Archive for the 'vegetarian' Category

(Chronologically Listed)

Global grilled cheese lunches

There are so many different ways to make grilled cheese. Grilled panini, quesadillas, pupusas, croque monsieur, Welsh rarebit, cheese on toast — you name it. My three-year-old’s current favorite is a grilled cheese sandwich made in a waffle iron, an idea we found in Toddler Café: Fast, Healthy, and Fun Ways to Feed Even the Pickiest Eater (one of the cookbooks in my growing collection). Today’s lunches took us south of the border, with cheese and bean-stuffed pupusas made with corn masa, and cheese quesadillas on a flour tortilla. These are fun in a bento lunch if you’re okay with room-temperature grilled cheese, as they hold together as easy finger food for the younger set.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Mini crab cakes (Handy brand from Costco, reviewed earlier), grilled asparagus with a sesame-soy glaze (recipe from Steven Raichlen’s How to Grill), raspberries, and pupusa wedges filled with bean and cheese. These were smaller slices of full-sized pupusas from a restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission district, but I’ve made mini pupusas for lunch before with assorted leftovers like pulled pork and cheese. I would have liked to include a non-spicy dipping sauce like crema sour cream, but the school lunchroom restrictions at his preschool rule out liquid dairy due to a food allergy.

Morning prep time: 8 minutes, using frozen crab cakes, leftover asparagus and pupusas. In the morning I heated the crab cakes in the microwave, the pupusa in my convection toaster oven, and cut the pupusa and asparagus into bite-sized pieces for little hands. (Read on for details and an additional quesadilla lunch.)

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Published by Biggie on April 10th, 2008 tagged bento, corn tortillas or masa, fish or seafood, for kids, sandwich or wrap, vegetarian | 19 Comments »

Rice cube & mushroom bento lunch

One of our two cats has started scratching under our bed and on our door when we shut her out, so I wake up early some mornings when Squirrel decides it’s time for us to get up (grrr). I’d rather be sleeping, but figure as long as I’m awake I may as well do something a little more ambitious for Bug’s bentos than throwing something into the microwave and reheating leftovers. (On the cat front, please feel free to give me advice on how to change our cat’s behavior! I’ve tried squirting her with water and putting contact paper under the bed, so now she jumps at our hair through the headboard slats. I’d love to get that extra hour of sleep in the morning again, but short of putting her in a cage I’m not sure what to do…)

Contents of preschooler lunch: “Rice cubes” with salmon-flavored furikake rice sprinkles, Moro blood orange, teriyaki chicken cubes (recipe below), Chinese egg custard tart, and roasted mushroom cap stuffed with chevre, pancetta, sauteed broccoli rabe, garlic and butter (recipe below). This is the lunch I referenced last week in the recipe for roasted mushroom caps.

Morning prep time: 20 minutes, using frozen rice and a quarter of a leftover egg custard from a cheap takeout dim sum meal (from Good Luck Dim Sum in San Francisco). In the morning I popped the mushrooms in my convection toaster oven to roast while I microwaved the rice and made the onigiri rice cubes with a little rice cuber (details and how-to here; you can also use a shaped silicone ice cube tray for similar results). The chicken and mushroom filling took the remaining time — I was ambitious for this lunch as I was awake anyway. (Darn Squirrel! At least her brother Moose is chill.) (Click for cooking and packing details, plus an additional preschooler lunch.)

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Published by Biggie on February 20th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, onigiri or sushi, poultry, rice, vegetarian | 46 Comments »

Miniature fruit & sandwich bento lunches

When I’m grocery shopping I like to keep my eyes peeled for miniature fruit that can be packed whole inside of a bento lunch, like Manzano or red bananas, Lady apples, or tiny tangerines. Although I can always cut up full-size versions and dip them in citrus juice to keep the fruit from browning, packing whole fruit is safer from a food safety standpoint, especially during warm weather. Japanese-language bento books tout packing whole fruit and vegetables during the summer for this reason, thus we see such accessories as the Banana Guard or the Banana Bunker that protect the delicate fruit from bruising in transit. I like to think that a miniature apple can rival cut fruit like apple rabbits and banana wedges in cuteness, but I may be deluding myself.

Sandwiches don’t have to go into a plastic baggie and get smushed in your bag before lunch. Roll or wrap sandwiches lend themselves nicely to a sushi-style presentation in a bento box, while bulkier sliced sandwiches can fit pretty much intact inside the larger collapsible sandwich cases that I like to take along for airplane meals. These are a couple of quickie sandwich lunches from last week (yes, I’m backlogged).

Contents of preschooler lunch: Turkey and Swiss cheese rolls, tangerine and a tiny Lady apple. Bug adores these darned rolls from Costco, although I find them to be a little bland and in need of mustard. They’re easy finger food, though, and they make my son unbelievably happy, so I humor him.

