Before and After

So I call myself Bento Mom, but that really is a misnomer. I'm not Japanese, nor do I play a Japanese person on television. I have never been closer to Japan than Little Tokyo. What I have done is read up on bento and find lunch ideas that work for me. I'm not into the fancy "painting with food" bentos, but I do like the skill of using what you were going to send for lunch anyway and making it look special. For example:

Everyone in our house is still sick, so the one person leaving the house gets leftovers for lunch, in this case some roasted cauliflower and potatoes with a devilled egg. It tastes good, but it's all so--beige. The paprika on the egg helps, but not much. I have met children who eat only foods in the white/tan/beige color (or lack-of-color) spectrum. For such people, this is an ideal lunch. To me, though, this lunch looks like a container of leftovers. If you would like to convey more intentionality and thought, you can punch it up with very little effort:

This is the same lunch, still made with food that happens to be in the fridge. It's not the height of bento, but it is a big improvement over the previous presentation. It took about one extra minute to put the cauliflower in a contrasting silicone cup, slice half a carrot, and add some pickled green beans and a cilantro leaf. Foods in the dark green and the red/orange spectrums add visual interest. Other red foods that work well and are often handy include cherry tomatoes, cooked beets, red peppers, strawberries, little cheeses in red wax, dried cranberries or a few grapes. Green foods can be any edible leaf, green beans, edamame, cooked lima beans, green peppers, or cucumber slices with some peel left on. Sprinkles can include toasted sesame seeds, crushed nori, or finely scrambled egg. Pickled vegetables like gherkins, olives or pimentos are easy to keep on hand and can effectively break up a vast expanse of beige.

If I can get metaphysical for a second, one way people know you care about them (for good or for ill) is when you give them your attention. Although composed of virtually the same foods in the same about of time, the second presentation conveys a sense that someone paid attention to the lunch bearer's dining experience. That is the most nourishing thing in the box.

Lunch Muse

My friend Matt, local photographer and single parent, was recently challenged by his daughter's decision to become a vegetarian. Because we all know that single parents need extra challenges. Matt is not now, nor has he ever been, a vegetarian. "What am I gonna cook? What will I send her for lunch?" In his infinite resourcefulness, Matt has not only been cooking her some amazing dinners, but has been posting photos of his lunch creations on Facebook. Luckily his daughter likes fresh fruits and veggies, which simplifies packing, but with his photographer's eye he combines various colors and textures to create lunches that seem simple on the surface, but which are a feast of color and flavor. For instance, in one container are bright red peppers and sections of yellow corn cobs; in another, some raw green snow peas; in another, crackers and cheese slices, or maybe a container of pasta and a container of sauce. He might also add a banana or an apple and some snack bars to the box, and maybe a baggie of pretzels, and she's good through all her after-school activities. Lots of color, lots of choices.

While packing bento-style is fun, some foods do migrate, and some eaters, Monk-like, don't want their foods to touch. This morning's lunch was like that: a beautiful black bean-corn-and-salsa salad that was destined to leak all over everything else in the container. So I drew inspiration from Matt and used separate containers. My lunch came out less colorful than his (and less well photographed), but it will be tasty, I hope:

Yellow beets, black bean salad, honeycrisp apple, jello with pineapple, corn flakes.

My original plan was to send the black bean salad with quesadillas and do it all cute, but La Primera woke up sick, and La Segunda eats very little lunch anyway, so this represents the simplified version. Matt's inspiration came just in time. The beets and jello were made on Sunday; the bean salad was made last night while I was making black bean soup for dinner. I set aside two cups of beans as soon as they were cooked and made the salad while the soup was finishing. So this morning I only had to cut the apple.

Even though Matt was challenged at first by his daughter's dietary choices, he has totally risen to the occasion. To steal a quote from his FB page "I never ate so healthy until my daughter turned veggie!!! Thanks kiddo!" Dietary "restrictions" can open up a whole new world of good eating.

Here are two recipes that you might enjoy: one for the tomatillo salsa, and the other for the colorful black-bean salad.

Lori's Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

Tomatillos, onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt. Quarter enough tomatillos to half-fill your food processor bowl. Add a small quartered onion and a handful of cilantro. Pulse to chop; leave some texture. Season with lime juice and salt. Yum! It will be a bit watery; that's normal. Serve on EVERYTHING.

