Archive for August, 2007

Tamale box lunches

Costco has changed the brand of frozen tamales they sell, and now they’re light, fluffy, and delicious (better than the old kind they stocked, which were a little too dense and heavy). Frozen tamales are great to have on hand for a fast dinner or lunch, especially if you have a large microwave steamer. Just pop them in the microwave for a few minutes, let sit for another minute, and they’re ready. These actually start to approach the quality of homemade! Evidently they’re from Del Real Foods — very nice. (Disclaimer: I have no commercial affiliation with Del Real Foods or Costco.)

Tamale lunch

Contents of my lunch: Steamed chicken tamale with containers of spicy salsa Taquera and Greek yogurt, plum slices, blueberries, and salad with pitted cherries, pine nuts, fresh mint and feta cheese (plus homemade apple-balsamic vinaigrette). We ran out of crema (Hispanic sour cream), so yogurt was a fine stand-in.

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using leftover tamale and salad. I packed the tamale the night before when cleaning up from dinner, so in the morning I sliced the plum and filled the sauce containers (I was out of pre-filled sauce containers with salad dressing).

Packing: Quick reminder to pack salad dressing separate from the salad itself in a container so you don’t have wilted, soggy salad at lunch. Yuck! Lunch packed in two 350ml tiers of a Lock & Lock lunch set.

Tamale lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler lunch: Same as mine, with a slice of crisp Asian pear (nashi) and a little container of yogurt for the tamale.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover tamale from dinner and leftover Asian pear from an earlier snack for Bug.

Packing: Packed in one 350ml tier of a Lock & Lock lunch set, and a 220ml metal container from the Daiso in Daly City, CA. Daiso is a great Japanese dollar store with branches internationally.

Contents of husband’s lunch: Grilled skate wing (a.k.a. ray or stingray) with Nonya-style sambal sauce on top, on a layer of rice. The left hand side holds more of the same salad that I had, plus a couple of cherry tomatoes. The chili ray is the last of the leftovers that I used earlier in the week in lunches for Bug and myself — my husband was happy to get another taste of the spicy ray after all the effort he put into making it! Delicious.

Nonya skate wing lunch

Morning prep time: 9 minutes, using all leftovers. I microwaved leftover cold rice to restore the texture, then removed the skate wing from the bones to make it easier to eat (my husband doesn’t have a lot of patience for deboning fish when eating on the run).

Packing: I packed the sauced skate wing right on top of the rice layer, with the rice absorbing a little bit of sauce (”donburi bowl style” — it wasn’t so liquidy that the rice became sodden). Packed in a 500ml Leaflet box with movable divider.

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Published by Biggie on August 31st, 2007 tagged bento, corn tortillas or masa, curry, fish or seafood, for kids, glutenfree, poultry, rice, salad | 11 Comments »

Noodle box lunches

A couple of simple presentation tricks today. The first is salami curls: fold a round slice of salami into quarters, which is fast and simple but adds a little visual twist. The second is stuffing a mini bell pepper with soft cheese after removing the ribs and seeds from the top. This quickly adds flavor without being messy to eat. I used a baby spoon to stuff the cheese down into the small bell pepper, but a chopstick or utensil handle would also do the trick.

Yakisoba lunch

Contents of my lunch: Mini bell pepper stuffed with a garlic and herb cheese triangle, salami slices folded into quarters, white peaches, and yakisoba fried Japanese noodles with Chinese sausage (Hsin Tung Yang brand), cabbage, carrots, bell peppers (yellow & red), onions, green onions and benishoga red ginger. I riffed a little on the yakisoba by going heavy on the vegetables and using dried Chinese sausage in place of the classic sliced pork.

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using leftover yakisoba packed the night before during dinner cleanup. Having half of the lunch already packed gave me time to work on the rest of the meal, and it was actually calming to know that lunch was almost done. Definitely pack ahead of time if you’re organized and the food you’re packing is sturdy enough to survive an overnight rest in the refrigerator!

Packing: To prevent the fruit from browning, I dipped the peach slices in lemon juice mixed with cherry grape juice to cut the sourness. Instead of a plastic food divider, I used mint to separate the peaches from the salami. So it was edible and complemented the delicate flavor of the peach when eaten together. I thought about eating it at the end of the meal as a breath freshener, but decided the freshness of the mint would be nice with the peaches instead. Packed in a 580ml two-tier Urara Dragonfly box.

