Summer Lunch Strategies

What to pack for lunch when it's so danged hot out? It's the eternal summer question, right after "Mom, where's my swimming suit?" (Actually, the two most-asked questions are "Who left the door open?" and "Were you raised in a barn?")

If the lunch is kept in a climate-controlled room or in a cooler, proceed as usual, of course. If the lunch will be kept outside, you need strategies. Even the best lightweight insulated lunch bag with an icepack in it will only keep for cool for so long. If the food is well-chilled, if there are a few frozen components like frozen nuts or peas, and if there is a frozen juice or water bottle inside, the lunch will stay nice for three or four hours in the shade, depending on the heat. That might be enough for most circumstances. However, if it's super hot, or your diner is likely to leave the lunch bag in the sun, you need a new strategy.

In some conditions, you may want to use a small, hard-sided cooler with both an icepack and a frozen beverage inside. Rigid coolers insulate much longer, but they're heavy; you could send it to day camp, but not on a hike. This setup would allow you to pack most of the foods you have been using all year.

My strategy for hot days is raw produce, and not very much of it. Anyone who is not in a climate-controlled environment will be too hot to eat anyway. Pack cut-up fruit, crispy vegetables, dried fruit and nuts, and dried seaweed, if your kids like it. A few chips or crackers can be good, too. None of these foods will spoil easily. Cheese and jello melt, so don't even try. Boiled eggs are usually fine, but save deviled eggs for more temperate weather.

It is prudent to send along some wipes, or a small bottle of hand sanitizer, or even a few individually-wrapped alcohol swabs. Outdoors facilities are notoriously scarce and/or unpleasant; it's handy to be able to wash up before a meal without having to hike around. Wipes, swabs and hand sanitizer are also very useful for the following hot-weather tip, sure to become a seasonal favorite:


Bento Mom's Fail-Safe, Field-Tested, Pit Purification Protocol

If one is out and about in warm weather and discovers more fragrance coming from the shirt region than is socially acceptable, simply retire to the nearest restroom and use hand sanitizer or alcohol swabs to wipe the offending area. Repeat periodically as necessary. Bacteria is often the culprit in these situations, and Bento Mom's protocol knocks them out. This is a good tip for the preteens and teens among us who are not only more fragrant, with sharper senses, than we adults, but also still care what other people think. A few alcohol wipes or a small bottle of hand sanitizer are easy to carry discreetly.

Chips and Salsa and Guacamole

Organic blue corn chips with flax (from Target), salsa, guacamole, dried mango with chile; snap peas, radish and grapes.

Summer CSA season is here! Yesterday we picked up our produce, and La Segunda went out in the field and picked snap peas while La Primera and her friend climbed a tree. It's always fun to put fresh local produce into the lunchbox, especially if the kids helped pick it (or even choose it) themselves.

This lunch went together very quickly. You can pack everything but the dips the night before--keep the container of produce in the fridge. In the morning make the guacamole; you can make it the night before if you have to, but it's better fresh. One avocado made two portions. Pack it up and you're done!


Simple Guacamole

One ripe avocado
Lemon or lime juice
Salt
Optional: Minced onion, garlic and/or cilantro

Use a perfect avocado. Sometimes the grocery store will discount too-soft avocados and suggest you make guacamole. I suggest you let them alone. Too-soft avocados that are turning brown inside taste bad. Your perfect avocado, mashed with a little citrus juice and a little salt, will be delightful. I also enjoy minced onion in mine. Some people use a food processor to get a creamy puree. I prefer to grate or mince the onion, and mash the avocado with a fork so it will be chunkier. The joy of making it yourself is that you can have it just as you like it : )


Even Simpler Guacamole

If you ever find yourself in the unenviable position of walking in the door with children who are so hungry they are bickering and it is on your very last nerve, quickly dash into the kitchen, scoop that last ripe avocado you were saving for dinner into a bowl, mash it up with a couple spoons of salsa and fling it on the table with a bag of chips. The kids will still try to fight over who is getting the most, but their mouths will be full, dampening the sound. You will hardly hear it as you sit down with your sudoku puzzle.