Bento Mom's Black Bean Confetti Salad

Black beans, fresh corn, carrots or red pepper, tomatillo salsa. Drain the beans, mince the carrot or red pepper, and cut the corn off the cob. Mix together. Add salsa to taste, and extra salt if desired. Yum!

Getting Ready with Sides

It's Sunday--in my world, that's time to get lunches prepped for the week. Bento blogs mostly focus on the main dish, but the sides can really save your butt. It only takes about an hour to prep them, and usually I'm doing something else in the kitchen anyway. I don't always prep my sides, but I am always so glad if I do.

This week, I put three things in my stash: cookies, gelatin and apples. The three together are a kind of insurance. They are all nutritionally dense, with enough protein, fat and fiber to get a kid through the day. The gelatin helps the body absorb the minerals and protein that are in whatever food they manage to eat. All three elements do contain sugar--not so good, but to some degree you get to control what kind of sugar (for instance, the gelatin is sweetened with stevia), and the sweetness acts as a lure: I can be pretty sure these three things will get eaten if nothing else does. If those three things are in there, it becomes less important what else I send. So if I'm up all night with one sick kid, I can add peanut butter to the apple, include some chips and salsa or a thermos of leftovers, put in cookies and gelatin, and 5 minutes later the other child has a decent lunch. Would you like breakfast, dear? Here's the cereal. Wash your bowl; I'm going back to bed.

These are peanut butter/granola cookies made with homemade GF granola and some Callebaut chocolate shavings (recipe below). They are filling and nutritionally dense. If your child talks instead of eats at lunchtime, they will at least eat these, or hide them in a pocket to eat on the playground. Cookies are also good for student athletes who need bigger lunches to carry them through after-school practices. Store them in the freezer to add a cold element to the lunch bag, and to keep little mice (or big mice) from snitching them.

These gelatin cups are made with canned pineapple. I poured the juice into a measuring cup and added cranberry juice for color, then brought it up to 3 cups with some limeade. It wasn't sweet enough, so I added stevia. Each Sunday I make 4 cups of gelatin to fill 10 little containers and stack them in the fridge so they're ready to go in the morning. You could put anything in the cups: gelatin, yogurt, applesauce, pudding, or whatever your family favorites are.

There is a risk of putting something messy into a snap-top container. Unless your diner is very careful (mine aren't), the top can pop off, spilling the contents into the lunch bag. Yuk! If you can get screw-top containers, that is the best. Another solution is to put the snap-top containers into a larger, rigid container. Or do as I do and add enough gelatin or agar to everything to make it more solid. Gelatin and agar add significant nutritional value as well. Here's a link about gelatin from the Weston Price Foundation: http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/why-broth-is-beautiful

An apple a day....Gosh, I love apples. When I grew up in California, you could get three kinds: red delicious, golden delicious and rome beauties. When granny smiths started appearing, it was a big deal. Now we are in apple heaven with countless varieties to choose from now that fall is here. Apples stay nice all day, even cut up, and they're tasty and filling. All I do on Sunday is wash them. Usually in the morning I cut them cut up, sometimes adding cinnamon, sometimes adding peanut butter. Be sure to soak the slices in cold water (some people add lemon or salt) to retard browning. Our favorites are honeycrisp, fuji and gala--what's your favorite?



Flour-free Granola Cookies 
(I am not a recipe tester, nor am I good at following recipes. This is more of a guide.)

1 cup peanut butter (or the nut/seed butter of your people)
1 cup GF granola (instructions in an earlier post)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar (more or less to taste; how sweet is the granola?)
1/2 tsp baking soda OR 1 tsp baking powder*
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips (more or less to taste)
NO VANILLA! If you add liquid, the peanut butter separates

If you overmix, the peanut butter will separate, so stop the mixer as soon as it is all combined. Use an ice cream scoop to portion onto a cookie sheet. Flatten a bit, then bake as you see fit.

*If you can't find GF baking powder, just use half the amount of baking soda and make sure there is a little acid in the recipe for it to react with, like vinegar or yogurt or fruit. I don't know what acid is in this recipe, but the cookies came out fine.

Mara's GF Peanut Butter Cookies

Here is the original actual recipe that the above recipe is based on. These rock. Do NOT add any liquid, even vanilla, or the peanut butter will separate. Because there is no flour, the peanut flavor really pops--these are the best peanut butter cookies you can make!

