Archive for the 'lactose free' Category

(Chronologically Listed)

Ma po tofu and Sloppy Joe lunches

Not all dishes fare well cool or at room temperature. Just imagine Sloppy Joe filling eaten cold — congealed and nasty. Because there are no microwave ovens at my son’s preschool or at the park, I like to have a thermal food jar or thermal lunch jar on hand to expand lunch options to include warm food.

Amazon carries thermal bento sets with a thermal food jar and an insulated carrying case for packing cool side dishes. You can achieve the same the effect on the cheap by using a regular thermal food jar that you can find at stores like Target or Walmart, plus a small side dish container for the room temperature or cool foods. (Read more about hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations.) When I use this set for my own lunches, I also like to pack fresh rice in the thermal lunch jar, keeping it warm and soft until I’m ready to eat. (Note to San Francisco locals: Kamei has the two Zojirushi-brand sets behind the counter for $33. Store info at the SF local shopping guide.)

Later this week I’ll be traveling out to Philadelphia to visit my ailing grandmother, so I won’t be as responsive as usual on the comment front. I’ll still be updating the blog from the road, but just a quick heads up. It’ll be interesting to see how my husband fares packing our three-year-old’s lunches on his own for two days; I promised to help by planning out simple menus that require only quick assembly. Maybe he should read my Mommy’s Lunch Manifesto — Need for Speed… I hear that works for dads too.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Homemade ma po tofu (with tofu, ground pork, enoki mushrooms and salted black beans), rice, edamame and apple bunnies made with miniature Red Delicious apples that Bug and I found at Safeway (see the apple rabbit tutorial). I thought apple bunnies were out of the picture because Bug doesn’t like apple skin anymore, but something about these tiny apples made him ask for apple bunnies.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using leftover mapo tofu. In the morning I made the apple rabbits first and got them soaking in acidulated ice water to curl the ears and prevent the fruit from browning, then moved on to warming the frozen rice and ma po tofu in the microwave and pre-warming the thermal food jar with hot tap water while the apples soaked. (Read on for packing details, Sloppy Joe lunch and recipe, and review of Bush’s Grillin’ Beans.)

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Published by Biggie on May 11th, 2008 tagged beans, bento, food jar, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, meat, recipe, rice | 19 Comments »

Lamb & spaghetti squash bento dinners

It’s been a really topsy turvy month around here! First the website was hacked (boo), then my bulk freezing tip went viral with write-ups all over (yay!). In the latest of the ups and downs, on Tuesday my computer bag was stolen from behind a store counter where I had checked it as per store policy. Mercifully, my computer wasn’t inside, but my checkbook and digital camera were (along with photos of lunches from the past few days). Filing police reports and doing paperwork is a pain, but upon reflection it could have been so much worse — I had my wallet, phone and car keys on me so Bug and I were able to drive home afterwards with minimal inconvenience. We dodged a bullet! I picked up a replacement camera on Wednesday, so the blog will go on.

Today I’m going back to some small bento dinners that I made for my husband and I to take to our running club last month, to supplement the snacks served after our run. According to the bento box size guidelines, they’re both too small for adults on their own. They’re filled with things that my three-year-old had previously rejected at dinner, so I packed a plain sandwich bento for him (not shown).

Contents of my bento dinner: “Confetti spaghetti” (roasted spaghetti squash with sauteed red bell pepper and zucchini, recipe from Kitchen Playdates), Moroccan-spiced grilled lamb (recipe from Steve Raichlen’s The Barbecue! Bible, my husband also made the same dish last year for this lamb lunch). Roasted asparagus, Moro blood orange and a banana segment round out the meal. Because the banana was just for myself, I didn’t bother cutting it into decorative banana wedges.

