Archive for the 'thermal lunch jar' Category

(Chronologically Listed)

How to care for your bento gear

Because I like shortcuts and can get bento gear cheaply in San Francisco, I’m tough on my equipment and push the envelope when caring for it. I experiment with putting everything in the dishwasher for speed even when the care instructions say not to. As a result I’ve lost or damaged some equipment, but I’ve also figured out what can take a little more abuse than the manufacturer recommends.

Dishwashers are uncommon in Japan (I didn’t have one until my last year there), so a lot of bento boxes and accessories are made with hand washing in mind. If you have time and the inclination, hand washing all of your bento gear with regular dish soap will make it last the longest, but I wanted to put together bento care guidelines for people either looking for a shortcut or wanting to know what the Japanese care instructions say. At the end of this post I’ve included translations of common Japanese-language care instructions if you’re trying to decode what’s in your cupboard.

Do you have a clever bento care or cleaning tip? Share it with us in comments! (Click here for the full post…)

Read the rest of this entry »

Published by Biggie on January 22nd, 2008 tagged Laptop Lunchbox, bento, equipment, food jar, sandwich case, thermal lunch jar, tips, tutorial or how to | 45 Comments »

Korean hotpot bento dinners

Once a week I pack bentos to eat for dinner while we’re out at our running club. I started doing this when my son graduated to solid food and I realized that we might have to stop going to this event that happens at Bug’s dinnertime. My son has become so attached to this weekly ritual that even when we’re off schedule and I offer him dinner at home beforehand, he tells me that he’d rather have a bento there instead. Of course, his eating alone isn’t much fun for any of us, so I started packing meals for myself and my husband too. Our friends are always curious to see what this week’s meal is, and it’s always more satisfying and better for us than the chips and cheese puffs that are there (okay, okay, I eat some of the snacks too).

Contents of my husband’s dinner: Korean vegetable hotpot (with carrots, daikon, zucchini, bell pepper and greens), white rice with wasabi furikake and seasoned Korean seaweed, yellow plum tomatoes, assorted banchan (ggakdugi daikon kimchi, spicy fish cake, sweet/spicy tiny crabs) and daikon and spinach namul (Korean seasoned vegetables served as a side dish). This meal was an antidote to all of the barbecue and fried food we’d been eating in Oklahoma when we were on vacation in December — I came back with a serious craving for fish, vegetables, and rice (nothing oily). Kukje Market’s big panchan bar and fish hotpot packs saved the day when we were still unpacking.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using all leftovers from a previous dinner. In the morning I preheated the thermal lunch jar with hot tap water while I microwaved the soup and frozen rice.

Packing: I chose a thermal lunch jar (mine’s a Nissan Stainless, often cheaper than the Mr. Bento) because of its ability to effectively hold warm soup, but left out one inner container because it was just a bit too large for this meal. The soup was originally a fish hotpot at dinner, but I left out the actual fish when packing as I was concerned that the fish would become hard and rubbery when held at higher temperatures over time. Draining the side dishes helped keep flavors from mingling, and packing the daikon kimchi in an aluminum food cup kept it from staining the inner container. I added extra hot pepper paste to the soup, basically giving up on containing strong smells, and the whole family reveled in the garlicky spice (food smells are less noticeable if you all eat the same thing, right?). (Click to read the full post with two additional meals…)

* * * * *

Read the rest of this entry »

Published by Biggie on January 7th, 2008 tagged fish or seafood, food jar, for kids, lactose free, rice, soup or stew, thermal lunch jar, tofu | 19 Comments »

English muffin sandwich bento lunch

Bento lunches don’t have to include rice, in fact sandwiches are a popular item in children’s bento boxes in Japan as they’re easy for little hands to hold. You can use all kinds of breads to make interesting sandwich variations: mini bagels, English muffins, croissants, dinner rolls, sandwich bread cut into shapes, cocktail bread for teeny sandwiches, biscuits, regular bread roll-ups, or even focaccia or regular bread packed in a collapsible sandwich case. What’s your favorite sandwich bread to shake things up a little?

Contents of preschooler lunch: English muffin sandwich with herbed cream cheese on a lettuce garnish, crisp Fuyu persimmon slices, steamed broccoli, cherry tomato, hard-boiled quail egg shaped like a car, and diced mango.

