Happy Halloween!

Nothing is more fun to make than theme lunchboxes. Many of them are questionable in terms of wholesome ingredients, but if you look around on the Internet, you'll find many that are both nutritious and fun.

Here is what my kids requested: Deviled egg "eyeballs," roasted cauliflower "brains," and an onigiri jack-o-lantern. For the eggs, smooth the yolk with a wet finger, then add a slice of pimento olive for the pupil and a few threads of saffron for veins. (Saffron and eggs taste wonderful together, btw!) Usually I pack two egg halves in each lunch, but three eyes seemed more appropriate for Halloween, don't you agree? The onigiri is a ball of brown rice patted with grated carrot, with cut-up nori for the face. The kids like more nori, so I sent more in a side container.There was room left in the box, so a few chunks of hakurei turnip tightened everything up nice and snug.

Mom, make it stop staring at me! Deviled eggs, onigiri, turnips, roasted cauliflower.

The kids also helped me make marshmallow slugs, adapted from Martha Stewart's marshmallow peeps tutorial. (Once you get to the site, hover your mouse over the "ingredients and equipment" tab to find the recipe.) Marshmallows turn out to be one of those things that are surprisingly easy to make, yet people think you must be a genius. This recipe is notable because it uses no corn syrup, if your kids don't tolerate it. We use organic evaporated cane juice. You can also make marshmallows with agave or honey, if you prefer.

Sluggy goodness!

La Segunda tinted the sugar herself to just the perfect shade of chartreuse, and we used an old ZipLock bag with a corner cut off to pipe the slugs. Martha gets kudos for those bunnies and chicks--slugs are WAY easier to pipe! Work fast, before the marshmallow sets up. Once you have piped them all and sprinkled them with sugar, lightly drag a bamboo skewer along the head to pull up blobs for the slug horns. Let them sit for about half an hour to firm up, keeping a constant vigil to discourage ducks, chickens and other slug-eating predators, then store in an airtight container.

Carrot Cups

Making a lunchbox beautiful is satisfying, and it's particularly satisfying when form and function meet. Such is the case with puzzle apples that are cut to hold peanut butter (that will be for a future post), and these carrot cups. They are really a flower-shaped garnish--each piece looks like a little flower, but you can also bunch several together to make a larger flower. Because they are cup shaped, they make fantastic scoops for hummus or other dips. You can find tutorials for these on YouTube, but here is a quick how-to:

Start with straight, fairly thick carrots and a small, sturdy, sharp knife. Cut three slices off the bottom so the carrot comes to a triangular point. Then begin making cuts above the first cuts and in the same plane. This is how you form the petals. Make sure to angle the knife toward the center of the carrot so all three slices will meet in the middle; follow the cuts you made to shape the point and you'll be fine.

These photos are all taken with one hand, leaving the other hand to balance knife and carrot. Keep both hands on your project while you cut! Safety first!

Notice that the knife is held parallel to the first cut and angled toward the center of the carrot. Do not allow this cut to go down to the bottom of the petal or your flower will fall apart.

Once you have cut in, rotate the point of the knife so that the blade is cutting parallel to the edge of the flower. You are trying to make the same three cuts as before to create a point inside the carrot. If properly done, the flower will come off very easily and the petals will be intact.

Since you can't slice to the bottom of the petal in the first cut, rotate the knife blade to cut down into the point.

Here is the flower falling off the carrot. See the new point? Keep making these cuts up the carrot. One carrot is enough for several flowers.

Here is the finished lunch box. Wasn't that fun? Expect to mess up a lot before you get the hang of it. There are so many variables, such as what knife you are using and how thick/hard/straight your carrot is. I began by practicing whenever I was making vegetable soup, and all the ruined ones went into the pot. After a while, you will be able to make them fairly quickly, and your kids will love them!