Summer Lunch

Black-eyed pea salad, olives, carrots, broccoli. Blueberry gelatin, Trader Joe's meringue cookie plus a few TJ's chocolate pomegranate seeds.

Summer is here--time for lunches that are more vegetable-y and refreshing. Black-eyed peas make a nice salad because they're tasty, they cook fast, and they're small. There are several recipes on the internet for bean salads. I tend to make some variation of tabouli, substituting the beans for the bulgar wheat, but you could easily make something Italian, Greek, Mexican, or whatever seasonings you enjoy. This salad was made with minced herbs--cilantro, mint, scallions, basil--and dressed with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar. Toss in some carrots for color and a shake of salt.

Summer is the time to take shrimp off the menu, or any food that gets stinky when it's warm--remember, you're going to have to clean out the containers at the end of the day! This lunch will be nice to eat even in a warm environment, and leftovers won't make you gag even if the lunchbox is forgotten in the car overnight. It helps that all the ingredients were prepared the night before and well chilled. I made the gelatin firmer this week so it wouldn't melt as easily. An ice pack in the lunch bag helps, of course; even better, freeze a juice box or fill a water bottle with ice sticks and your diner will have a cool beverage to sip. For really hot days, stock up on frozen peas and add them at the last minute to bean salads, pasta salads, or even tuna sandwich filling. Another snack that freezes well is nuts. By incorporating a few frozen items into an already well-chilled menu, and by using an insulated lunch bag, you can keep foods safe and appealing up until lunch time.

GF Strategies

Yesterday I tried a new thing: Burritos wrapped in brown-rice tortillas. Usually I make quesadillas, but you gotta switch it up sometimes, right? Anyway, they were really fragile by lunchtime. La Primera didn't care, but La Segunda brought hers home in a delicate state, mostly uneaten. (I ate it, though. Yum!)

Some GF products, such as brown-rice tortillas or brown-rice pasta, are very delicious. For instance, with brown-rice pasta you get the benefits of whole grains AND the chewiness of regular pasta, which whole-wheat pasta lacks. (In fact, many of my non-GF friends have switched to brown-rice pasta; it's that good.) The downside of gluten-free products is that--well, there's no gluten! Gluten holds things together even in wet conditions. GF foods don't hold up as long. Biscotti will break off when dunked in coffee. Soup noodles and pasta salads will taste good the next day, but the noodles will have broken into smaller pieces. Brown rice tortillas filled with moist ingredients will soon become fragile.

You can still make all these dishes, just adjust your strategy. Wrap burritos in parchment and instruct your diner to leave it wrapped and just fold down the paper as they go. Or instead of burritos, send quesadillas and put beans and salsa on the side. For pasta salads, boil the noodles the night before and chill them, then mix the salad in the morning. You can also add chilled noodles to individual servings of hot soup to cool the soup and warm the noodles. Those nice Vietnamese rice papers make great roll-ups, as long as the fillings are fairly dry and the dip is on the side. As for biscotti and cookies--well, just dunk carefully! GF takes a little forethought, but once you are used to it, it's a breeze!

Assembly Line Lunch

Five in one blow: Sushi with brown rice, asparagus and avocado; steamed greens with soy sauce and sesame seeds; grapes; carrots. Mango gelatin on the side (not pictured).

Yes, I finally made a Japanese-style lunch with sushi in it. What took so long? Well, the nori I have on hand is not the best, but I needed something that would be good on a hot day, could be made ahead, and didn't require me to shop again. I was making lunch for the masses today, so it made sense to do the sushi and greens last night, then assemble it all in the morning. The silicone cups keep the flavors separate and also keep the nori rolls dry. For lunches, I leave the nori rolls uncut; it travels better that way, and is less likely to be distributed to everyone who asks for a piece ; )  (As a safety note, some smaller people find nori hard to bite and chew--you should definitely cut their sushi up.)

