Lunch Today and Thoughts on Slow Food

Today’s lunch was super quick to make. In fact, I had already gone to bed, too tired to think about packing a lunch, resigned to the fact that I would have to forage at the buffet in my office building. Finding myself up with a grumpy 1 year old at 3am I decided to “make lemonade from lemons” as it were, wandering around with a baby strapped to my back and pack a lunch. I just realized that it’s all premade so it was a super-quick and nutritious lunch to make.
Today’s bento has cut up chicken sausage – mmm… a favourite for sure – we had extra after supper one night so I cut it up an stuck it in the freezer. Actually, I cooked it and then held it back in the kitchen because whatever gets put on the table tends to get eaten. I also have 2 mini-banana muffins which were also frozen. The baggie said “sweet” so that’s promising. I probably actually put sugar in them. There was also homemade berry jello with blood oranges in it. For veggies I have cut up cucumber – precut in a container in the fridge – and baby carrots. So, all homemade and good for you, and all premade.
I was on a roll (and baby still not asleep) so continued to make a breakfast bento and a snack bento. Oh, ya! I may be tired today, but I am well fed. The snack bento was very similar to the lunch with a couple of pieces of sausage and cut up cauliflower and cucumber. The breakfast was superb – frozen strawberries dated “August 2008” and a frozen mini-quiche, again from the freezer, made from my friend’s “happy chickens”. Mmmm... summer strawberries and happy chickens - does it get any better than that??

I’ve been thinking a lot about the food we choose lately. I haven’t bought strawberries in the winter in a couple of years – they just taste like cardboard – but it wasn’t until this year that I really started to pay attention to what vegetables and fruits are in season. I’ve recently read “The 100 mile Diet” and have realized that to eat locally here means finding food in the summer and freezing it for the winter. Hence the August strawberries. Man, were they good. And hit the spot in the middle of winter when it seems like we’re in the middle of another 100 year ice age. Of course, I think I could plan to hoard away enough food to get one person through the winter, but I’m shopping for 2 kids and a nanny (who cooks, too) and a husband who hasn’t changed his lunch since junior high school. So it’s an uphill battle, to be sure. We all have our challenges.
I’m not thinking this way to change the world or anything big like that, it just doesn’t make sense to me that we insist on eating produce from Chile and China when, with some attention and planning, we could be eating far better quality stuff from actual farmers around here. It just makes more sense. I just found the Calgary slow food site which has a fantastic directory for sourcing local foods. I think some field trips will be in order this summer!

4 yr. old Does Bento

lunch packing time has become a special mother-daughter time in our house. It's usually done after the baby is asleep and daddy is watching tv downstairs or in the garage, so it's just me and the big kid left. She's taken to packing a lunch or snack for her and the nanny while I pack mine. (Baby has to forage, I guess) At first I led the way, but she's not concerned with rules and form, so now she leads the way and I just help out. They can always suppliment from the fridge at mealtime.
The first one she did by herself had a container of yogurt, a whole avocado and a mandarine orange. Only two of those items fit in the box at one time, and the lid wouldn't fit on with the yogurt in there. So we cut up the avocado and split it between several people's lunches, included the orange and put the yogurt (and spoon) on top of the box after the lid was on. Today's bento snacks were more minimal. Cherry tomatos in sauce cups (2 tomatos fit inside one one oz. cup with minimal squishage), Half a slice of cheeze, 1 cube of honeydew and one cube of cantelope. good thing it's only a snack.
Oh what fun it is to prepare lunch with my 4 year old. Life is good.

A Bento Post with Pictures!

Angie asked for bento pictures so here they are! We went out off-roading this weekend with the whole bunch of us so I made bentos for me and the girls.

contents:
mine: baked hashbrowns, diced turkey leftovers, boiled egg, broccoli slices, apple slices, boiled egg (from my friend's happy chickens, yum!), blue cheeze (just because) and mango jello with a strawberry in the middle. (there were lids on the blue cheeze and jello, I just took them off for the photos.)
DD1: (bottom): boiled egg, honey orange (these things are teeny tiny), cut up apple, hashbrowns, broccoli slices. We added a strawberry (from frozen, not pictured) after she asked for mango jello with no jello.
DD2: (top) hashbrowns, cubed broccoli, cubed apple, egg yolks. Later we added some cubed turkey because there was some left over after daddy made his sandwich. she is such a big protein eater, I'm not sure this lunch would have quite done it for her.