Mac & cheese lunch for preschoolerContents of preschooler lunch: A quarter of a tuna melt (open-faced sandwich of tuna salad topped with sliced cheese then melted in the broiler or microwave), marinated cucumber and tomatoes with feta cheese and sanbaizu sweet vinegar sauce, and doctored shells and cheese with zucchini, fake crab chunks, onions, carrots, bell peppers and tomato-based pasta sauce. This lunch is too carb-heavy for my liking, but there you have it. The tuna melt worked well in a packed lunch as the melted cheese contained the mess and smell of the tuna salad (see Tips for Packing Smelly Food).

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using all leftovers.

Packing: I used a disposable condiment cup with a lid to contain the marinated veggie “salad”, and briefly microwaved the cold mac & cheese with a splash of water to restore the texture before packing. Packed in a 350ml Power Rangers box.

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Published by Biggie on August 29th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, meat, pasta or noodles, sandwich or wrap | 16 Comments »

Nonya skate wing box lunches

I love Singapore-Malaysian food. Nonya cuisine is the fusion that arose when male Chinese migrant workers moved to Singapore and Malaysia four centuries ago and married Malay women, and the cuisines merged in a most delicious fashion. Today’s lunches have skate wing (also known as ray, or stingray), which I had for the first time in Singapore in the Airport Hawker Center in the 90’s. A local friend took my husband and me there, promising amazing food, and she was right. There was an outstanding red sweet/hot chili sauce on grilled skate wing, and I haven’t yet been able to duplicate it.

Anyway, my Southeast Asian cookbooks have failed me so far in the quest to duplicate my memory of the ultimate hawker’s skate wing, so we resorted to a recipe from Steve Raichlen’s book The Barbecue! Bible. I have to hand it to Raichlen — his books are surprisingly international and well researched. (That said, can anyone recommend a really authoritative Singapore-Malaysian cookbook with recipes for authentic dishes like skate wing?) The Nonya sauce is sweet but hot, with shallots, jalapenos, garlic, lime juice and coconut milk. My husband made the skate, and the sauce came out SUPER-SPICY. Delicious, but not something that Bug could eat. So we grilled some plain skate and gave him mild pesto yogurt sauce instead.

Penang skate wing lunch

Contents of my lunch: Grilled skate wing with Nonya sweet-and-sour sauce, blueberries, cherries, and a quick salad of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and sanbaizu sweet vinegar sauce.

Morning prep time: 8 minutes, using all leftovers. In the morning, I microwaved leftover cold rice to restore the texture, and trimmed the skate wing to fit into the box.

Packing: I packed the sauced skate wing right on top of the rice layer, with the rice absorbing a little bit of sauce (”donburi bowl style” — it wasn’t so liquidy that the rice became sodden). Packed in a 650ml Leaflet box with movable divider that I picked up this weekend for US$8 at Irving Housewares in San Francisco, identical to this 500ml Leaflet box but a little bigger.

Skate wing lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler lunch: Blueberries, cherries, grilled skate wing with pesto yogurt sauce, and bread salad (crusty bread cubes, heirloom tomatoes, bocconcini marinated mozzarella balls, fresh basil, and homemade vinaigrette). (Click photo for a larger view.) Summer’s the perfect time to make bread salad, with tomatoes and basil in season. An added benefit is that it packs well in lunches because the bread soaks up all of the seasoned liquid from the salad. At dinner, Bug initially didn’t like the look of it, but ate it all up once he tried it. The Two Bite Rule in action! (You don’t have to eat it all, but you must have two bites.)

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using all leftovers.

Packing: In the morning, I deboned the skate wing and flaked it for easier child eating. Packed in one 350ml tier of a Lock & Lock lunch set.

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Published by Biggie on August 28th, 2007 tagged bento, curry, fish or seafood, for kids, glutenfree, rice, salad | 21 Comments »

Top 7 things to do with leftover food scraps

Orzo salad lunch for toddler

I don’t make much food art — you know, making shapes and fanciful characters out of food, using cookie cutters and scissors. But I do it occasionally, making cutout sandwiches and veggie shapes like those in these lunches (click photos for details). After you’ve cut out the fun shapes, though, you’re left with a pile of food scraps that’s a shame to throw away.