Morning prep time: 3 minutes, using store-bought wrap sandwiches. In the morning I just peeled the tangerine and scraped the white pith off with my fingernail. (Click to read the full post with packing notes and an additional preschooler lunch…)

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Published by Biggie on February 8th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, poultry, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap, vegetarian | 18 Comments »

Speed tip: Freeze chopped green onions in plastic drink bottles

I’ve written previously about freezing chopped green onions or fresh herbs to speed up prep time and reduce spoilage, but a twist is using plastic drink bottles as handy dispensers. When freezing chopped green onions, put them into an old water bottle that you’ve washed, and use a permanent marker to label the bottle cap with the contents. Freeze. To use, simply remove the cap, shake out just as much as you need, replace the cap and return to the freezer. The clear bottle allows you to quickly see what’s inside, and shaking things out of a bottle is faster than spooning them out of a freezer container. I use them in cooked dishes like fried rice, microwave mixed rice, soups, curries or scrambled egg purses — you name it.

Remember that moisture is your enemy in freezing, so be sure to dry the green onions thoroughly before chopping to prevent freezer burn. I used a large funnel to get the chopped scallions into the bottle, but you could also cut another plastic bottle in half around the middle and turn it over on top of the larger bottle, creating a do-it-yourself funnel. Green onions do become a bit soft in freezing, so they’re best used in cooked dishes as opposed to salads. Use within three weeks of freezing for best quality.

BTW, today (Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008) is the last day to use the 20% off coupon code a15447 at Reusable Bags (after the 3rd, coupon code FREEACME should still be valid to for a free ACME Reusable Shopping Bag on orders over US$50). In addition to reusable bags, they also sell lead-free lunch gear, lunch kits, lunchboxes, reusable bottles and the lead-free Laptop Lunchbox (they ship internationally). Their FAQ on health and safety issues is helpful in learning the latest about lead and plastic concerns. (Disclosure: affiliate links)

FURTHER READING:

Published by Biggie on February 3rd, 2008 tagged freezing, glutenfree, lactose free, parenthacks, tips, vegetarian | 31 Comments »

Meatball “rice bomb” bento lunch

Bento lunches don’t have to be filled with a multitude of different dishes in order to be appealing; focus on packing a balance of food groups and contrasting natural colors in your meal and you’ll find that a simple lunch can be just as attractive and satisfying as an ornate one. Other visually simple lunches I’ve made include zarusoba, chili con carne, and chicken curry pasta (a Leftover Remake).

This lunch revisits the meatball-stuffed onigiri rice “bombs” that I packed in an adult lunch last year (photo below, click for detail) after spying them in a Japanese-language onigiri cookbook. Making them is pretty straightforward: with your hands or ball-shaped onigiri mold (photo below), cover a meatball with warm short- or medium-grain rice, then completely cover that with moistened scraps of nori seaweed. I used pre-made teriyaki meatballs that I picked up at Costco and seasoned Korean seaweed for flavor, but regular Japanese nori is easier to work with and keeps its shape better afterwards as it’s less delicate.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Onigiri rice “bombs” stuffed with teriyaki pineapple chicken meatballs (my favorite, Aidells brand), grape tomatoes and steamed bell pepper with Korean barbecue sauce. I keep a bottle of Korean barbecue sauce in my fridge to quickly flavor any number of protein or vegetable dishes; having a few premade sauces on hand (store-bought or homemade, any of your favorite flavors) is an easy way to speed up your lunch prep. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using leftover refrigerated rice, store-bought meatballs, and leftover bell pepper. In the morning I microwaved the rice to restore its soft texture so I could work with it, and microwaved the meatballs to kill off any surface bacteria (see my post on packed lunch food safety). I made these without the molds at left, wetting my hands when I put the pieces of seaweed on in order to get them to stick. Honestly, it was just too much effort to dig the mold out from under my stove — I need to revisit my bento gear organization system to make the larger accessories more accessible.

Packing: Initially I just plopped the rice bombs down into the plain, unlined box, but they looked sad and lonely with the bare box bottom staring back up at me. So I grabbed a piece of lettuce from the refrigerator and lined the box with it for some nice color contrast (I’m guilty of unnecessary garnish here — Bug totally ignored the lettuce). Much better. The bell pepper went into a hard plastic food cup (yellow, to amplify the yellow of the bell pepper), and the grape tomatoes acted as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch in transit. The lunch is packed in one 350ml box from a Lock & Lock lunch set.

Verdict: A qualified thumbs up. Three-year-old Bug ate both of the rice bombs at preschool, and the rest afterwards as a snack. His preschool teacher said that the he had a little trouble eating the rice bombs as they were a little crumbly; this was my fault as I’d let the rice sit too long in the rice cooker before refrigerating it, and it dried out a little. For best results, either use fresh rice or be sure to freeze/refrigerate your leftover rice soon after cooking it, while it’s still at its most moist. (Click to read the full post with an additional lunch…)

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