Travel, and speedy meatball lunches

First off, I wanted to let everyone know that Bug and I will be traveling to Philadelphia for a week starting today (4/13/07), so my blog updates will be sporadic during the week. I’ll try to check in and respond to comments, but won’t be as responsive as I usually try to be. Second, thanks to everyone who has voted for this blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards so far — my goal is to hang around as a non-vegan blog on the top page for a while. Wish me luck! (November 2007 update: Open voting for 2007 has closed with Lunch in a Box in 3th place. Thank you! 2008 voting is here is you’re interested.)

Morning prep time: 10 minutes each. A combination of frozen food, store-bought food, and refrigerator staples made Bug’s quick lunch possible today. The meatballs were store-bought (Aidells teriyaki chicken pineapple) with extra teriyaki sauce, I had a small batch of shaped hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for snacking (more below), and the little rice balls were from the freezer and wrapped with pre-cut nori for maximum speed. Grapes, blackberries and grape tomatoes round out the meal — and I packed a tiny toddler fork for the meatballs (cut in half for Bug).

Earlier this week I made rice to eat with Thai curry at dinner. I only make rice every 10 days or so, so when I do, I make a big batch and freeze the excess as individually wrapped rice balls (see my prior entry on frozen onigiri). I mixed a bowl of medium-grain rice with furikake (rice sprinkles), and popped it into rice ball molds to shape before wrapping and freezing. A quick spin in the microwave brings these back to life.Bug really enjoys the shaped hard-boiled eggs, but I can’t be bothered to make just one in the morning specially for lunch. Instead, I make a batch of 5-6 at once with cheap egg molds that I picked up at a local dollar store (Ichiban Kan, US$1.50 for two), and store them in the refrigerator in the molds. You boil the eggs, peel them while they’re hot, pop them into a mold and throw them into cold water for 10 minutes to take on the shape (Cooking Cute has a tutorial here). If you don’t want to fork over money for a uni-tasker, you can also use ice cream sandwich molds for the same effect, available from Amazon and Williams Sonoma (my tutorial here).

My lunch is the same as Bug’s, but with larger rice balls and a cheese triangle that Bug seized when he spied it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to eat the cheese triangles that I pack in my lunches…

RELATED POSTS:

• Avoid airplane food, pack your own bento lunch!
• Disposable bento lunches for my in-laws’ plane trip
• Fried rice disposable bento for airplane
• Airplane bento lunches and stromboli
• Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews