Archive for the 'pasta or noodles' Category

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Frozen spaghetti cup lunch

Contents of preschooler lunch: Frozen spaghetti cup, pineapple & pork sausage, mushrooms, unsauced broccoli, molded hard-boiled egg, and dried apricots.

Morning prep time: 20 minutes, mostly inactive prep time to make a batch of molded eggs. I used the multi-boiling technique to cook the broccoli, mushrooms, and rinsed eggs all at once in the same pot, saving both time and energy. Had I made the eggs in advance I could have made this lunch in 5 minutes using a previously frozen spaghetti cup. If I didn’t have proper egg molds, I could have used commonly available ice cream sandwich molds instead (tutorial here). (Click any photo for a larger view.)

Packing: I had previously frozen spaghetti cups in paper baking cups set into Tupperware, so I was able to just grab one from the freezer and drop it into the lunch as is (pasta was cut up prior to freezing to make it easier for preschooler eating). I used paper cupcake liners for the pasta because I hadn’t yet bought silicone baking cups, but you can definitely freeze food directly in the silicone cups. (I confirmed this by freezing the silicone cups, then immediately squishing them in my hands when they came out of the freezer cold. No damage; they didn’t even get stiff.) I dropped the drained broccoli into a reusable silicone mini baking cup for purely aesthetic reasons (color contrast) — there’s no practical reason for the cup unless you or your child are sensitive about foods touching. Dried apricots fill the gap in the lunch to keep it from shifting during transport. Lunch is packed in a 350ml Power Rangers bento box with inner cups removed to accommodate the food.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Bug tore through everything except the apricots at preschool, and then finished them up in the car afterwards. Success!

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Published by Biggie on October 23rd, 2007 tagged bento, eggs, for kids, meat, pasta or noodles | 11 Comments »

Weird Pokemon lunch bag cloth

When I was shopping at Ichiban Kan in San Francisco the other week, I stumbled across a strange Pokemon lunch bag that I initially thought was an ordinary lunch cloth (like a cloth napkin or furoshiki wrapping cloth). When I got it home, however, I discovered that it was actually a weird cross between a wrapping cloth and a lunch bag.

The bottom and sides are sewn together so that you can just drop in a bento box and any other lunch gear, then simply knot the top to close it securely (similar to the Otsukai Tsutsumi illustrated in this cool wrapping chart). I’ve used furoshiki, cloth napkins, and dish towels to tie flimsy bento lunches together and throw into a backpack before, but I can see this being a fun way to ease a child into lunch wrapping without a lot of skill involved. I’d seen a similar Shinkansen-themed lunch bag on Amazon before, but it hadn’t really sunk in that this was how it was supposed to be used — now I get it! Ingenious. (Click on any of the photos for a larger view.)

Here I put Bug’s two-tier pasta lunch inside (shown below), along with a fork, cloth napkin, and damp oshibori hand towel and case. It looks cool, but he went on strike when I asked him to practice opening it, and requested his new Cars lunch bag instead (”I can use just two fingers to open that one!”). We’ll practice some more before I send him to preschool with it so I can be sure he can open it by himself, but it’s hard to compete with Cars!

Contents of Wednesday preschooler lunch: Radiator-shaped radiatore pasta with leftover slow-cooked salmon (salmon recipe here) mixed with tomato-based sauce and sauteed onions with bell peppers. The fruit tier holds gold kiwifruit, tangerine slice and a strawberry.

Morning prep time: 4 minutes, using leftover pasta. The night before, I packed the pasta tier when cleaning up from dinner. So in the morning I just cut the kiwi, cut another wedge off the rapidly shrinking tangerine from the fridge, and quickly microwaved the pasta to restore texture. Very simple lunch this day, nothing fancy.

Packing: Packed in two tiers (180ml and 100ml) of a 4-tier nesting and stacking Thomas the Tank Engine bento box set. I included a small Anpanman pick for the kiwi.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Bug ate everything at preschool except the kiwi, which he ate in the car afterwards.