Sushi is a flexible lunch option. It can be filled with a variety of vegetables, or shrimp, or even tuna salad. You can roll it, as above. You can make chirashi sushi, which is sushi rice with the "fillings" on top. You can even make pressed sushi: Line a container with plastic wrap or parchment and layer warm rice, then fillings, then more warm rice. Press it down to fuse the layers, then cut it into shapes; it is like little sandwiches. The other great thing about sushi is that, once you have everything assembled, you can roll lots of them in a short time, so it's good for days when you are making LOTS of lunches.

Here is a great instructional video by a raw-food chef using a parsnip "rice" in the sushi. His instructions for making tight rolls are great. And parsnip "rice" really is delicious, by the way!

http://therawchef.com/therawchefblog/raw-food-recipe-sushi

GF Granola Revealed!

One of the hardest things about going GF/corn-syrup-free is breakfast. For me, anyway. What does this have to do with bento? Well, if I'm making lunch, I don't want to be making breakfast at the same time. You have to draw the line somewhere or you'll just turn into a crazy person. Cereal is easy, but most GF cereals are expensive. My husband, bless him, would make eggs or Cream of Buckwheat or miso soup in the morning. But he has to get ready, too. Our kitchen is too small for everyone to be in there making their own breakfast. What to do? Then, two days ago I made an amazing discovery in the Indian section of the grocery store: Poha.

Poha is precooked, rolled and dried rice flakes used to make quick and savory Indian breakfasts. It has been around for ages, of course, but the light bulb never went off before. For you see, it has the perfect dimensions to for granola, and it is pretty cheap. Hooray! And yesterday the temperature dropped from the mid-90s to the mid-60s, the perfect conditions to turn on the oven. Clearly, the granola gods were pointing the way. Last night I made an "imperial buttload" (to use one of my husband's units of measure) of granola. It will not only make a good breakfast, but can be sent as a snack in the kids' lunch bags!

There are only three components in granola: Dry stuff, syrup and dried fruit. Dry stuff is your bulk, syrup is your glue/sweetener, and dried fruit provides little treats. You add the dried fruit at the end or it turns into little rocks in the oven.

How to make granola: Mix a bunch of dry stuff together in a bowl--leave plenty of room for mixing. Melt honey and oil in a saucepan for the syrup; you can use other sweeteners as well. Toss the syrup with the dry stuff. Toast the raw granola in the oven on cookie sheets at about 325*. (You may need to do this in several batches so as not to crowd the pan.) You will need to stir the granola every 10 minutes or so to help it toast evenly. When it is toasted to your liking, pour it into a big bowl to cool. It will still be slightly soft and damp when warm--this is a good time to toss in salt and cinnamon. Once all the granola is cooked and cooled, you can stir in the dried fruit and put it into a sealed container. Yum!

Here's what I used in this batch--of course, I just chucked things into a big bowl without measuring, and you could do the same. Just use what you have and like. I didn't add cinnamon or nutmeg this time, just a bit of salt:

~1 pound of Bob's Red Mill oatmeal
~1 pound of thick Poha flakes
several big handfuls of raw sunflower seeds
~1 pound of dry coconut
handfuls of flax seed
~1/4 cup coconut oil + 1 splash sesame oil (you can use any mild oil you have on hand)
~1 cup honey (for this amount of stuff, that made a mildly sweet granola)
dried, sweetened orange-flavored cranberries

I have used dry Cream of Buckwheat, but it's granular, not flakey--Poha is so much better. You can also add any kinds of seeds you like such as chia or sesame, and chopped nuts. For the dried fruit, you may need to cut it into smaller pieces.

Reality check here: La Segunda has decided that she hates granola. *Sigh*  But La Primera and her father are very pleased, and that's good enough for me.

Apologies to All!

Gee, I love everyone's comments! So sorry I never respond; it's not that I don't want to, I just haven't figured out how. The instructions at Blogger don't seem to work for me. But please keep those comments coming, and thanks to everyone for your support! Sending warm-sushi-rice love to you all!

Love, Mom