Archive for the 'organize' Category

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Speed tip: Pre-fill sauce containers

Pre-filling sauce containers with your most commonly used sauces saves time when you’re packing lunch. I keep shelf-stable sauces (like Tabasco, soy sauce, tonkatsu sauce, Lizano sauce and Worcestershire sauce) in a magnetic spice tin on the kitchen wall for easy access when I’m packing lunch (see photo below). Perishable sauces (like salad dressings, sanbaizu, and dumpling dipping sauce) go in little containers in the refrigerator. That way I can just grab one and quickly throw it into the bento box or lunch bag, instead of taking the time in the morning to fill just one for each individual lunch. I started doing this during our nine months of gluten-free eating (my husband had been misdiagnosed with celiac disease), to be able to throw little plastic fish full of gluten-free soy sauce into my husband’s work bag in case he picked up sushi. Some of the containers (like the little pig above) are labelled with the kind of sauce they contain. (To fill containers like these, squeeze the container, submerge the mouth into a small dish of sauce and release. Repeat until enough sauce has been sucked into the container — no need for a funnel.)

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Published by Biggie on June 4th, 2007 tagged equipment, glutenfree, organize, tips | 38 Comments »

Magnets to track freezer inventory

A number of my speedy lunch tips involve making food ahead of time and freezing it in individual portions to throw into a packed lunch. Keeping track of what’s in your freezer is key to being able to cycle through it regularly (avoiding freezer burn and food waste). I’ve tried different techniques, but haven’t been able to stick with anything too demanding that requires me (or my husband) to write down exactly what we take out or put in each time (ack). I did find a pretty straightforward technique in Shufu no Tomo’s book on freezing in my collection of food books, though: make magnets using photos from the weekly supermarket advertising pages, magnetic sheets sold at dollar stores, and tape. I sometimes scan through new ad circulars as they come to see if there are additional photos that might be good freezer magnet candidates.

You can work out your own system, but here I’ve put magnets indicating the food I have on the narrow side of the freezer door, and food I don’t have (but might pick up sometime) on the right hand side. I actually use these magnets on our large chest freezer in the basement (i.e. the Black Hole for frozen food), but brought some upstairs to show on a regular refrigerator. Anyone else have a handy system? Tell us about it! (UPDATE: Also check out the round-up of ways readers organize their lunch gear.)

To make the magnets, you can use any thin magnets — I picked up a big yellow magnetic sheet from Daiso (dollar store), and also used paper-thin freebie magnets we’ve accumulated over the years from pizza delivery, online ordering, etc. Cut out little photos of food you commonly freeze, tape it to the thin magnet with either double-sided tape or regular tape looped over onto itself, and cut to shape. I disregard brand names, of course: I don’t have Eggo waffles in my freezer, but I do have homemade mini pancakes for packed lunches and fast breakfasts for Bug.

If you wanted to get elaborate with this, craft stores stock special magnetic products you could use with custom photos of your own choosing, and you could finish the top and seal the edges for durability. That’s a little much for me, but I bet they’d be cool magnets! For larger views of either photo, click on it, then click the “All Sizes” button above the photo.

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Published by Biggie on April 3rd, 2007 tagged freezing, organize, parenthacks, tips, tutorial or how to | 37 Comments »

Organization madness: Lunch accessories

My bento lunch accessories were threatening to take over my kitchen, so I took some drastic organization measures. This is my obsessive way of keeping them neat and within reach when I’m packing lunch in the kitchen. The first is a US$0.99 metal strip from Ikea, and oversized magnetic spice canisters from Ikea (3 for US$4.99) with food picks and sauce bottles (both empty and pre-filled for speed). Click on a photo for notes on what’s stored where.

The plastic boxes on the microwave (from a Japanese dollar store) hold less-used things, while the wooden under-cabinet shelf with drawers holds the most frequently used accessories. The wall shelf with drawers is from Ikea’s FÃ–RHÃ–JA line — the wood drawers hold more than the glass drawer option (which were pointed in the back and didn’t fully utilize available space). Great idea from Flickr user Yurippe.

This is a little box I picked up from Ichiban Kan (a Japanese dollar store) for US$0.99 — perfect for seeing all sizes of food dividers (”baran”) available. Someone help me — it’s an illness… Anyone have any good lunch gear organization ideas? (EDIT: I ran a lunch gear organization event and contest; here’s the event round-up and my kitchen reorganization using some of the ideas from it.)