Morning prep time: 12 minutes, using a molded quail egg from an earlier batch (stored in cold water in the fridge). In the morning I quickly made the sandwich (not toasted, as per Bug’s request), sliced the fruits and veggies, and steamed the broccoli in my microwave mini steamer. I shaped the quail egg with the yellow quail egg mold shown on the right: shell a hard-boiled egg while hot, quickly put it into the mold and close it up, then toss into a cold water bath for 10 minutes or so for it to take on its shape. If you don’t have an egg mold, you can use common ice cream sandwich molds to shape chicken eggs. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Packing: The mango went into a reusable plastic food cup to keep it contained, and a plastic food divider kept the sweet persimmon away from the savory broccoli (I cut the divider to size and reuse it after washing). I’ll cop a guilty plea for unnecessary garnish: I put the muffin sandwich halves on curly leaf lettuce for color contrast. If this were my lunch I would have thrown in a pre-filled sauce container with vinaigrette, and made a mini salad out of the lettuce after I’d eaten the sandwich. That, or put the lettuce inside of the sandwich itself and let it hang out of the sides for a similar visual effect. The lunch is packed in a three-tier 495ml bento box from Daiso (US$1.50) which unfortunately is a little tricky for little kids to put back together as the lids are not interchangeable. We practiced beforehand, but his teachers had to help him put this box back together. I may mark the lids and their corresponding tier with marker or nail polish to help Bug match them up by himself (self-sufficiency, hooray!).

Verdict: Too big. Bug ate both halves of the sandwich at preschool, but totally left the rest until afterwards. In the afternoon after playing he did eat everything but the persimmon slices, which had gotten a little warm from sitting too long and had stuck together. I should have left one half of the sandwich out, and just sent him to school with two tiers instead of three. (Click for details of the second lunch with curry packed with the “rice lid” method…)

Read the rest of this entry »

Published by Biggie on December 4th, 2007 tagged bento, curry, eggs, equipment, for kids, lactose free, poultry, rice, sandwich or wrap, thermal lunch jar | 22 Comments »

Weekday Indian box lunches

I normally associate making Indian food with spending hours in the kitchen on a weekend. I recently picked up a copy of Julie Sahni’s cookbook Moghul Microwave, though, that’s been teaching me how to prepare authentic-tasting Indian dishes quickly using the microwave. Today’s lunch is my shortcut to homemade Indian food on a weekday — it felt quite decadent! In other news, my in-laws, brother-in-law and his wife have come to visit us for the next week and a half, so I anticipate being more sporadic on the lunch blogging front over the next week as we host a houseful. The house certainly is clean now, though! I no longer feel like such a Filth Wizard.

Contents of my lunch: Fish cake tikka masala, smothered cabbage with mustard oil (bandhgobhi sabzi), and whole wheat tortillas in place of Indian flatbreads (it’s what I had on hand). The smothered cabbage with mustard oil was a simple Bengali dish from Moghul Microwave, cooking shredded cabbage, onions, tomatoes and (frozen) julienned ginger in the microwave before dressing it with mustard oil with cumin, mustard seeds and cilantro. The tikka masala was a quick throw-together with a pre-made Patak-brand simmer sauce from Costco that was quite tasty (Bug ate it up at dinner). There’s a thread about the best food finds at Costco here on Chowhound.com, where I used to be a moderator way back when.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using dinner leftovers. In the morning I just heated the curry, and packed.

Packing: To keep the curry warm, I pre-heated the thermal food jar with hot tap water while I microwaved the curry in a microwave-safe dish. All packed in an insulated bento set from Ichiban Kan that lets me pack hot food and cold food at the same time. I found similar Zojirushi sets on Amazon (albeit pricey!): Metallic Stainless Vacuum Lunch Jar (Lavender) and Metallic Stainless Vacuum Lunch Jar (Green).

Contents of preschooler’s lunch: Chili Colorado, whole wheat tortillas, and steamed asparagus and bean sprouts with Korean barbecue sauce (yakiniku sauce). We ran short of tikka masala (which Bug loved), so we shared both the chili and curry. Bug didn’t like the smothered cabbage at dinner, so I threw together a quick side of veggies for him. Bug ate up the asparagus, but spit out the bean sprouts. Oh well, at least he ate something green!