Kale Taboulli

My friend Katherine was telling me yesterday that kale is a complete food, and if you could eat enough of it to satisfy your caloric needs, you would never need to eat anything else. I believe it. Kale is low in calories, strongly anti-inflammatory, high in antioxidants, has a decent protein profile, and it's packed with chlorophyll. Once you start eating kale, you crave it. As for quinoa, it is sometimes called a super grain, although it is not in the grass family and so is not a grain at all. But it is definitely a super food. Combining quinoa and raw kale into one salad, dressed with olive oil and lemon, creates a nutritional powerhouse, and it's so yummy I could eat it for lunch every day. In terms of bento, kale tabouli holds up much longer than parsley tabouli--you could easily make enough for three or four days.

Traditional tabouli is a labor intensive dish, but not this one. The great thing about substituting kale for parsley is that, while parsley does not chop well in the Cuisinart, kale stands up very well and even improves, becoming dark green and tender. You can make a big bowl of it in no time. Both have the same dark green flavor--you will be surprised that you can hardly tell the difference. Usually I chop the mint leaves in with the kale. Chop the green onions by hand so they stay clean and fluffy; they can get slimy in the food processor.

Lots of dark green kale chopped in the food processor; can of delicious Greek olive oil looms in the background.

Once you have the greens chopped--the bowl above took about 5 minutes--you add in the minced green onions, cooked quinoa and dressing, and that's it. For a real treat, include chopped tomatoes and cucumber. I read yesterday that you can freeze kale without blanching it. Really? I'm going to try freezing kale later and see how it holds up. Here is the finished salad:

Gee, a lot of the salad seems to have disappeared. Hmmmm.......

Kale Tabouli

1 big bunch of kale
1 bunch green onions (in winter use a minced white or yellow onion)
1 handful mint leaves (in winter use the contents of a mint tea bag)
1 cup dry quinoa cooked in 2 cups salted water
1 or 2 lemons, juiced
olive oil
salt to taste
1 tomato and 1 cucumber, optional

First, put the quinoa on to cook in salted water. While it's cooking, get out the food processor. Strip the kale leaves from the stalks, tear them into pieces and stuff them into the processor bowl, adding some of the mint leaves to each batch. You can pack in quite a bit. Put the lid on, being careful not to trap any leaves, and pulse it until the kale is chopped and moving freely. Process until the kale is finely chopped.

Chop the green onion by hand; use the green tops and all. (When I was a kid, we used the green and tossed the white. When I grew up, I was amazed that many people use the white part and throw away the greens!) Also dice the tomato and cucumber, if using.

When the quinoa is cooked, remove it from the heat and fluff it up to speed cooling. Once it is cooled, mix it into the salad. Dress with olive oil, lemon and salt: First, drizzle on olive oil a little at a time, tossing as you go. Stop when each leaf is lightly coated with oil. Next, add lemon juice a little at a time, tossing as you go, until it is a sour as you like. Then add salt the same way. Done!

How To Pack an Apple

For some reason, my kids prefer to have apples cut up. If it's cut up, they'll eat it; if it's whole, it comes home uneaten and travel weary. It makes sense, though: Kids enjoy being able to share slices with their friends. One fun way to pack an apple is the stripey way. It is simple to do and has a big visual impact--plus, you get to eat two different kinds of apples! For two people, use one red and one green or yellow apple. Here I have used a Fuji and a local Yellow Delicious. Cut them into eighths and put them in a bowl of cold water to retard browning. (Some people add salt or lemon juice, but I don't.)

Begin with a pair of one color, in this case green. Set them in so the top slice is against the edge of the box. Now add a pair of the next color, and continue alternating as far as your container goes. (These are two of the small containers that come in the Fit & Fresh system.) When your box is full, add one more slice to the top row. In this demonstration, there are three slices on the bottom row and four slices on the top. That will leave two extra slices for the cook! I love when it works out like that ; )

Yes, You Can--Beans!

Home-canned beans from Potenza Organic farms. Yum!

One of my kids' favorite lunches is quesadillas or chips served with a dip made of salsa mixed with black beans. I like to use the local organic beans in my pantry, but beans do take time to cook, even in the pressure cooker, and the quesadilla lunch is one I like to make on the fly. Then one day I spoke to my friend Ellen at Regional Access, a local-foods distributor. Ellen has been buying local organic beans and canning them herself. (Did you know you could do that? I didn't know you could do that.) What a great idea! You can have local, organic beans for less than the cost of buying canned beans, and what a convenience. It takes the same amount of time as just cooking beans!

