alas, here is a compendium of things Juju ate for lunch last week and will eat for lunch tomorrow.

Tomorrow I am serving leftovers from tonight's dinner of artichoke (I know, I know, enough with the artichokes.  I'm sorry, they are still in bloom and still delicious!!), semi-homemade pizza, salad, edamame, and strawberries.

 

The pizza is semi-homemade because I did not make the dough.  I used Trader Joe's dough to make two pizzas.  One was cheese and mushroom (obvs) on wheat dough, the other was cheese on herbed dough.  Both were really good.  I will likely have leftovers myself for lunch tomorrow.

Last Thursday (June 2) Juju had strawberries, carrots, leftover chicken, and whole wheat pita sandwiches filled with edamame hummus and thin carrot slices.  It still weirds me out to send chicken for lunch (for some of my formative brown-bagging-it years I went to a Jewish Day School that forbid anything but a dairy lunch) but Juju always eats it so if I have it around, I pack it.

 

On the Tuesday before that (May 31) I was really desperate with not much in the house (we went out of town last week so I didn't do much stocking up at the grocery store).  So, I scraped together a few strawberries, cut some corn off the cob, opened a bag of edamame, and hardboiled some eggs.  You'll notice I used my egg molds here and made one bunny egg and one teddy bear egg.  I really don't like the teddy bear mold.  It's near impossible to get the egg to move into the "ears" of the mold so it doesn't really work.  Juju must agree.  She only picked at the bear one and preferred to eat the bunny instead.  I made use of fake grass from an earlier sushi meal to liven up the egg section of the container and I threw in the giraffe pick to give the whole lunch some more color.

 

I used my Lunchbots Trio for all three meals.  If you are interested in Lunchbots, you might want to check out the Gilt Groupe sale going on right now for the entire line.  The savings are very minimal, so you might prefer to purchase them from elsewhere but it's worth a look, particularly if you have some Gilt credit.  If you are not a member of Gilt Groupe, that link above will allow you to sign up (full disclosure - I get some sort of credit when you make your first purchase on the site.  I promise to use it on something good!).

Lunch on May 12, 2011 - Leftovers for lunch

I had a great culinary experience tonight, sampling from various LA foodtrucks that I drove about 20 miles in rush hour traffic to eat from.  Yes, I know the LA Times has declared that food trucks are so over but after dinner I went shopping and tried on a top with shoulder pads so clearly I am reluctant to give up on things I actually like for the sake of being trendy.  Well, I am not sure I like all shoulder pads (or food trucks for that matter) but the ones I saw tonight worked.

Despite the fact that I ate well tonight (or perhaps because of it) Juju will be dining on leftovers tomorrow.

 

Lunch includes chicken and brown rice, cantaloupe and grapes, and roasted carrots with onion and shallots.  The dinner this lunch came from was really easy to make.  I am a big fan of Trader Joe's marinades.  Although some are loaded with sugar, there are a few that are really light and tasty and go very well with beef, chicken, fish, etc.  I like to have a bottle or two in the pantry for when I get lazy about dinner.  I can't remember which marinade this was, but it definitely had a lot of soy sauce in it with a hint of honey, or something sweet.  I marinated the chicken in it overnight and then just threw  the chicken pieces and marinade into the oven.  

I made the brown rice in a rice cooker and added some garlic and shallots to the rice and water (the shallots were left over from the mustard roasted fish I made on Monday).  The shallots totally disintegrated when the rice was finished cooking which I wasn't expecting.  The sauce from the chicken poured over the rice was out of this world.   

And just as I was throwing dinner together, The King of All Media noticed we had some leftover carrots in the fridge from when Juju visited a farm last week.  Some horse is pretty sad that she left without feeding these to him.  But I'm glad they were around because we have a little theory in our house and these carrots helped us test it.  We believe that if you throw some kosher salt, pepper, olive oil (and sometimes garlic and/or onion) on any vegetable and roast it at 425 degrees, it will taste fantastic no matter what it is (this is very similar to the theory that anything fried is good).  So, since these sad carrots had nowhere to go but up, we peeled them, chopped them, and threw them together with some onions, shallots, salt, pepper, and oil.  The result: delicious!  The onions got all brown and caramelized and you could really taste the sweetness of the carrots.  I don't know how the dish will taste in a cold school lunch but I figured I would send them and see what happens.

For Friday's lunch I'm going to make a sandwich.  But it's not what you think. . . 

Lunch on May 6, 2011 - devoid of color but not of flavor

Today's lunch isn't very pretty.  Even though it lacks color there is definitely some flavor in all this bland.

I am serving brown rice and chicken (with some soy sauce glaze), watermelon, and the heart of a large and DELICIOUS artichoke.  I simply can't get enough artichokes these days, they keep getting better and better.  Strawberries however have been consistently bad no matter where I get them.  What gives?