Archive for the 'sandwich or wrap' Category

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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.

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.

Contents 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 »

Lox and cheese mini bagel sandwiches

On short notice, we were invited to go out with a group of Japanese women who all brought bento lunches for themselves and their preschoolers, so I quickly threw these together on our way out the door. It was interesting to see everyone else’s mother/child lunches, trade preschool and lunch tips, and talk about places to buy bento gear in the San Francisco Bay Area. Afterwards another mom showed me around Ocean View Supermarket, a newly opened pan-Asian market near Daly City that’s huge, clean, cheap, with parking, and even has colored mamenori soy paper for making food art (US$2.59 for 5 large sheets). I’ve updated the SF Bay Area guide to ethnic markets with store info; it’s worth checking out for locals.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Mini bagel sandwich with cream cheese and smoked salmon, broccoli and orange cauliflower florets with red wine vinaigrette, and cherries. The orange cauliflower tasted just like regular white cauliflower to me; I bought it and a bag of mini bagels (perfect for little hands) at Safeway.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes to make the sandwich on an untoasted bagel, and quickly cook the broccoli and orange cauliflower in my microwave mini steamer (speeds cook time by 50%). I nuked the cream cheese briefly to make it easy to spread on the bagel.

Packing: I didn’t want the vinaigrette on the broccoli and cauliflower to get onto the bagel and make it soggy, so after cooking and dressing the vegetables I tossed them into my mini strainer and bowl to drain and cool quickly. A short rest of a minute or so did the trick, then I took out extra insurance against leaking by packing them in a coated food cup. If I had the larger size silicone baking cups, those would have been a good waste-free alternative here. One of these days… The lunch is packed in a 350ml Power Rangers (”Geki Rangers”) box that I actually found abandoned near my house!!! Manna from the skies — bizarre.

My lunch has the same food, but with the addition of capers in the bagel sandwich and a couple of Concord grapes that act as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch for transport.

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Published by Biggie on August 18th, 2007 tagged SF Bay Area local, bento, fish or seafood, for kids, sandwich or wrap | 18 Comments »

Portobella chicken burgers in collapsible sandwich cases

Contents of husband’s lunch: Portobello mushroom chicken “burger” on a focaccia sandwich roll with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and chocolate chipotle-flavored mayonnaise. Side dishes of homemade chili and a shelf-stable mini pudding cup.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using ready-made chicken patties by Aidell’s (review below) and leftover frozen chili.

Packing: I picked out some of the soft bread from the focaccia top layer like this to make room for the sandwich filling, so that tomatoes didn’t squirt out of the sides when eating. The lettuce and cheese acted as moisture barriers to keep the bread from getting soggy. The sandwich is packed in a collapsible sandwich case (first reviewed here), and threw in a lidded Solo condiment cup with leftover chili that I had frozen as a savory variation of the edible ice pack. These are the same condiment cups that I used for the fruit jello cups, and are widely available (you can even save the ones you get from pizza delivery with Parmesan cheese or pepper flakes). Packed in a US$1 sandwich case from Ichiban Kan (online store coming soon). My lunch is in the blue Feel at Ease sandwich case (below right).

Cooking: We had extra chocolate chipotle wet rub leftover from making the chocolate chipotle babyback ribs last week, so I made a quick flavored mayonnaise by mixing mayo with the wet rub. You can quickly jazz up regular mayonnaise with simple add-ins like pesto, hot sauce, pureed garlic, etc.

Product: I tried Aidell’s portobella mushroom and onion chicken burgers for the first time after spying them at Costco. I’m a big fan of other Aidell’s products (especially their teriyaki & pineapple chicken meatballs), and was hoping that the patties would be a tasty shortcut to a burger lunch. Sadly, we found the texture to be overprocessed and greasy, and the flavor to be one-dimensional (mushroomy, but not much else). Whereas the meatballs have clearly identifiable pieces of chicken and pineapple in them and a nice meaty texture, the portobella/chicken patties were rubbery and spongelike. Thinking that microwaving might have been the culprit, I pan-fried a patty this morning until it developed a nice crust, and tasted it side by side against their teriyaki and pineapple meatballs. No improvement — I can’t recommend this product and am trying to figure out what to do with the other six patties in the freezer. I could always cut them into strips, bread them with flour/egg/panko and fry them (frying it and dipping it in sauce might mask the texture, albeit at the cost of my arteries). Anyone have any ideas? (I really hope that this is a new product that’s still in development, so they can work out the kinks.)

Contents of Bug’s lunch: Chicken salad sandwich with cheese, a wrapped Babybel cheese, and a condiment cup of leftover zucchini with tomatoes and onions (recipe from Marcella Hazan’s definitive cookbook Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking).

Equipment: I picked up a child’s Snoopy collapsible sandwich case that’s much smaller than the adult boxes that I have. I’m thinking this’ll come in handy when Bug starts preschool next month — I won’t need to use a regular bento box or pad out an adult sandwich case with food he won’t eat. Extra bonus is that it’s Peanuts and gender-neutral. Bought at Moritaya in San Francisco’s Japantown (see the SF Bay Area shopping guide) for about US$9, which was pricey, but I haven’t seen the child versions anywhere else and preschool starts soon.

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Published by Biggie on August 10th, 2007 tagged equipment, for kids, poultry, sandwich case, sandwich or wrap | 28 Comments »

Sloppy Joe lunches

Contents of my lunch: A do-it-yourself homemade Sloppy Joe sandwich (filling on the side), asparagus with poppyseed dressing, cherry tomatoes, garlic cheese wedge, pear and blackberries.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftovers. The Sloppy Joe filling was leftover from dinner the night before, so in the morning I just made the asparagus and fruit. For the asparagus, I microwaved it with a little water, drained, and tossed with premade poppyseed salad dressing.

Packing: Because Sloppy Joe filling is so moist, assembling the sandwich ahead of time would ruin the bread and leave you with a soggy mess at lunchtime. The solution is to make it just prior to eating, so I packed the meat filling in a separate metal container (review here) to keep the juices away from the rest of the lunch until I was ready to eat. To prevent the pear from browning, I tossed it with a little lemon juice mixed with pear/peach juice. The main lunch is packed in an 810ml Clex box by Asvel.

Click for preschooler and husband lunches…

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Published by Biggie on July 20th, 2007 tagged bento, for kids, lactose free, meat, sandwich or wrap | 9 Comments »

Chicken sandwich lunch

Contents of my lunch: Chicken salad sandwich (with cheese and lettuce on whole wheat toast), tabbouleh, blueberries and tiny Champagne grapes.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes. The chicken salad and tabbouleh were both pre-made from Costco, so it was a quick matter to toast the bread and assemble the sandwich.

Packing: Because the collapsible sandwich case (equipment review here) isn’t secure enough to pack moist food as is, I put the tabbouleh in a separate little disposable food cup with lid (the same ones I used for the fruit jello cups — I tend to wash and reuse the cups). The little cup with lid was really handy as otherwise I wouldn’t have felt confident that the tabbouleh was well contained — it essentially widens the types of food I can pack in this type of sandwich case. To ensure that the bread didn’t get soggy before I ate it, I toasted the bread and used two moisture barriers (cheese and lettuce) to keep the moist chicken salad away from the bread itself. This worked fine, and the sandwich was still in prime condition a few hours later (protected by the hard-sided sandwich case).

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