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder

As Promised, the Lame Lunch from Tuesday

A thermos of leftover soup, mango gelatin, corn flakes, mochi with red bean paste, cut-up watermelon.

It's true; despite your best efforts most of the time, some lunches are just lame. You don't plan ahead, or you overslept, or you barely slept at all because a kid crawled in next to you at 3am, or D, All of the Above. You wake up, look at the clock and say---well, no sense repeating it, you know what to say.

This lunch, for instance, has too much sugar and not enough fat. Sure, there is nutrition in the soup, and La Primera ate everything, but La Segunda ate the sweets and ditched the soup and came home crabby.

On the other hand, that story I told the other day is true: I really did visit the cafeteria and find the kids eating cold whole-wheat tortillas topped with cold grated cheese and chopped tomatoes, which they told me in all sincerity was "pizza." I mean, come on! Even without a name, the toppings were totally falling off--it was impossible to eat. Why not roll the fillings in the tortilla and call it a burrito? Then, even despite the cold ingredients, it would be easier to eat and they would not be lying to children. How can they lie to children about pizza? It's the ONE food all children can correctly identify, and the school, which is supposed to be the source of knowledge, pulls the rug right out from under them. Eloise thought she hated lasagne because she once tasted the cafeteria version, but Aunt Jenny's lasagne set her right again. The one thing school lunch has going for it is the human element. The cafeteria ladies are nice, and the food, though assembled from government-surplus ingredients, is at least handled with affection for the children, and that is something of value.

Unlike Lunchables. Lunchables make me cry. Everything about them is wrong and disgusting. On the physical plane you have the lack of nutrition and freshness and genuine deliciousness; on the spiritual plane, what message are you sending to a child when you send them to school with that? It makes me think of an awful moment in the Family Dollar last week when I heard a middle-school-aged boy say to his mother, "Is this my dinner?" and he was holding two packages of candy. She responded in the affirmative.  No, she was not joking. Yes, it was his dinner, and he wasn't very happy. Kids know.

Bento mom is on her soapbox, people. When I told my kids about the boy who got candy for dinner, first they thought he was joking, and then they said, Lucky! Because they do not have candy for dinner, or Lunchables. Sometimes as a treat we have ice cream for dinner and dinner for dessert, just to mix it up. The worst lunch they have had to have is the one pictured above, or, yes, apples and peanut butter. Or salsa mixed with refried beans and served with tortilla chips, with a cut-up organic apple on the side. Anything I can scrape together will be made of better-quality ingredients than cafeteria fare, and nothing in my cupboards is as nutritionally or emotionally dead as Lunchables.

If you keep decent-quality food in your house, you cannot pack a bad lunch. So just get over it. Your children are ambassadors of good food, and even though some kids tease them, other kids want a bite.

To conclude, I know you are curious about the watermelon, how it fits so perfectly in the container. Here is what you do: Find a lidded container with thin sides. Slice the watermelon as thick as the container is deep, or just a bit thinner. Press the container into the slice like a cookie cutter. Cut into sections. That way, the kid gets as much melon as possible, and the pieces don't get all bruised and watery from jostling around. Happy packing!

How to Do a Two-fer

Wow, that was awesome!

Thanks for the outpouring of support on yesterday's blog. One friend wrote that it made her feel like a "bad mom" until she got to the end, where I advocate flinging an apple and some peanut butter into a bag and shoving it at the child rushing out the door. Mind you, this woman is an amazing artist, but I am willing to bet that, because she is a real artist who takes chances, she may have created one or two things that made her go, "Wait, what was I thinking?" It's all part of the learning curve and the exploration process, although in the case of art, no one has to actually eat your failures or try to explain them to fellow diners. In cooking as in art (and mothering), the best way to learn is to do it. So as a follow-up to yesterday's post, here is one way to make lunch and dinner simultaneously:

Say you decide to make chicken with boiled potatoes, corn and green salad for dinner. Here is your Lunch Thought Bubble:

"Potatoes make good salad, and hey, there's one limp carrot and a stump of celery in the fridge. Perfect! For two kids, I'll cook a couple extra potatoes and that golden beet that's been in the crisper drawer. I could also pack an ear of boiled corn; potato salad plus corn would be a pretty filling lunch. Hmm, what for a vegetable? We're having green salad; kids won't want that. I know, I'll put a piece of broccoli in with the potatoes at the last minute to steam. Protein? If only my kids liked cold chicken...Oh well, I can just boil a couple eggs."

