Archive for April, 2007

Stromboli lunches and travel food

Bug and I returned safely from our trip to Philadelphia last night. On our trip, we brought along a couple of small bento boxes, a collapsible sandwich case, and a couple of sauce containers so that we could have freedom on the road instead of needing to break to find a restaurant mid-day. This turned out to be a good approach, as the boxes neatly held our lunches on the plane going out (no purchasing nasty airline “snack boxes”), restaurant dinner leftovers for the following days (held overnight in our hotel room mini fridge), cheesesteak sandwiches, and fruit and hoagies (Philly submarine sandwiches) from Wawa for the plane trip back.

Morning prep time: 3 minutes. While hoagies and cheesesteak sandwiches are pretty well known Philadelphia food, I rediscovered strombolis this trip. Essentially a stuffed pizza, a stromboli is like a loaf-shaped calzone that is supposed to have originated in the Philadelphia area in 1950. There are many variations, from the no-sauce classic Italian (with meats and mozzarella), to sauced strombolis like meatball, steak, chicken steak, pizza, etc. They’re also wonderful eaten at room temperature, making them tasty lunchbox food. Here it’s paired with a sliced nectarine, grapes and cherry tomatoes (plus leftover marinara sauce in a container for Bug to dip his sandwich into).

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Published by Biggie on April 20th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids, meat, onigiri or sushi, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap, tips | 22 Comments »

Travel, and speedy meatball lunches

First off, I wanted to let everyone know that Bug and I will be traveling to Philadelphia for a week starting today (4/13/07), so my blog updates will be sporadic during the week. I’ll try to check in and respond to comments, but won’t be as responsive as I usually try to be. Second, thanks to everyone who has voted for this blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards so far — my goal is to hang around as a non-vegan blog on the top page for a while. Wish me luck! (November 2007 update: Open voting for 2007 has closed with Lunch in a Box in 3th place. Thank you! 2008 voting is here is you’re interested.)

Morning prep time: 10 minutes each. A combination of frozen food, store-bought food, and refrigerator staples made Bug’s quick lunch possible today. The meatballs were store-bought (Aidells teriyaki chicken pineapple) with extra teriyaki sauce, I had a small batch of shaped hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for snacking (more below), and the little rice balls were from the freezer and wrapped with pre-cut nori for maximum speed. Grapes, blackberries and grape tomatoes round out the meal — and I packed a tiny toddler fork for the meatballs (cut in half for Bug).

Earlier this week I made rice to eat with Thai curry at dinner. I only make rice every 10 days or so, so when I do, I make a big batch and freeze the excess as individually wrapped rice balls (see my prior entry on frozen onigiri). I mixed a bowl of medium-grain rice with furikake (rice sprinkles), and popped it into rice ball molds to shape before wrapping and freezing. A quick spin in the microwave brings these back to life.Bug really enjoys the shaped hard-boiled eggs, but I can’t be bothered to make just one in the morning specially for lunch. Instead, I make a batch of 5-6 at once with cheap egg molds that I picked up at a local dollar store (Ichiban Kan, US$1.50 for two), and store them in the refrigerator in the molds. You boil the eggs, peel them while they’re hot, pop them into a mold and throw them into cold water for 10 minutes to take on the shape (Cooking Cute has a tutorial here). If you don’t want to fork over money for a uni-tasker, you can also use ice cream sandwich molds for the same effect, available from Amazon and Williams Sonoma (my tutorial here).

My lunch is the same as Bug’s, but with larger rice balls and a cheese triangle that Bug seized when he spied it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to eat the cheese triangles that I pack in my lunches…

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Published by Biggie on April 13th, 2007 tagged bento, eggs, equipment, for kids, freezing, meat, onigiri or sushi, rice | 35 Comments »

Nominate yourself! Blogger’s Choice Awards

I figured out what’s up with the Blogger’s Choice Awards. The reason why the vegans are so strong in the voting is that one of their top food blogs pointed out that you can vote for multiple food blogs (not just one), and that you can (and should) nominate your own food blog. So they’re out there en masse, supporting all of the vegan food blogs.

The larger lunch-packing community can do the same: if you want to, nominate all of the lunch blogs you think should be there, and then go vote for as many as you like. Your favorite blog not there? Take matters into your own hands! Comment on this thread and let us know if there’s a new lunch blog nom that we should know about. Let’s even the playing field and have our voices heard!

The following lunch blogs have been nominated:

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento (this blog)

My Lunch Can Beat Up Your Lunch

Vegan Lunch Box

Vegan Lunchcast

Edited to add:
What’s for Lunch Honey?

(Oct. 2007 update: Open voting has closed with Lunch in a Box in 4th place. Thank you!)Â

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Published by Biggie on April 12th, 2007 tagged admin | 15 Comments »

Speedy tamale lunches

Morning prep time: 2 minutes each (4 min. total). I’m almost embarassed at how little time it took to throw these together. These are frozen tamales that were leftover from dinner a couple of nights ago; I steamed extra when making dinner and just packed the spares directly into these lunch containers after we ate. After-dinner cleanup also provided a tiny bit of undressed salad, and sauces (ranch dressing, cooked salsa and crema — like sour cream) which I packed into little containers during cleanup. So in the morning all I had to do was grab the semi-packed boxes, throw in some grapes, blackberries and raspberries. Done.

A word on packing fragile fruit like raspberries, though. Although it’s tempting to use them to “plug the gaps” in your lunch, they’re really too delicate to stand up to shifting food during transport. Pack delicate berries in a separate container or in hard, non-flexible food cups to minimize the chance of finding berry goo in your lunch.

Bug’s lunch is the same as mine, but without salad or hot salsa (only crema for his tamale). We ate this one with a big group of Japanese moms and kids after playgroup and it was a big hit with them as well as Bug (the other kids were hovering over the grapes and berries). Bug’s lunch is loosely packed in a two-tier 600ml box, and mine is packed in two 350ml Lock & Lock containers.

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Published by Biggie on April 11th, 2007 tagged bento, corn tortillas or masa, for kids, poultry | 6 Comments »

SF Bay Area shopping guide & award nomination

Shopping Resources: The bentolunch community on LiveJournal has a geographic shopping guide for other cities around the world (slightly dated) and an online shopping guide. I’m still working on a separate list of low-cost, commonly available containers and lunch-packing equipment, so this is not necessarily an endorsement of any of the stores linked on the bentolunch lists. Just FYI for people seeking out bento equipment.

In addition, I’ve put together an opinionated shopping guide for the San Francisco Bay Area as a resource for local readers looking to buy bento boxes and accessories in person. I am not affiliated with any of these stores, I’m just an avid shopper and know what I like. I will edit this list as things change; please feel free to comment if you know other local stores that we’d benefit from knowing about (please disclose any commercial affiliations you may have with the store). Links point to the stores’ Yelp.com listings with maps, photos, and commentary from the larger Bay Area community. (See also the SF Bay Area guide to ethnic markets.)

Latest News: My LiveJournal site has been nominated for a Blogger’s Choice Award — Best Food Category! If you like Lunch in a Box, could you click over to the entry and vote? Thank you. I’m pretty jazzed considering this all took off just a couple of months ago with the new focus on speedy lunch prep tips added to my existing lunch blog. (Nov. 2007 update: Lunch in a Box tied for 3rd place, the only non-vegan blog in the top four. Thank you!)