avid cook, speedy lunch packer, mom in San Francisco, & former expat fluent in Japanese.
Archive for the 'review' Category
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Inarizushi with toppings
A couple of highlights today. Inarizushi is basically sushi rice stuffed into seasoned abura-age fried tofu wrappers. If you have a Japanese or Korean market nearby, you can often find preseasoned wrappers in the refrigerated section (shaped like rectangles or triangles). Just gently open them up and fill with seasoned sushi rice (cooking tips below). A fun variation on normal inarizushi is to fold down the top edge, stuff with seasoned rice, and top with anything you like. Toppings can be really creative: I’ve seen shrimp, cucumber, ornate food art that makes little characters sitting in the inari “boats”, soboro (fried and seasoned ground meat — think dry Sloppy Joe filling), etc. Think outside the box with this kid favorite!
You can speed up morning sushi or rice ball prep by freezing cooked rice; below I review a couple of Japanese food containers specially designed for freezing and reheating rice in the microwave oven.
Contents of preschooler lunch: Inarizushi stuffed sushi topped with pink sakura denbu
Published by Biggie on June 20th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, freezing, lactose free, meat, onigiri or sushi, review | 23 Comments »
Ravioli & spray pancake bento lunches
I’m definitely not above using convenience products for speedy lunches. Convenience foods come in many different forms: frozen foods (homemade or store-bought, like appetizers, potstickers, rice, rice balls, waffles), canned foods (baked beans, regular beans, dolmas), store-bought deli foods, etc. Today’s lunches use different kinds of convenience food. First off is frozen ravioli, a fast-cooking pasta option. The second is pancakes made with terrifying but surprisingly acceptable batter from a spray can. Read on for a full product review of Batter Blaster spray pancake and waffle batter.
Today I used a different packing method to minimize texture damage: toss the cooked pasta with a little olive oil or butter to create a moisture barrier between the sauce and the pasta, lightly sauce the pasta and pack in the lunch container, and pack extra sauce (just spooned in gaps around the edges, but you can also pack it in lidded condiment cups).
Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Spinach and mozzarella raviolis with roasted garlic tomato sauce, blueberries, strawberry, and broccoli with Thai oyster sauce. (Read on for lunch packing details, and an additional preschooler lunch with review of Batter Blaster spray pancake batter.)
Published by Biggie on June 15th, 2008 tagged bento, for kids, meat, pasta or noodles, phyllo or pancake or other, review, vegetarian | 53 Comments »
Ma po tofu and Sloppy Joe lunches
Not all dishes fare well cool or at room temperature. Just imagine Sloppy Joe filling eaten cold — congealed and nasty. Because there are no microwave ovens at my son’s preschool or at the park, I like to have a thermal food jar or thermal lunch jar
Amazon carries thermal bento sets with a thermal food jar and an insulated carrying case for packing cool side dishes. You can achieve the same the effect on the cheap by using a regular thermal food jar that you can find at stores like Target or Walmart, plus a small side dish container for the room temperature or cool foods. (Read more about hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations.) 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. (Note to San Francisco locals: Kamei has the two Zojirushi-brand sets behind the counter for $33. Store info at the SF local shopping guide.)
Later this week I’ll be traveling out to Philadelphia to visit my ailing grandmother, so I won’t be as responsive as usual on the comment front. I’ll still be updating the blog from the road, but just a quick heads up. It’ll be interesting to see how my husband fares packing our three-year-old’s lunches on his own for two days; I promised to help by planning out simple menus that require only quick assembly. Maybe he should read my Mommy’s Lunch Manifesto — Need for Speed… I hear that works for dads too. 
Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Homemade ma po tofu (with tofu, ground pork, enoki mushrooms and salted black beans), rice, edamame and apple bunnies made with miniature Red Delicious apples that Bug and I found at Safeway (see the apple rabbit tutorial). I thought apple bunnies were out of the picture because Bug doesn’t like apple skin anymore, but something about these tiny apples made him ask for apple bunnies.
Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using leftover mapo tofu. In the morning I made the apple rabbits first and got them soaking in acidulated ice water to curl the ears and prevent the fruit from browning, then moved on to warming the frozen rice and ma po tofu in the microwave and pre-warming the thermal food jar with hot tap water while the apples soaked. (Read on for packing details, Sloppy Joe lunch and recipe, and review of Bush’s Grillin’ Beans.)
Published by Biggie on May 11th, 2008 tagged beans, bento, food jar, for kids, glutenfree, lactose free, meat, recipe, review, rice | 25 Comments »
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