That whole thought process took about one minute, plus rummaging the fridge for the limp carrot and the celery stump. If your brain is tired, you can boil the eggs while dinner is cooking and then do lunch after dinner is over. Sometimes I get the kids to empty the dishwasher and wipe all the surfaces while I make lunches, then I do the wash-up afterwards. It would take 15 or 20 minutes for a tired me to make potato salad, deviled eggs and steamed broccoli.

On the other hand, you might just want to shoot the moon and do it all at once. Ready? Go!

Presumably your chicken is already roasting away in the oven. Put a couple eggs into the pot for the corn; while the corn water comes to a boil, chop up the carrot and celery and put them in a bowl for the potato salad. If you have something green like minced chives or parsley, that would be nice, too. (If you want lunch to be super pretty, instead of sending boiled corn, you could cut the kernels off the raw cob and put them into the potato salad. With the orange carrot and the green chives, it would look like confetti. If that's your choice, do it now.)

About 15 minutes before the chicken is done, put the small red potatoes into the pressure cooker; bring it up to pressure and cook them for 5 minutes. In the meantime, your corn water boiled and the eggs cooked 7 minutes; fish them out and add the corn. While the corn cooks and the potatoes finish, peel the eggs and devil them. Put them into whatever bento you are using. When the potatoes are done and the pressure is released, put the cut-up broccoli into the turned off pan on top of the spuds, put the lid back on and let it steam for three to five minutes in the residual heat. Pull the chicken out to rest and make the green salad. Dinner is ready.

While your family is making their way to the table, put the broccoli and the lunch corn in the bentos with the eggs to cool, and hide the lunch potatoes and the golden beet--not in the fridge, though, because the salad will come out better if the potato is somewhat warm. Enjoy your dinner knowing that lunch is all prepped.

While your family clears the table and the counters, cube the lunch potatoes and beet, mix with the chopped carrot, celery and chives, and season with mayo, salt and just a drip of vinegar, or whatever dressing your family likes. Bottled ranch might be good, or Italian dressing. Take the corn out of the bento boxes and pack the potato salad, the deviled eggs and the broccoli together. It should be nice and snug; if there's wiggle room, add a few cherry tomatoes or grapes or carrot sticks--you get the idea. Wrap the corn in plastic or put it in a small rectangular container; cut it in half, if necessary. A large ear might be enough for two lunches. Put the lids on the bentos and put everything away. That took about 10 minutes, and now lunch is done.

In the morning, put a bento, a corn, a container of cookies and a container of jello into each lunch box. Put the cereal and milk on the table. Hey, there's time to do your makeup and calmly sign all the pieces of paper your kids are bringing to you. No problem, honey. How nice is this?

Lest you think every morning is so blissful, tomorrow I will post a picture of what my kids walked out the door with this morning; not apples and peanut butter (we're out of apples), but definitely a second-string lunch. I was too tired to make lunch last night, so I ended up rushing around in the morning and growling at kids shoving papers under my nose while I was trying to make lunch. Why didn't you show me this last night??? But at least they got a lunch, right? You do what you can and enjoy the relaxing moments when they come.

A Week of Menus

Sometimes you don't sleep well, and you wake up tired, and you have no idea what to make for lunch. You consider taking it later, or just handing them cash and letting them buy whatever the cafeteria has to offer--but then you remember the time you visited and the children at your child's table were eating cold whole wheat tortillas topped with cold cheese; they told you it was "pizza." That's just wrong on so many levels.

So, by popular demand, here is a week of our go-to school lunches, all gluten-free, made with fresh local ingredients as much as possible. These can be mostly packed the night before; items that are packed in the morning have an asterisk.

Weekend Prep:
On Friday: Make sure lunch boxes are emptied and containers cleaned. Monday is bad enough without having to face putrescence.

Make jello cups or pudding cups or applesauce cups, enough for the week.

If you plan to bake cookies, freeze them IMMEDIATELY--out of sight, out of mind ; ) Make them the right size to fit into your containers. Cookies made with nut butter and granola can be very filling and nutritious, so even if your child eats nothing else, they won't come home starving.

Other make-ahead ingredients include pesto, boiled eggs, hummus, pasta and rice--one friend steams beets for the week and doles them out. Another friend's daughter wants pasta every day, so he cooks a couple pounds and just dresses a portion when he packs lunch. Hummus, pesto, pasta and rice can also be frozen in portions and thawed the night before. Heck, in an emergency, you can put a frozen lump of pasta and a frozen chunk of pesto in a container and instruct your diner to microwave it at school!

