Pasta salad lunches & frozen fruit cocktail

Morning prep time: 5 minutes. This was all leftovers, nothing made just for this meal. We had leftover Greek chicken pasta salad from Costco that I had doctored (adding tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce), leftover peas and egg scramble, chicken salad, and an egg roll from a nearby dim sum takeout place. Tiny tomatoes and a wrapped cheese act as gap fillers to stabilize the lunch for transport.

It was the day of tiny Tupperware, though. I’ve used these tiny containers in lunches before to include mini-portions of leftover curry, but they can also be used to contain loose dishes that would roll all over the lunch (like the egg/peas), pack moist foods, or freeze individual servings of canned fruit (see below).

My lunch (above) also added a little container of frozen Thai fruit cocktail with pineapple, papaya, guava and nata de coco (Butterfly brand) for a variation on regular fruit cocktail. Frozen in tiny plastic containers as a waste-free alternative to packaged fruit cocktail cups, this also acted as a freezy pack to keep the other two lunches cool and safe. A tip for successful freezing: don’t add much liquid to the fruit, as 1) overfilling will crack your plastic containers when the liquid freezes and expands, and 2) the liquid may leak out if the seal on your container is not 100% secure. A 20-ounce can yielded about seven little frozen servings that can be thrown into a lunch on busy mornings.

 

Bug’s lunch is the same except for the omission of the eggs (not enough for two people. This was a little large for him (580ml box); he wound up leaving about half of the pasta salad.

READ MORE:

• Need for speed: A mommy’s lunch manifesto
• Food safety for packed lunches
• How to pack a bento lunch and use “gap fillers”
• Choosing the right size bento box
• Biggie’s list of top speed tips, tutorials and equipment reviews