Contents of Thursday preschooler lunch: Half of a bagel sandwich with cream cheese, grapes, grape tomatoes, and a tiny Manzano banana (smaller and drier than a baby banana, with a slight apple flavor).

Morning prep time: 4 minutes

Packing: I started peeling the banana by cracking open the stem end to make it easier for Bug to peel himself. The interesting thing about this lunch is that I lined the child-sized Snoopy collapsible sandwich case with decorative aluminum foil to keep any cream cheese from escaping through the holes in the bottom or sides. Although I usually pack sandwiches directly in these kinds of ventilated sandwich cases without any kind of lining, my friend Mami (Japanese mother of one of Bug’s classmates) tells me that she always lines hers with colorful plastic wrap to keep things tidy and clean. Her theory is that Japanese-language bento cookbooks don’t often show photos of the plastic-wrap-lined boxes because it looks nicer without the wrap. What do you think?

Verdict: Bug ate the bagel sandwich and a couple of tomatoes at prechool, then ate the banana and remainder of the tomatoes in the car afterwards. For some reason the grapes were uninteresting to him, so I wound up eating those myself.

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Published by Biggie on October 13th, 2007 tagged bento, equipment, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, leftover remake, pasta or noodles, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap, tutorial or how to, vegetarian | 13 Comments »

Tarako spaghetti lunches

Making bento lunches for preschool five days a week is no problem so far, but keeping up with the blogging is! I may have to rethink how many of Bug’s lunches I blog about — not all of them are necessarily photo-worthy, and I’d like to keep quality high and focused on speedy lunch packing. I may write in-depth about three or so a week, and then do a roundup post with the remainder for people just looking for quick visual ideas. The jury’s still out, but it’s something I’m weighing.

Contents of my lunch: Tarako spaghetti with onions, red bell peppers and kaiware (daikon sprouts). The top tier holds a section of corn on the cob, plum tomatoes, broccoli with red wine vinaigrette, black Mission fig, and grapes. Tarako is salted cod roe, but I often use jarred Greek tarama for this dish instead.

Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover pasta and corn. I pre-packed the pasta when cleaning up from dinner. In the morning I briefly microwaved the pasta to restore texture, garnished with fresh kaiware, steamed the broccoli in my microwave mini steamer (speeding up cooking time by 50%), and arranged food in the the top tier.

Packing: I used tongs to twist the spaghetti into two large loose nests, making the pasta tier a little nicer looking. Nothing in the top tier was particularly wet, so I didn’t use food dividers (edible or otherwise). Packed in a 580ml two-tier Urara Dragonfly box.

Cooking: Hereâ€™s a tarako spaghetti recipe with good notes. I start by sauteing an onion and bell pepper if I have some on hand for color contrast. In Osaka I often had it with a little Kewpie mayonnaise stirred into it. Other variations omit the cream in favor of sauteing in butter and tossing in mirin/tarako/mayo (that’s what I did here). However you vary it, itâ€™s bound to be good â€” just get the sauce loose enough to lightly coat the noodles.

Preschooler lunch: Contents are the same as mine. For packing, I used kitchen scissors to cut up the spaghetti into smaller bits (right in the box) that are easier for little hands to manage. Packed in a 270ml one-tier Thomas the Tank Engine box with one hard plastic sub-container removed to fit more pasta, and a 150ml Anpanman side dish container for the fruit. After taking the photo I tucked in a little Anpanman pick for the fruit. Verdict: 5 stars. Bug ate all of this at preschool, nothing left over. Success!

(Cross-posted to The Daily Tiffin parenting and lifestyle blogâ€™s Tiffin Tuesday column.)

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Published by Biggie on October 7th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids, lactose free, pasta or noodles | 21 Comments »

Broccoli rabe & sausage penne box lunches

Broccoli rabe (a.k.a. rapini) can be tricky to cook with — my husband generally isn’t fond of it because of its bitterness, even though he loves broccoli. This penne dish has managed to break down his aversion, though, by balancing the bitterness of the rabe with the savoriness of the Italian sausage. I got the recipe from The Classic Pasta Cookbook by Giuliano Hazan (son of renowned Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan). I’m finding that I like oil-based pasta sauces in bento lunches as leftover pasta doesn’t get mushy after sitting, and doesn’t need a separate little container of sauce to re-dress the pasta just prior to eating. So it’s also slightly faster to pack in the morning.