All you need is a pressure cooker large enough to hold canning jars, and, of course, beans. (If you don't have a pressure cooker, consider buying one. They save time and energy. It will expand your repertoire tremendously.) Any pressure cooker large enough to hold jars will work. Mine is a 5-quart pressure cooker, and it holds pint jars or smaller. Most new pressure cookers come with a round, flat metal insert you put in the cooker to hold the jars up off the bottom.

Dip made from beans and salsa, plus organic corn chips. Apples, cookies and grape gelatin not pictured.

If you have never canned, it would be a good idea to look up more information about proper procedure. I can't go into that here. It is pretty easy, though, and satisfying. To pressure-can beans, soak the beans overnight, then cook them for about 1/2 an hour,  to make sure they are heated through. (I won't get into the "salt-or-no-salt" debate--just do as you see fit.) Pack the hot beans into the hot jars, put the jars in the pressure cooker, then process at 10psi for 60 minutes for pint jars. My jars held one cup each--that's half a pint--but I went ahead and cooked them for the full hour anyway, just to make sure the beans were soft enough. They came out perfect! It's great because you don't have to worry about the beans on the bottom of the pot sticking or burning--they all cook evenly and perfectly. Use what you need at the moment and let the other jars cool so you can put them away for another day--your "leftovers" are already packed and ready.

The Envy Factor

My friend Matt packs lunch every day for his newly vegetarian daughter. It is an adventure. He has been posting the lunches on Facebook. They are not at all fancy, but they are appealing, and many of the elements he makes in advance, so his mornings are easier; in fact, this morning we met on the way in to school 20 minutes late--their alarm hadn't gone off, and we had houseguests. But all the kids had lunches. My point is that even though Matt is preparing lunches that are different from the norm, and even though they are simple to make, every day at lunch other kids stop what they are doing to watch his daughter unpack her box and open all the containers. Her lunch is an event.

When you are packing lunch for someone on a special diet, the "special" is an important factor. Instead of "poor me, I can't eat that," go for "lucky me, I get to eat this!" It does not have to be labor intensive to succeed, although it certainly could be if you are so inclined. Mainly, it has to look appetizing and be something your child is excited about eating. Colorful and fresh go a long way in this department.

Enviable lunches don't have to be hard. The extra labor involved is usually a matter of retraining your brain to plan ahead, and the more you do it, the easier it becomes, until you are planning ahead on the fly. Adjust it to suit yourself. I like packing bento boxes with a couple side containers, so my kids get the composed meal effect. Matt packs a bunch of individual containers all at once a couple times a week, so his daughter gets the "opening presents" effect when they are unpacked. What would work best for you? What containers could you keep on hand? What foods make you feel special?

Local Lunch

Black bean and cheese quesadillas, broccoli, hakurei turnips; green and red apples wedges; steamed delicata squash.

At a food conference last week, I was surprised to learn that, even among foodies, there is a lack of knowledge about how much fossil fuel goes into food. There is all the fuel involved in farm machinery and shipping, of course, but some of it literally goes into the food: Commercial fertilizers and pesticides are made from petroleum, as are artificial colors and flavors. Add to that all the petroleum used in packaging, both in the packages and in the running of the machinery, and suddenly you see that processed food from far away can have a huge carbon footprint.

Fortunately, there is something you can do; in fact, if you are reading this, you are probably already doing it: As much as possible, cook food from scratch, and as much as possible, use local organic ingredients. Changing our eating habits can reduce our petroleum consumption as much as changing our driving habits. The lunch above is a perfect example: The produce was all grown on farms within a mile of our house; the apples are not organic, but the other produce is. The cheese was made in the region. Even the black beans in the quesadilla came from a local farmer. The only non-local element is the brown rice tortillas.

By cooking food from scratch as much as possible, we are doing something important to reduce waste, and probably reduce waist as well. Keep up the good work!