Afternoon prep time: 5 minutes, using all dinner leftovers. In the afternoon I cut the fruit, and microwaved the meat and squash to take the chill off. (Read on for an additional lunch, details, and a cookbook review.)
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Published by Biggie on April 24th, 2008 tagged bento, glutenfree, lactose free, meat | 30 Comments »

Decorative rice ball lunch & how-to

Today’s lunch illustrates an easy way to dress up an onigiri rice ball using ordinary plastic wrap and a little box. This is the first time I used this new little 350ml two-tier bento box that I found at Sanko in San Francisco’s Japantown for $8 (see my full store review or a brief writeup in the San Francisco Bay Area shopping guide for bento gear). 350ml is small, so it might seem unnecessary to split it into two tiers (especially ones that don’t nest inside each other when empty). But there is a reason behind it: the small shallow upper tier is the right size and shape for making decorative onigiri rice balls with the help of a little plastic wrap.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Onigiri rice ball with edamame and pre-cut nori seaweed shaped like Shinkansen, a little sauce container with Gohan Desu Yo! jarred seaweed paste for the rice, kiwi, broccoli, roasted eel (unagi kabayaki), and red/yellow bell pepper strips with Annie’s Green Goddess salad dressing (surprisingly good). Not pictured is a side dish container with snack strips of seasoned Korean seaweed shown in this bibimbap lunch, which is my three-year-old’s favorite way to eat rice: making little packets of rice with seaweed paste on Korean seaweed.

Morning prep time: 13 minutes, using frozen rice and leftover unagi eel. In the morning I microwaved some frozen rice, slapped together the rice ball (instructions below), and multi-cooked the vegetables in my microwave mini steamer, and filled the little sauce container. I could have taken a lot more time to really fancy up the rice ball, but that’s not my style and Bug was pleased enough with minimal decoration. (Read on for full cooking details, a review of the little bento box, and an additional lunch with pasta frittata.)

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Published by Biggie on April 18th, 2008 tagged bento, eggs, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, leftover remake, meat, onigiri or sushi | 25 Comments »

Appetizers for lunch

Welcome to those of you who found your way here from recent write-ups in Boing Boing, Neatorama, Slashfood and Serious Eats! Please feel free to ask questions or comment even on old entries, and accept my apologies for some lingering issues from the site’s being hacked last week (some character encoding is wonky, and Google-powered internal search is down until the site is reindexed by Google).

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Teriyaki pineapple chicken meatballs, broccoli with vinaigrette, steamed red bell pepper with Korean barbecue sauce, blueberries, and onigiri rice balls filled with Gohan Desu Yo! seaweed paste and wrapped in packaged, pre-cut seasoned nori seaweed snack strips.

To give the rice the red and green color, I mixed the rice with red and green hana-ebi powdered dried shrimp. A variation on sakura denbu (a sweet powder of ground codfish that’s often used in chirashizushi), hana ebi is a savory shrimp powder from Hawaii. You can see the results of all three types in an early snack bento for my son. (see my page on Decorative Food for other ideas)

Morning prep time: 12 minutes, using frozen rice and pre-made meatballs from Costco (Aidells brand, my favorite). In the morning I warmed the frozen rice in the microwave, and started working on the rice balls while the broccoli, bell pepper and meatballs multi-cooked in my microwave mini steamer at the same time. (Read on for details and an additional preschooler lunch.)

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Published by Biggie on April 15th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, onigiri or sushi | 25 Comments »

Speed tip: Make individual portions in freezer bags

Although it might be nice if I were organized enough to plan out all of our dinners and my son’s bento lunches in advance, that’s never going to happen — not my style. I operate from more of the spur-of-the-moment approach to cooking, so it’s essential to have a well stocked freezer and pantry. One drawback, though, is that if I’ve frozen food in big blocks, I can’t use just a bit quickly without defrosting the whole thing.

Enter my Japanese-language freezing books. A standard tip for freezing ground foods or thick sauces in small portions is to first put the food into a large freezer bag and press it out as flat as possible, eliminating air pockets. (Making it thin speeds up defrost time due to the increased surface area, and pressing out excess air guards against freezer burn.) Use a long chopstick or ruler to create divisions within the food, forming individual portions. This way when you freeze the entire bag, you’ll be able to quickly break off just as much as you want to use, no more.

Because you’re touching the freezer bag and not the meat directly when flattening it out, your hands don’t get messy, and the food and work surface stay clean. You also reduce the waste that would be generated by individually wrapping each little serving in plastic wrap. This freezing technique isn’t limited to ground meat, though. Think thick pasta sauces, mashed or pureed fruit or vegetables, cooked meat soboro, rice, fried rice, cookie dough, etc.

(Read on for variations and space-saving storage hints.)

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