So without further ado, I present:

The Top 7 Things to do with Leftover Food Scraps

1. Eat as you go: Have them as part of breakfast or a snack as you pack.

2. Camouflage: Put them underneath a layer of pretty food, or cut them small and mix with other food. For example, the yellow pepper scraps in the orzo salad lunch to the right are chopped and mixed in with the salad itself.

3. Veggies: Save & put in other food like salad, fried rice, stir fry, soups, or a sauteed add-in to macaroni and cheese. You can also chop them up small and add them to a mirepoix or seasoned food topping.

Currypanman onigiri lunch for toddler

4. Bread crusts: Make into bread crumbs, croutons, or freeze in cubes and save to use in stuffing or bread pudding. Or you can always save them to feed to the birds — my preschooler enjoys going to Golden Gate Park and feeding stale bread cubes to the ducks in Stowe Lake.

5. Fruit: Save (in refrigerator or freezer) and put on cereal, in smoothies, yogurt, pies, pancakes, or muffins.

6. Cheese: Save and use in salad, melt over bread (sandwich melt, grilled cheese, or “pizza”), melt over tortilla chips as nachos, or put in an omelette.

7. Sliced meats: Save and incorporate in other dishes like pastas, sandwiches, omelettes, fried rice, etc.

What do you do with your food scraps? Comment and let us know. Speedy sandwich lunch for toddler

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Published by Biggie on August 27th, 2007 tagged parenthacks, tips | 47 Comments »

Latin-Korean fried rice box lunches

This week I misjudged the heat level when making kimchi fried rice for dinner, and it wound up being too spicy for my preschooler. Although I usually serve him the same things that we eat in order to broaden his palate (and make things easier on me), this is one of the only times I’ll actually make a different meal for Bug — when it’s simply too spicy and I can’t fix it by adding yogurt, etc. So while my husband and I got leftover fusion fried rice in our bento lunches, Bug got green onion bread and mini burger patties from the freezer. I made the mini burger patties about a month ago when we had meatloaf for dinner. I reserved some extra meatloaf mix and fried up the mini patties at the same time as I was making dinner, then flash froze them on a little metal pan (putting them in a freezer bag afterwards for longer-term storage). This is a convenient way to build up a stash of quick lunch items in your freezer that you can grab and pack quickly on busy mornings. (Read about more speed techniques in my Mommy’s Lunch Manifesto.)

Fusion fried rice lunch

Contents of my lunch: Fusion fried rice with kimchi, Salvadorean chorizo, tofu, onion, broccoli stems, carrots, nopales (prickly pear cactus paddles), egg, green onion and chogochujang sauce (recipe here). The fruit half holds crisp Asian pear (nashi), Concord grapes, green and gold kiwifruit, and cherries. Kimchi fried rice is a standard dish at our house that uses up whatever leftovers I have around. Leftover cold rice, the last of the kimchi, whatever veggies are on hand — you name it. It’s also nice with a garnish of roasted/ground sesame seeds and a bit of sesame oil.

Morning prep time: 8 minutes, using leftover fried rice from dinner. Just prepped the fruit in the morning.

Packing: To keep the fruit from browning, I tossed the Asian pear with lemon juice mixed with cherry grape juice to cut the sourness. Packed in a 500ml Leaflet box with movable divider.

Green onion bread lunch for preschooler

Contents of preschooler lunch: A whole red banana, green and gold kiwifruit, Asian pear (nashi), mini meatloaf patties, and Chinese green onion bread. After having tried the tiny Manzano bananas in a lunch the other week, I was intrigued when I spied the red bananas in the store. Also known as Jamaican bananas, red bananas are more commonly used in baking than raw, and are ripe when there are black spots on the skin. I learned this the hard way by peeling one last week and discovering that it was green and inedible in its raw state. But let ‘em sit for a week and Bug was begging for them. They were delicious and not mealy, although I think I prefer the Manzano bananas for out of hand eating.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using frozen mini meatloaf patties and store-bought green onion bread. In the morning I popped the frozen meatloaf patties into the microwave to thaw, put the green onion bread in the toaster, and sliced the fruit.

Fusion fried rice lunch

Packing: Packed in two tiers (280ml and 180ml) of a 4-tier nesting Thomas the Tank Engine bento box.

My husband’s lunch is the same as mine, packed in a 600ml two-tier box.

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Published by Biggie on August 25th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, meat, rice, tofu | 15 Comments »

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