Contents of my lunch: Penne with broccoli rabe and Italian sausage, cheese wheel, strawberries and blueberries, and spinach salad with hard-boiled egg, grape tomatoes, red onions, cheese, mushrooms, bacon and poppy seed dressing.

Morning prep time: 7 minutes, using leftover pasta and Costco spinach salad. In the morning I sliced the strawberries, arranged the salad, and put the dressing into the purple sauce container.

Packing: I used the Laptop Lunchbox to pack today’s bulky salad and penne. The little blue container and lid for the yellow container weren’t actually necessary, but I used them for kicks to keep everything contained and symmetrical. We ate our lunches outside so they were at room temperature, but if we had access to a microwave I could have lifted out the penne container and warmed it.

Contents of preschooler lunch: The same as mine, with some white nectarine.

Morning prep time: 4 minutes, using leftover pasta. In the morning I sliced the nectarine and threw the pasta and fruit into the box.

Packing: Although Bug did fine with the penne as is at dinner, if I were to repack this lunch for him to eat on his own I would cut each penne in half so they were more bite-sized for a preschooler. To keep the cut nectarine from turning brown, I dipped it in lemon juice mixed with guava juice to cut the sourness (see other ways to prevent fruit from browning here). I put the berries into the box’s hard plastic sub-container so that they wouldn’t be bruised in transit. Packed in a 350ml Power Rangers bento box.

(NOTE: The cookbook and Laptop Lunchbox links are affiliate links; using the links to buy anything from Amazon or Reusable Bags supports Lunch in a Box.)

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Published by Biggie on September 12th, 2007 tagged Laptop Lunchbox, bento, eggs, for kids, meat, pasta or noodles, salad | 9 Comments »

Chicken drumstick box lunches

My preschooler actually gets distressed if his hands get messy when he eats, so I used some decorative aluminum foil to create a clean “handle” on a chicken drumstick for him. Success! He dove right in and grabbed the chicken leg without complaint, gnawing happily.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Roast chicken drumstick, strawberry tree fruit (a.k.a. arbutus berry), mango, blueberries, and pasta salad with roasted corn, cherry tomatoes, cilantro and chipotle chiles (recipe from Cookâ€™s Illustratedâ€™s The New Best Recipe).

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using store-bought roast chicken from Costco and leftover pasta salad.

Packing: In addition to using decorative foil to make a clean “handle” on the chicken, I also used plastic sushi grass to keep the sweet fruit away from the savory chicken. The pasta salad is packed in a disposable condiment cup with a lid, although I forgot to put the lid on and some of the corn escaped the cup in transit (oops!). The entire lunch is packed in a 350ml Power Rangers bento box.

Equipment: A while back I picked up some yellow and pink aluminum foil from Daiso in Daly City (Japanese dollar store with branches internationally) for US$1.50 each (click on the photo for a larger view). It’s Ciao! brand, which puts out a popular line of bento lunch accessories such as food cups, rice ball wrappers, picks, cutter, dividers, antibacterial lunch sheets, etc.

Contents of my lunch: Smoked hamburger that my husband the grillmaster cooked over the U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend, red-leaf lettuce, container of poppy seed dressing, and the same fruit and pasta salad that Bug ate.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover smoked hamburger and pasta salad. In the morning I just cut the fruit and hamburger.

Packing: I used red-leaf lettuce as an edible food divider to keep the sweet fruit away from the savory burger, and cut the burger into bite-sized pieces to avoid in-box cutting. I grabbed a pre-filled sauce container with salad dressing from the refrigerator, and used it to dress the lettuce as a mini-salad after I ate the burger. Last week I filled three little sauce containers with leftover salad dressing from a store-bought salad, which speeds things up when I pack lunch on the fly in the morning. Packed in a 500ml Leaflet box with movable divider.

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