Bunch of lunches catch-up

A million apologies for not updating this blog sooner; I know many of you can't start your day without checking out whether I sent apples or plums to school. . .

It has been a really crazy (and exciting) time with work so I haven't had too much time to write but I have been packing lunches and photographing them so here's what you missed:

One of my favorite lunches packed was right before Purim, a Jewish holiday associated with eating hamentaschen, a triangular shaped butter or sugar cookie with a filling in the middle.  Juju and I made a zillion batches (they are really easy to make) and I loved seeing my Facebook newsfeed fill up with photos of friends making the same cookies with their kids.  Hamantaschen are usually filled with apricot jam or poppy seed pie filling or some other fruit preserve but my friend Lirona gave me a great idea (via Facebook) to use Nutella.  In our case we used chocolate almond butter from Trader Joe's but it was an absolute hit in our house and among Juju's classmates (we sent a batch of choco/almond and apricot ones to school).  I made a few mini cookies perfect for the center square in the Planet Box as you can see in the lunch below.  In addition to the cookie I sent oranges, strawberries, peas, plums, a cheese and avocado sandwich, and small flowers made with cucumber and strawberries. 

My amazingly talented friend Jill told me that I inspired her to get a Planetbox for her son and she sent me a photo of the first lunch her husband Bruce packed.  They are self-conscious that it isn't "good enough" but I think it looks great.  I also loved that Bruce pointed out creative lunches like these are a fantastic way to teach our kids to design.  I completely agree and hope they send me more photos like this one!:

Lunch by Jill & Bruce:

And here are a few more lunches I packed over the last two weeks:

Heart-shaped sandwich (I can't remember what was inside - cheese and avocado maybe?  Or it coud be hummus. . .) oranges, tomatoes and peas, a cut up nectarine, and mini hamentaschen for dessert.

Homemade chicken fingers cut up, strawberries and plums, cucumbers in the shapes of hearts and stars, avocado, orange slices, cut up hamentaschen.

Homemade chicken fingers with marinara dipping sauce, strawberries and cantaloupe, cucumber sticks, avocado, and granola for dessert.

Gemelli pasta with cheese and broccoli, orange slices, cantaloupe, strawberries, cucumber, and a half of a Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie.

Homemade chicken finger (made with almondmeal instead of breadcrumbs) with marinara dipping sauce, spinach pasta, strawberries, carrots, cucumber sticks with hummus for dipping, chocolate for dessert.

Chicken meatballs, avocado, peas, string beans with cucumber and strawberry "flowers," hummus with carrots and cucumber for dipping, and a chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

More updates soon!

Lunch on September 13 - First day of school!

Yay the day finally came!  Nursery school started today and things went pretty well considering Juju was at a new school and instead of 2 days a week she is now going all 5 days.  I couldn't ask for much more on the lunch front; her nervous energy must have helped her work up quite an appetite because she ate everything I packed.

Today I served hummus and carrots for snack, and sushi with edamame and fruit for lunch.  I probably should have made something special for the first day of school but she loves sushi and had fun picking it out herself at the market so we went with that.

In addition to now packing a lunch every day, I also have to pack a snack.  At her old school snack was provided which I definitely appreciated.  This year we were given a special snack bag just for snack.  I've included a photo below.  This is probably one of the more boring photos I have posted here but hey, you are reading a blog about one kid's school lunch so what do you expect?

And here is the first day of lunch all ready to go.  I am still not sure why I am bringing two bags with food to school since they eat lunch and snack in the same place and both sit in her cubby all day but I guess this makes it easier when it's time to eat?

Here's hoping for another great year!

Lunch on June 9 - Middle East meets Far East

Lunch tomorrow is a little unusual.  I'm not sure I would like the flavor combinations but Juju doesn't really seem to mind if things don't exactly "go" together provided she likes both things separately.  This mentality spills over into her fashion sense too.  Since she's comfortable mixing so many colors and prints that she likes I've taken her lead and mixed a few dishes as well.

 

Tomorrow's lunch includes sushi, celery, carrots and hummus, and a side of cantaloupe.  It just hit me that this may not be the most filling lunch.  Perhaps I'll throw in a fabric snack bag filled with edamame.  The dog-pick is for color and unintentionally matches the pink silverware set.  The matchey-ness of the two proves there are no accidents.

My friend Amy brought over some delicious cookies this evening (she claims they are made with whole wheat flour but they taste just as good as regular cookies so I don't believe her).  I want to send one to school with Juju but alas I am afraid it will be confiscated.  Juju asked for peanut butter today when I handed her a celery stick but I was afraid to pack it in tomorrow's lunch (hence the hummus substitute).  I don't recall being told we can't send peanut products to school but these days I'm pretty sure they are a no-no anywhere.  When did packing a lunch get so hard?  There are so many rules to remember!

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 Friday, May 13 - Pressed for ideas, I made a sandwich

Friday's lunch included a sandwich.  You may remember that I don't do sandwiches largely because Juju still can't figure out what to do when one is handed to her. 

