Balanced Meals Unbalanced

One of the hallmarks of maturity is the capacity to consider future consequences of present actions. Children, by definition, lack maturity. What does this have to do with bento? We all have days when there is not that much in the fridge to pack for lunch. We want every meal to be balanced, but the average school cafeteria is a minefield of bad food choices. If you send food your child doesn't like, there are lots of sympathetic friends who will offer alternatives. Can they resist? The fact that your child ate a thing for dinner last night and it's the only "balanced" food in the house is irrelevant if it ends up in the trash.

My philosophy about "what to pack when there's nothing to pack" is, stick to nutritious food you know they'll eat, and balance it over the course of the day. It's just one meal. Imagine this scenario: "Gee, my mom thoughtfully packed me a nutritious lunch, but Lilly says it looks like vomit. She keeps making retching noises. Lilly has kindly offered me half her peanut butter sandwich. However, the jelly may be manufactured using corn syrup, which will give me a tantrum later in the day, so I'll just thank her politely and stoically eat this vomit." If your child is like mine, she will take the proffered sandwich and you will be dealing with a miserable kid all afternoon.

It may seem like the only "real" food in the house is the bean soup from last night, but apples and peanut butter do make a wonderful meal. Seriously. Sometimes I have sent lunches made up mostly of fruit, or cut up vegetables with fake ranch dressing (see recipe below). Sure, I'll try to get some kind of protein and fat in there to help them feel full, but it can be nuts, or cheese, or a couple homemade cookies--even potato chips! Remember the secret weapon for balancing everything up: The after-school snack.

Most kids come home from school ravenous; it's a great time to have something ready that makes up for whatever was missing in their lunch (and if you're really lucky, you'll have time to shop before they get home). You can put cut up vegetables on the table. You can now heat up that bean soup from last night. The hummus that looks like vomit in the lunchroom becomes ambrosia after school. By packing food that is fun to eat and not getting too tied to the food pyramid, you help your child resist temptation at school and come home in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Fake Ranch Dressing

One blob of mayo
One blob of plain yogurt or kefir
a shake of garlic powder
a shake of Italian seasoning or poultry seasoning
a drip of light-colored vinegar or a squeeze of lemon
salt and pepper to taste

This is a great "emergency" dip. Be sure to put it in a container with a tight-fitting lid, or put it in a small lidded container inside a larger lidded container that holds the veggies. You can make a passable main course with a carrot and a stalk of celery, or a little broccoli, or a piece of cucumber, and that last pickle from the jar. If you have some potato chips or tortilla chips, those can be fun to dip, too. Tomorrow, go shopping!

Improvising!

Root salad, asparagus, turkey dog, broccoli, tomato; half-sour pickle, apple, mango gelatin

Time to improvise: Tie the opposite corners of the napkin together--the napkin is both the lunch "bag" and the tablecloth! The ties make a convenient handle.

Stack sandwich boxes together and secure with a rubber band. Put a fork or spoon under the rubber band, if you like.

La Primera left her lunch bag at school yesterday. That can be a stinky problem if I pack shrimp! Usually they keep their leftovers to eat in the car on the way home. If we have an event after school, I pack extra lunch just for that reason.

Today they have karate, so I needed to pack lots of food with no lunch bag. Here's how we rolled: Stack two sandwich boxes, secure with a rubber band, and tie it all up in a big napkin. You can get quite a lot of food into two sandwich boxes, even enough for a karate kid. Heck, you could pack three sandwich boxes if you have a teenager on the swim team. Just put a sandwich in the third sandwich box. (I've never tried it, but it might work! Hee hee!)

Gelatin is a great lunchbox staple, for several reasons. You can make a bunch of them in minutes and have them ready all week. Nutritionally, gelatin helps the body absorb protein and minerals, one reason why soup made with bone broth is so sustaining: When food is scanty, gelatin lets you get more from less. Some parents worry that their kids don't eat enough or don't eat enough "protein." Human breast milk contains 5% or less protein--there is at least that much protein in vegetables, in addition to all the vitamins, minerals and fiber. If you're worried, toss in a gelatin to assure yourself that your child is absorbing maximum nutrition from what they do eat. Vegans and dieters can make a nourishing gelatin with agar that is high in fiber and high in minerals, especially calcium and iron.

Make your gelatin firmer so it's more like Jigglers; that's your insurance that it won't get runny at room temperature. In today's lunch-in-a-napkin, I could not pack the gelatin separately, so I popped it out of the container (which was too tall to fit into the sandwich box) and slid it into a silicone muffin cup. The muffin cups are flexible, making it easy to tuck the gelatin into a corner of the sandwich box.

SUB NOTES: Special diet? No problem!

Vegans can omit the turkey dog or sub a tofu pup, and use agar in the gelatin. Yum! Or leave out the gelatin and put a little cup of peanut butter to go with the apples.

Specific Carbohydrate Diet? We followed this for a while: Make the root salad from celeriac, rutabagas, carrots and golden beets, or whatever legal roots you prefer. Dress with homemade mayo. Instead of hot dog, sub a boiled egg, a slice of cheese or a homemade sausage patty.

Hypertension: This lunch is perfect already! The turkey dog is low fat; go easy on the mayo in the salad.

Diabetic: If you are avoiding fruit juice, sub peanut butter to dip your apples in. You might need to sub something for the root salad. Here is an interesting recipe using green bananas to make a mock potato salad:
http://www.diabetesforum.com/diabetes-recipes/4138-faux-potato-salad.html

Last Minute Lunch Box

Bean thread noodle stir fry, black olives, mango, tomatoes, baby bananas, fruit-juice gelatin, and applesauce

These sandwich boxes are so much fun! This lunch demonstrates a few bento concepts. One is that almost any shallow container with a tight lid can be a lunchbox. These are two sandwich boxes I found on sale at Wegman's. The lids have gaskets and snap on, making them pretty leak proof. Once filled, they stack together snugly and, with a wide rubber band securing them together, they make a beautiful lunch box. You could even go Japanese-style and tie them together with a napkin that will become a little tablecloth. How elegant is that!

Another concept is to scout out and hoard small lidded containers. The gelatin is made in a lidded cup that holds only 4oz of liquid; it's the perfect size for making little desserts or holding small treats like chocolate chips. The cup fits into a slightly deeper square container and can be used to hold hummus or ranch dressing surrounded by veggies--the lid keeps the dip from sloshing out when La Segunda flings her backpack, lunch bag and all, at some unsuspecting boy with cooties.

This lunch was made entirely from stash in 10 minutes. La Primera was attending an all-day babysitting class and I realized that very morning that she would need a lunch. Yikes! She is going through a growth spurt and has a massive appetite these days. Luckily we had leftover noodles and enough produce to make a presentable and filling meal. At $1/pound, the baby bananas cost twice as much as the regular ones, but still, for a buck I got about 7 baby bananas--they fit into containers where they don't get squished, and they bumped up the envy-factor of two day's lunches.

One last tip: If you plan to send leftover rice or noodles in a bento that will be eaten directly from the box, always warm them ahead of time and let them cool back down before you pack them. Noodles and rice become unpleasantly stiff when served cold from the fridge. Except for the hottest days of summer, most foods can safely sit at room temperature from morning till afternoon. We use a pan on the stove, but many bento "pros" keep a stash of cooked rice portions in the freezer, then nuke and cool it in the morning. The first bento blog I ever found has great tips for stash-building and food safety. Check out Lunch in a Box. Biggie's lunches are the bomb!

http://lunchinabox.net