Spend 20 minutes planning your dinner and lunch menus; plan ahead when to cook extra for lunches. As much as possible, include lunch prep in your dinner routine. If you plan extras for lunch, put them aside right away! Have the containers chosen and ready, and while you holler "Dinner!" be packing up the lunch food before it ends up being someone's third helping.

A note on sides: For two kids, I have about twenty 4-oz lidded containers; that is a good size for most kids and adults, and you can underfill for tots. Ten are filled with jello on Sunday, and the rest are for packing sides. Have a few options, such as applesauce, cut-up fruit, cookies, edamame, dry cereal, 3-bean salad, cole slaw, steamed beets, etc.--whatever your diner likes that is easy to pack. If your child likes the cole slaw at dinner, pack a couple small containers for later in the week. Fruit is best cut up in the morning, but everything else can be packed ahead. If your child is staying after for sports, pack extra sides so they will have snacks for later.


LET THE MENUS BEGIN!

Monday: Leftover lasagne (or other leftover pasta), eaten at room temperature. Leftover green beans dressed with olive oil instead of butter so they won't be greasy when they're cold. Pack these into a sandwich box with a small ear of corn on the cob; they should fit snugly and not shift around. A little spinach or kale would be a pretty garnish.

Tuesday: Sushi rolls made with leftover short-grain rice and filled with tuna salad (or chicken salad, or vegetables). One roll per child, cut in half so it fits in the sandwich box. Fill the cracks with silicone cups of vegetables from dinner, such as steamed green beans and raw carrot slices. A bit of pickled or candied ginger is a nice addition.

Wednesday: Potato salad with other steamed roots such as golden beet, celeriac and carrot; add chopped raw celery and dress with mayo, salt and a drop of vinegar. Deviled egg. Steamed broccoli. A pickle would be good in this box.

Thursday: *Rice with sprinkles and steamed shrimp (or curry, or teriyaki). Warm the rice in the morning and let it cool while you do other things. Pack it firmly into half of the sandwich box and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and crushed nori. Top with shrimp, and fill the empty spaces with vegetables such as edamame and carrots.

Friday: Hummus (or other dip) with cut up vegetables, either raw or lightly steamed. (If your child has a sporting event soon after lunch, opt for steamed, as they are more quickly digested.) Put the hummus in a small lidded container; pack with the veggies inside a sandwich box with taller sides--this keeps the lid from popping off if the lunch is handled carelessly. Olives make a nice garnish.


Saturday: Use Vietnamese rice papers or lettuce leaves to make wraps. Layer lettuce, shredded veggies, rice noodles and/or lunch meat on the rice paper and roll it up. (Look on YouTube for instructions for doing spring rolls.) A couple wraps cut in half would fill a sandwich box. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Sunday: Our last, and favoritest, go-to lunch: *Quesadillas! These are best made fresh. Have the cheese grated and everything else done the night before. In the morning, make the quesadillas and pack with a container of salsa and a portion of refried beans or bean salad. For super-yum factor and extra specialness, make a little layered dip with refried beans, salsa, sour cream, olives and chives, if you have those things around.

After a while, you will come up with your own "go-to" menus--anything that is easy for you to prepare and something the kids like to eat. In time, we hope they will start making their own darned lunch. Making lunch every day is a big commitment, and not always an appreciated one, but with a little planning it can be much, much easier. And without planning, there is always apples and peanut butter!

Lunch Simplified

Hey, it's a new school year! Sorry I have not been posting pictures, but there should be some next week.

Today's post is about how to use your freezer to make mornings less hectic. Remember the cute little square silicone cupcake liners that you separate food with? Well, I don't use them for baking because they discolor, but they work great for freezing 1/2-cup portions. So for instance, if you make hummus, make a lot. Line up your silicone cupcake liners on a cookie sheet, then fill them with hummus. You can adjust the portions by how much you fill the cups; you can even mound it up. Freeze overnight, then peel away the liners and store the hummus-sicles in a ziplock bag.

This strategy would work great for runny foods that you might serve with rice, such as curries, teriyaki, chili, thick stews, or whatever. You could even do it with beans for salads. Thaw them overnight and, if appropriate, warm them in the morning before you pack them.