Morning prep time: 8 minutes, using leftover chili Colorado. In the morning, I cut up the beef into bite-size pieces for a preschooler, and quickly cooked the bean sprouts and asparagus in a microwave mini steamer followed by a toss with bottled Korean barbecue sauce.

Packing: The unique thing about Bug’s lunch is that I liberated the soup bowl from my Nissan Stainless thermal lunch tote to use without the thermal jar itself, similar to this lunch. It half fills the soup bowl, and the side dishes are packed in a 260ml “Comment vas-tu?” side dish container.

Contents of my husband’s lunch: The same as mine.

Packing: The curry is packed in a 300ml Thermos Nissan food jar, preheated with hot tap water. The tortillas and cabbage are packed in one 350ml tier of a Lock & Lock lunch set.

(Disclaimers: I have no commercial affiliations with Ichiban Kan, Costco or Patak’s. Amazon links are affiliate links; using the links to buy anything from Amazon supports Lunch in a Box.)

READ MORE:

Published by Biggie on September 14th, 2007 tagged bento, curry, fish or seafood, food jar, for kids, lactose free, phyllo or pancake or other, thermal lunch jar | 12 Comments »

Strawberry tree fruit & curry lunches

I packed number of unusual fruits and vegetables in our meals today, the most interesting of which is the striking red fruit of the strawberry tree (”arbutus berries”). I haven’t seen this fruit in stores, but our friend Vincent from the African island of RÃ©union picked them from trees in the neighborhood with Bug. I find them faintly sweet and a bit mealy when eaten out of hand, but they make a very nice jam or couli. We didn’t have enough strawberry tree fruit to cook up into anything much, so into the bentos they went, to be eaten out of hand. Suite 101 tells us they can also be made into “jellies, syrups, candied fruit, distilled and fermented drinks, such as wines and liqueurs. In Spain, they’re made into a highly flavored wine, called medronho.”

Contents of preschooler lunch: Honeydew nectarine, strawberry tree fruit (arbutus berries), sliced cucumber with herb oil from marinated bocconcini (we shared this), and a curry that Vincent made with chicken, potatoes, banana squash, tomatoes, mushrooms, chili, coconut milk, peanut butter, lemongrass, and keffir lime leaves, simmered with Parmesan cheese rind for flavor complexity. This particular honeydew nectarine was disappointingly mealy, but another one we had a day early was sweet and medium-firm with (not surprisingly) a hint of melon. There’s an interesting article on fruit hybrids here.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, to reheat leftover curry that Vincent made, and cut the nectarine and cucumber.

Packing: I pre-heated the thermal food jar with hot tap water before packing to maximize heat retention, and dipped the nectarine in lemon juice mixed with strawberry banana juice to prevent fruit from browning without making it sour. Packedin a 560ml insulated bento set (240ml rice jar and 160ml side dishes).

My meal is the same, minus the cucumber. Packed in a 300ml thermal food jar and a 190ml metal side dish container.

Contents of husband’s lunch: The same curry, pre-frozen gemelli pasta, plum tomatoes, broccoli and orange cauliflower florets with red wine vinaigrette, and a mini pudding cup. The orange cauliflower tasted just like regular white cauliflower to me; I bought it at Safeway so it should be widely available. (Pasta is pushed to one side for the photo only; I re-covered the curry with pasta after the photo was taken.)

Morning prep time: 10 minutes of mostly microwave time, to warm the curry, defrost the frozen unsauced pasta, and quickly cook the broccoli and orange cauliflower in my microwave mini steamer (speeds cook time by 50%).

Packing: This lunch features a variation of the “rice lid” technique that I first described here, where you pack a container mostly full of your stew or curry, and cap it with a layer of rice to keep things warm and intact until eating. We were out of cooked rice, so I pulled out a little packet of pre-frozen pasta and microwaved it to use instead. I had serious doubts that pasta would work as a lid, so we purposely tipped it on its side in the car to really put it to the test. Result: it actually kept the very thick curry in place without leaking out of the loose rice container lid, but this definitely wouldn’t work with a thinner broth. The top tier is divided by a little plastic gelato spoon that I kept from a gelato takeout shop. It did double duty as both food divider and spoon for the pudding; it’s the perfect size for box lunches so I wash and reuse it. Lunch packed in a cheap Chinese thermal lunch jar, bought locally.