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).

Lunch on April 22 - Passover Provisions and a Pink Puppy

As I mentioned it's Spring Break so I only had to pack a lunch one day this week but in addition to Juju's lunch, I had to pack food for three adults as well.  And it's Passover so I had some extra limitations.  But, I think I made out pretty well.

I mentioned my friend Annie H. gave me a great baby frittata recipe perfect for kiddos.  I didn't follow her recipe exactly, I mostly used my own (this one features leeks, mushrooms, and spinach), but I did use her idea of baking in mini muffin tins.  I also baked some of the frittata in large muffin tins for the adults. 

I wanted to find a nice complement to the eggs, something that could easily take the place of bread.  I settled on a new Passover favorite: quinoa.  I realize some very observant people don't consider quinoa kosher for Passover but I am not one of those people; abstaining from bread and grains and a whole bunch of legumes and peanuts is plenty deprivation for me.

I haven't had time to shop for groceries for a few days since we've eaten out the last three nights so I made up a quinoa recipe with things I had around the house.  I'd give it a B, maybe a B+.  I was trying to replicate a sweeter quinoa salad that was served at my second seder but fell short.  This is good, just not exactly what I was going for.

Here's how I made it: I toasted 1 cup quinoa with 1 tablespoon of oil in a small pot on the stove. When the quinoa was toasted (but not burnt!) I added 2 cups of water, let it come to a boil, then simmered it  covered for about 15 minutes.  I usually cook quinoa with a clove of chopped garlic but since I was going for a sweeter taste, I left it out (but I did add some salt).  Once the quinoa was cooked and cooled, I threw it into a bowl and started mixing things into it.  I cut up some scallions and threw in a pack of dried raisins and cherries my friend Marla brought me from Seattle.  I also threw in some chopped walnuts since I wanted more of a crunch.  For the wet stuff I added some oil and vinegar.  With quinoa you can really add any oil: vegetable, sesame, olive, etc.  Then I squeezed the juice of a lemon Juju picked at a friend's house the other day and voila, quinoa salad!  I am hoping the flavors blend a bit more tonight so the salad is even more flavorful tomorrow.

Here is how the adults' lunches came out - everyone got two regular size muffin tin frittatas and the quinoa salad.  I like presenting things on lettuce for the color and it helps to keep the two dishes separate which I think makes them more appealing.  Since these lunches are for adults I packed them in glass, my favorite way to store food (but sadly not very kid friendly).  These are Snapware Glasslock containers that used to be really hard to find but are now everywhere like at Target and Bed Bath and Beyond.  I think the best prices for them are still at Costco which used to be the only place I could find them.

 

I gave Juju a small cup of the quinoa salad (not shown), four baby frittatas, mango, cantaloupe, and clementine segments, and three Passover macaroons.  The pink puppy is yet another Japanese style lunch "fascinator."

 

Only 4 more days of this holiday to go.  Then I'll focus on another eating challenge: we are considering going vegan for a week sometime in the near future.  Can you believe it?  I can not.  More on that later as I work up the courage to plan it out. . .

Leftovers for lunch

I thought I would share some things we serve for lunch around here when Juju isn't at school.  I won't be sharing any photos because generally we eat a lot of leftovers and they aren't so pretty.

Here is what we made for dinner on Monday and Tuesday night that we will be calling lunch this week:

Monday night - homemade turkey meatloaf and brussels sprouts
The turkey meatloaf recipe comes via Ina Garten.  I always knew about it but it wasn't until my friend Missy made it a few months ago and I sampled some that I started making it on a fairly regular basis.  We've actually not been cooking much meat in our house lately but this was an exception.  And a delicious one at that.  The recipe is here.  Ina calls for 5 pounds of meat which is kind of crazy for a family of three like ours.  On Missy's recommendation we only used 3 pounds of meat (which still yields an enormous meatloaf) but did not cut back on any of the other ingredients.  The result is a very flavorful loaf.  Ina calls for all white meat turkey but I am sure the recipe will only be enhanced by using some dark meat as well.

The brussels sprouts came from the Hollywood Farmer's Market.  My recipe is really easy and something I learned by watching Ina Garten roast a dozen other vegetables.  It was also inspired by the amazing brussels sprouts I had at my friend Maggie's wedding last month.  YUM!  These sprouts were really big so I cut each of them in half and some in quarters (I also trimmed the ends).  I put them all in a big bowl with a chopped onion and several whole cloves of garlic (no Dorot this time, I actually had to peel the garlic myself!).  Then I drizzled a good amount of olive oil, salt, and pepper over the top and mixed everything with clean hands to make sure all of the sprouts were coated.  I turned the bowl over onto an ungreased cookie sheet and roasted the sprouts at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.  I know brussels sprouts get a bad rap but these were SO delicious.  Unlike the meatloaf, the sprouts really do taste much better the night they are made and aren't such a great idea for leftovers.


Tuesday night - homemade vegetarian moussaka and spanikopita 
We've been doing a lot of vegetarian cooking these days and have been using this Moosewood cookbook as our bible.  These recipes were actually prepared by my husband who all of a sudden decided he wanted to cook two extremely labor intensive meals at home.  He agreed to clean up the mess so I couldn't argue with that and he's actually a really great cook with more patience than I.  You'll have to buy the book for the official recipes but I did find this spanikopita recipe and this moussaka recipe online which are quite similar to the ones we used.  The spinach for the spanikopita came from the Hollywood Farmer's Market but save your time, money and energy and use the frozen kind, it will probably taste the same.  Both recipes are what my mother-in-law would call pichkarye (peetsch-kar-eye) which translates loosely into pain in the tush so save your time while you can.  But don't leave the cinnamon out of the moussaka if you do try it.  It gave the whole dish a really unique flavor and I never would have expected to use cinnamon in something like this.  Juju enjoyed this meal although truth be told if there are mushrooms in anything, she will eat it.

I grew up in a house where we rarely ate leftovers.  My mom usually made the right amount of food for dinner and my Dad hates leftovers so we didn't see too many.  But these days I am married to someone I like to call "Camp Cook."  My husband is very efficient and conscious of resources in so many aspects of his life (we live in LA and he rides the subway and buses, he find industrious ways to reuse almost anything nonrecyclable that enters our house, etc) and leftovers are no exception.  He finds a way to reinvent leftover foods (much the way the cook at my camp did if there were too many leftovers of one particular thing after a meal) and if he can't, he makes sure to take the leftovers to work for lunch the next day.  I appreciate his interest in not wanting to wasting food (and happy that Juju and I are rarely recruited to be a part of his efforts!)