Cooling hashbrowns. Now I have leftovers for another meal. Cooling before packing is one of the bento rules - if you don't you get condensation all over the inside of your box and everything's soggy. Also, we dipped the apples in emergen-c so they wouldn't brown.

My lunch was packed in a 800ml lock and lock box which is too big for me. I am usually careful to pack less calorie dense things in this box because it's just huge. The kids' lunches were packed in 296ml boxes. They never eat it all, but I can't find smaller boxes (that I like) for them. I use this size box for my breakfasts at work and it is just perfect. (To figure out what size box you should be using go here. I am nursing and find a 700ml box to be just about right most of the time)

verdict: when it's really cold out cold food is cold. this would have been a good lunch in the summer. Auntie A's thermos of soup looked pretty good....

The mango jello was Divine.

Bento lunches:

When you follow the rules sometimes that makes things easier.
I've been making bento lunches since returning to work in November. For the most part they have been a haphazard mix of whatever I could scrounge up in the fridge. All be it, a yummy hodgepodge, and they certainly filled the hole, but lacking an underlying organization.
Then I read Just Bento's post and decided to try the 1:1:2 guideline. 1 part carbs, 1 part protein and 2 parts veggies. That's 1/4 of the container carbs, 1/4 protein and half veggies or fruits. Roughly. (You notice I call it a guideline rather than a rule...I'm not so good with rules)
Well, how much simpler that makes my lunches. They're more elegant now, and quicker, too. Probably about the same yumminess as before, but there is a zen factor in getting in your groove.

Why I wish I had a small(er) camera, and what I love about bento this week. Yes, they're related.

I want to post so many things with pictures but never seem to get to the computer at home anymore to download some. In fact, there's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I had my camera with me. Yesterday it was first to capture the crane rising into the fog with building half torn apart in the foreground. It was such a juxtaposition between magnificent rising into the clouds and broken down-ness that I was intrigued. Progress and destruction. Renewal and decomposition.
Then as we drove home and got to the top of the hill the sky lit up above the mountains in bright pink firey clouds and the town was completely engulfed in billowing white clouds. It was surreal. And we descended down into the clouds and my driving partner commented that now it was night, and I thought that no one down here knows the magic thing going on up above. And soon it became unbelievable even to us that there was anything other than what we were seeing down below.

But this post was supposed to be about bento. I was reading this article (I love the title: finding my balance) yesterday and thinking about the bento lunches I've been packing lately. They're rather a hodgepodge of whatever will fit into the spaces in the box. A yummy hodgepodge, I have to say, and I've been so happy with them, but today I created something that is simpler. My lunch is calming. And I wish I had a picture because describing it is pretty lame. I can't wait for lunchtime, and have been showing everyone at work my geeky bento creation.

Creating bento lunches has been an unexpected joy - I love making them. It satisfies my need for creativity. I hope it doesn't loose that appeal.

Ho Hum. I can't believe I've never posted about photography before. Or at least used the tag. If I had a teeny camera I could tuck it in my pocket and snap pictures at will. And download blog ones at work. But would I ever be happy with that?

Sauce Cups and G-F pasta- An Interesting day

I finally made it to the wholesale club store to find my sauce cups. I have become enamoured with bento boxes of late and am collecting the equipment and supplies to make them when I return to work (only 2 weeks left ; (
Much simpler than hunting around for cutesy Hello Kitty gear I perused the tupperwear aisle at my local grocery store using, and using these guidelines, picked out a couple of tupperwear boxes that fit my needs. For sauce and dip containers I bought some 1 oz take-out containersat the wholesale club. And voila! We're in business. Problem is the little containers come in packages of 250. For my needs, 25 would be plenty, so I'm wondering where I can unload a whole bunch of extra sauce containers. I mean share the love.

Also, have to rave about Chianti's restaurant. They have Gluten-free pasta and bread. I forgot what it is like to be able to order whatever you want off of the menu. I had the seafood special and it was spectacular.

ok, too tired to type anymore.....