Then, I had the idea to make her a sandwich "pocket," kind of like those disgusting (though oddly appealing) Smucker's Crustable things.  I found a really cool contraption at the Japanese Tokyo Outlet to help me and I am really excited about it.  Well, as excited as one can be about a lunch accessory.  By the way, I know it sounds like I spend my days shopping and lunching at the Japanese Village Plaza downtown but sadly I don't.  One of my vendors for my business is right there so whenever I am in the area for a meeting I take a quick walk over to see what's new.  I don't think I've ever spent more than $2.49 on an item there so it's a great place to go for cheap lunch inspiration.  

 If only I read Japanese I could tell you the name of this sandwich press or where to get it (other than in downtown LA) but I am sure they exist anywhere.  In the case of this one, you place a piece of bread on the press, add your "filling" (in this case I used hummus), place another piece of bread on top, and press down.  You are left with a sealed rounded square sandwich with no crust and no place for your "filling" to spill out.  (See photo below for the resulting sandwich).

I was concerned that my whole grain sandwich bread would be too stiff for the press but it worked fine.   You can see what remains behind after removing the sandwich from the press in the photo at left.  I am not quite sure why there is a heart on the top of the sandwich press since it does not make any indentation on the sandwich.  I can only surmise it's there because the Japanese needed to find some way to make even something like this look cute.

Yes I am aware that the press is plastic and we don't tend to like a lot of plastic around here.  All I can say is that the food is in the press for less than 30 seconds and I hand wash it.

Along with the hummus sandwich today's lunch included cottage cheese and cantaloupe with grapes.

Unfortunately, despite my efforts, much of this lunch went uneaten due to far more exciting things than a sandwich, I'm sure.  She has however eaten other pressed sandwiches since then and the result has been great and mess-free!

Lunch on April 5, 2011 - Pasta Salad Plus

The idea of making lunches twice a week for my daughter is still fairly new and exciting considering we really like to cook (and eat) in this house and I usually pay a fair amount of attention to presentation.  Having this blog though has really thrown things into overdrive.  I will confess I actually thought about printing out the photo of the lunch above and taping it inside Juju's lunchbox so her teachers would know how to arrange the food in front of her and which container to open first.  Yes, I am aware that that is going overboard but if thoughts like that disturb you, you should probably stop reading this blog now; I imagine stressing over decisions like whether or not to print out lunch diagrams will be commonplace as I plan and execute more lunches and you need to be okay with that.

Today's lunch is actually tomorrow's lunch.  Although I like to pack food as fresh as possible, I simply have more time today than I will tomorrow morning so I've already made the lunch.  Also, the main dish is a pasta salad which I find tastes better the next day anyway.  Joining the pasta salad is a container of strawberries and grapes and a container of mini carrots to dip in hummus (while I loathe Costco, it's only redeeming values to me are cheap, quality kids pajamas and the fact that you can find individual servings of Sabra hummus there).

I have been thinking about making pasta salad since last week.  I know most kids gobble up any sort of noodle but I wanted to move beyond the prosaic mac and cheese.  Plus this lunch is served cold with no option to heat it up so I wanted a pasta dish that was best served at room temperature.  I made up the following recipe; the portions are totally up to you and I apologize that I am not actually a proper recipe writer. 

Pasta Salad Plus - this recipe will give you enough for 3-4 lunches
Cook 1/2 box of mini bow tie pasta. 
While it's cooking, place 1/3 package of frozen corn in a big bowl (don't worry about the moisture as it defrosts).  You can also use fresh or canned corn.
Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a pan and add 1/2 clove of chopped garlic.  Stir and cook the garlic long enough to flavor the oil but don't let it get brown (you don't want to burn it).  When the oil starts to bubble, turn it off and let the garlic hang out in the oil off of the heat.  You may leave out the garlic if you don't like it but I find it really adds a great flavor to the dish.
Cut in half sugar plum tomatoes, as many as you like.
Chop up some fresh basil (optional, I just do this for color) or better yet, to save time, buy the frozen kind made by a company called Dorot sold at Trader Joe's and elsewhere.  Get your chopped garlic from Dorot too - this company has changed my life!
Chop up fresh mozzarella cheese (I used one big hunk, about the size of a fist)
Chop in half black and green olives (optional, I did this because my kid is obsessed with olives)
Drain pasta when cooked al dente and add it to the bowl with the corn.  Add the tomatoes, basil, cheese, olives, and salt and pepper to taste.  Add the oil and mix thoroughly.  If the pasta salad is too dry add more oil to taste.
Put some in containers for your child and eat the rest yourself!
It's best if you can make this dish a day or two before, the flavors taste even better when they've marinated overnight.

Fingers crossed the pasta salad is a hit; I don't actually have any kid feedback yet but I quite enjoyed the sample I had.  And I had enough to send my husband a container for lunch as well which is always a plus.  Today's lunch was served in Kids Konserve stainless steel containers.  I promise a post on all the containers I use very soon.