Archive for the 'soup or stew' Category

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Corned beef bento lunches

I made corned beef and cabbage for our St. Patrick’s Day dinner, so leftovers made their appearance in my three-year-old’s packed lunches last week. Surprisingly, he was a big fan of the cabbage and carrots, not so much the meat and potatoes.

Packing Tip: When packing moist foods in a standard bento box, be sure to drain them of excess moisture first. This helps prevent spoilage if the food hits room temperature before lunchtime.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Cabbage and carrots in broth, corned beef, boiled potatoes, and orange segments.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using dinner leftovers. In the morning I pre-warmed the thermal food jar with hot tap water while I microwaved the vegetables, and cut up the beef, potatoes and orange into bite-size pieces for easy preschooler eating. (Read on for packing details and an additional preschooler lunch.)

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Published by Biggie on March 27th, 2008 tagged bento, food jar, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, meat, sandwich or wrap, soup or stew | 8 Comments »

Curry gyoza bento lunches

Gyoza potstickers are a handy finger food for kids, delivering protein and veggies in a neat little package. I like to keep a bag on hand in the freezer for mornings when I don’t have the time or imagination to make something more elaborate. Store-bought or homemade, these flavorful dumplings are a lunchtime favorite even at room temperature.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Pan-fried curry gyoza (details and tutorial here, spinach wrappers filled with leftover Japanese curry), roasted asparagus (recipe here), blueberries, cherry tomatoes and cheese cubes.

Morning prep time: 15 minutes, using leftover roasted asparagus from dinner. In the morning I actually made the three gyoza fresh using leftover curry, but you can freeze the assembled curry gyoza and have them ready to cook on time-pressed mornings. (Read on for lunch details and an additional preschooler lunch…)

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Published by Biggie on March 3rd, 2008 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, fish or seafood, food jar, for kids, meat, soup or stew | 18 Comments »

Oden & soup bento lunches

It was rainy and cool last week in San Francisco, so I put warm soups in my son’s packed lunches to ward off the chill. I used a 560ml thermal bento set (similar sets sold here) that’s too big for a three-year-old according to the bento box size guidelines, so I left out one of the set’s two 160ml side dish containers and used the remaining space to pack a damp oshibori hand towel. 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. You can achieve the same effect by using a small side container and a thermal food jar, commonly available from stores like Target or Walmart without the shipping. The humbling part about these lunches is that Bug ate only about half of each at preschool, though. They’re not all home runs, folks!

Contents of preschooler lunch: Kiwi fruit and oden with its broth. Oden is a Japanese simmered dish popular in the winter, with different kinds of fish cakes and vegetables. Here I’ve included fish cake stuffed with gobo (burdock root), hanpen, pink and orange-colored fish cake, and renkon lotus root. At dinner our oden also had hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, daikon radish, different kinds of fish cakes, tofu skins stuffed with mochi, and konbu seaweed tied in little knots.

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover oden. I packed the side dish container with oden when cleaning up from dinner the night before, so in the morning all I had to do was slice the kiwi and heat the oden broth in the microwave. While I did that I preheated the thermal food jar with hot tap water.

Cooking: Oden is a really easy dish to make — basically just make the broth, throw in the fish cakes and whatever vegetables you have on hand, and simmer. Voila! When I lived in Japan, I remember going into convenience stores in the winter and hand-picking out oden from a big simmering pot at the front of the store. Very much comfort food, and delicious with a small squeeze of karashi hot mustard on the side to flavor the fish cakes. Just Hungry has a nice recipe and blog post about oden here.

Packing: I used a 560ml thermal bento set that I picked up at Ichiban Kan a while back. (Note to San Francisco locals: The Ichiban Kan stores sometimes stock these thermal bento sets for $20 - $25, and Kamei has two Zojirushi-brand sets behind the counter for $33. Store info at the SF local shopping guide.) I left one side dish container out, and instead packed the small container of kiwi and a spoon/fork utensil side inside of the bag. I got a set of three small side containers that nest inside each other and a package of 12 animal picks at Daiso dollar store in Daly City for US$1.50 each. Daiso has branches internationally, although evidently some of the Japanese moms at my son’s preschool are boycotting Daiso, saying it’s run by Soka Gakkai. Hmm.

Verdict: Disappointing. Bug ate all of the soup, kiwi and gobo-stuffed fishcake at preschool, but passed on everything else in the oden despite having enthusiastically eaten it at dinner. He even requested that I pack the renkon in his bento (singing the Bento Box song), but didn’t eat it when it was in his lunch. Argh. I should probably do more “Leftover Remakes” where I make a new dish using the leftovers, instead of just packing everything up as is. (Click to read the full post with an additional lunch…)

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Published by Biggie on January 15th, 2008 tagged bento, fish or seafood, food jar, for kids, lactose free, pasta or noodles, poultry, soup or stew | 14 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…)

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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 »

Curry and lamb stew lunches

This was the first time I sent Bug to preschool with the insulated bento set on his own, which is able to keep hot curry hot and cold veggies cold in the same lunch. The full set has a 240ml thermal food jar and two 160ml side dishes that fit into a larger insulated bag, but that’s just too much food for a three-year-old (see bento box size guidelines). Instead, I left out one of the side dish containers and used the extra space to pack a deep spoon in a plastic baggie and a cute oshibori (wet hand towel) in its case. The thermal bento set is handy in that the lid of the thermos lifts off instead of unscrewing, so itâ€™s easy for little hands to open (i.e. Bug can’t open the food jar that I used for my lunch below). Although similar sets sell here and here for about US$43 (ouch), you can duplicate this setup on the cheap by using a thermal food jar and separate bento box packed in an insulated lunch bag to take both hot and cold foods at the same time.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Japanese curry (Vermont brand) with chicken, potatoes, carrots, onions and mushrooms. Rice, grapes, tangerine, cucumber, and red bell pepper with ranch dressing for dipping.

Morning prep time: 6 minutes, using leftover curry and rice from dinner. In the morning I preheated the thermal food jar with hot tap water while I microwaved the curry and rice, and sliced the vegetables.

Packing: I used the “rice lid” technique described in this post to pack both hot curry and rice together in the same thermal container — after taking the photo I covered the rest of the curry with a layer of rice. This kept both warm without getting the rice all soggy, as it would be if it were packed underneath the curry. Packed in the insulated bento set described above.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Bug ate all of the curry, cucumber and tangerine. After I picked him up he ate the grapes but passed on the bell pepper. I probably could have packed twice as much curry rice and he would have inhaled it — he’s got a bottomless pit for this kind of dish (hot curry or stew with rice).

My lunch: The contents are the same as Bug’s lunch, but the curry is packed under a layer of rice in a larger 300ml food jar by Nissan Stainless. The fruits and vegetables are packed in a 240ml bento box by Asvel, and the ranch dressing is in a little Clickety Clack mayonnaise cup from Ichiban Kan.

Contents of preschooler lunch: Bulgur pilaf with toasted noodles, packed in a layer over autumn lamb stew with squash, lemon, and mint (bulgur pilaf and Turkish Gaziantep stew recipes from Paula Wolfert’s award-winning cookbook The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, click for my lamb stew recipe adaptation). Side dish holds a tiny Lady apple, tangerine slice and raspberries. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Morning prep time: 5 minutes, using leftover stew and pilaf. In the morning I just preheated the thermal food jar with hot tap water while I microwaved the stew and pilaf.

Packing: Packed in two containers of the insulated bento set described above, with the lamb stew packed underneath a layer of bulgur pilaf with vermicelli. Continue reading for the lamb stew recipe…

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