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.

Cheese Dillys

Quesadillas made with organic brown rice tortillas, shredded lettuce, bean dip&salsa, carrot sticks

Quesadilla is Spanish for "cheese dilly." At least, that's my husband's translation, and we like it. This is easily the most-shared lunchbox the girls bring. Someone always wants a bite. I pack extra side dishes to make sure they get enough to eat, although I suppose I could just make another quesadilla! In this case, they got a container of apple slices and a container of dry breakfast cereal (makes a good non-messy snack) in addition to the bento.

The quesadillas are best made in the morning, but it takes just a minute. We keep the tortillas in the freezer and just remove what we need; they thaw quickly in the hot skillet. I put only cheese inside, but depending on your diner, you could add cilantro or chilies, or a bit of leftover cooked meat or tofu. My friend Katherine uses Daiya brand vegan cheese, which is quite good. Don't add too much stuff unless you want it to be a burrito. The brown rice tortillas tend to get soggy faster than wheat ones, so don't add salsa.

The bean dip and salsa are on the side, in a lidded container that fits in the bento. The dip is just refried beans with salsa stirred into it, and topped with another blob of salsa. This is in accordance with rule #3, Never Pack Anything That Looks Like Poop. The red salsa on top disguises the murky bean dip beneath. I filled the box with whatever colorful vegetables I happened to have at hand: In this case, baby carrots and shredded lettuce fit the bill. Other good choices would be red pepper slices, lightly steamed broccoli, cherry tomatoes, snap peas, or anything colorful to contrast with the beige tortillas.

If you can't get brown rice tortillas, use corn tortillas. You could even use crepes. If your family eats wheat, you could buy green spinach tortillas and red tomato tortillas: Make one of each color, cut them up, and alternate colors in the bento. Little kids particularly like finger food, and they like choices, even if it's just to choose between a red one or a green one.

Speaking of choices, it is an important aspect of Special Diet Bento: All kids like choices, and for those who have to follow a prescribed diet, it gives them a measure of control. For instance, traditional bag lunch contains a whole apple, but in bento the apple is cut up. The box above is meant to hold one sandwich--that's not much of a choice unless your child dismantles it, which is messy for the lunch monitor. With sliced apple and quesadilla, they can choose which slice to eat first, which slice to share, whether to dip into the sauce all at once or between bites, whether to put the lettuce on top, whether to use the carrots to do a walrus imitation. They can count all the components and make up little games. Interactive is attractive, and it takes very little extra effort on the part of the lunch packer. The more engaging their lunch is to themselves and the children around them, the more lucky they will feel to have a special diet.