A High Protein Friday

After working a 12-hour day, I didn't have much physical or creative energy for to pack lunch last night. I'm actually quite happy with the end result, though. It's good to know that a relatively healthy & appealing lunch can be thrown together quickly.

There's more highly processed food in this lunch than normal, but at least there's a good amount of calcium, protein, fiber, and some "colored stuff."

With the possible exception of the soup (can't find an ingredient list online and I've already thrown away the container), this lunch is also free of hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors & sweeteners, nitrates, etc. Hmmm...it just occurred to me that maybe the seaweed has some kind of preservatives. I'll have to check!

BunnieB forgot to wash her bento lunchbox last night, so I used the divided glass Corningware containers that I use for myself. As you can see they actually work great; they're just heavy. Wet stuff like yogurt will get over the divider in the middle, so you have to take care what you pack together in the container.

Here is the "menu" for today (clockwise from bottom left):

• Ham & cheese rollettes
• Tofu "bear" faces
• Applesauce
• Chicken & stars soup
• Edamame
• Soy sauce for edamame (in tiny "bear" bottle)
• Mayo for ham & cheese (in orange "kitty" condiment case)

VERDICT:

So-so. Bunnie B said there was not enough food. She liked everything but the tofu bears; unfortunately they disintegrated into a white mush with a few random dots of black (the sesame seeds & seaweed). I don't know if this happened because they weren't packed tightly enough, or if that's just what happens to tofu when it's allowed to come to room temp & gets bumped around. Normally she likes tofu, as long as it's not mixed with anything else.

PREPARATION DETAILS:

Ham & cheese rollettes. Two slices of deli-thin ham w/a slice of cheese inside. Pat the ham dry w/paper towel, lay down one slice of ham, then slice of cheese, then 2nd slice of ham. Roll up, slice into mini-rolls, & thread them onto toothpicks or skewer.

Harris Teeter now carries a nitrate-free, real ham product in the deli case. It's labeled as "natural" and is in a brown box. Usually it's down low where the deli meats are, somewhat out of sight.

Tofu "bear" faces. Slice a block of tofu into about 1/2 to 1-inch thick slices. Then use a rice form, cookie cutter, or sharp paring knife to cut the slices into fun shapes.

The eyes are black sesame seeds (found them at Bare Essentials) and the mouth is a flake of seaweed, though I could have used sesame seeds, a bit of red pepper or pimento, etc. If you want to try seaweed, you can get it in the Asian section of most of the local grocery & health food stores. The kind I'm using is called "nori". It seems to keep forever.

Applesauce. A pre-packaged cup of Harris Teeter's house brand of organic applesauce. We have always used the kind that is just apples, no sugar or artificial sweeteners added. I read labels: it drives me nuts that most of the products labeled "no sugar added " or sugar free" actually contain artificial sweeteners and/or sugar alcohols like xylitol!

By the way, it's obviously less expensive and better for the environment to fill a re-usable container with applesauce. But I must admit that when I'm tired or rushed as I was last night, it's great to have the ready-to-serve cups handy. I'm using them a lot less often though. :)

Chicken & stars soup. It's processed-food-to-the-max and wantonly waste-making with this container of Campbell's Soup-At-Hand chicken & stars soup. But it's about the only soup BunnieB will eat, period. I think it's because the texture is so uniform (Soup At Hand soups are meant to be sipped rather than spooned; they are packed in a heatable container with a small sipping hole in the cap).

Yes, I know it's totally "un-green" to serve this but besides just succumbing to the lure of convenience, I have a long-term ulterior motive; if Miss Picky gets used to having soup, I may soon be able to take soup leftovers and blend them slightly to remove the texture, and sneak it into her lunch!

Edamame. This is just a handful from a bag of frozen edamame (green soybeans). Pretty much every local grocery store carries them, usually in the frozen and/or organic sections. I nuked for 2 minutes, salted, and let cool to room temp before putting in the fridge (that seems to cut down on condensation, which makes things soggy). BunnieB loves it and calls it "sea anemone."

My First Post

Probably no one will ever read this blog except me. And that's okay, because the reason I'm writing it is to keep track of what bento lunches work for my child, in a way that I can access lunch ideas quickly while creating a minimum of clutter (I am an accomplished hoarder and loser of papers!). But just in case some poor reader does get lost in cyberspace and stumble upon this blog, this "first post" gives some background info that might help him/her make sense of what is here.

Before I go on, though, I want to say thank you to the many bento-makers who have created bento blogs, such as Jennifer McCann, "Biggie," and notexactlybento.com; and to the all the "bento community" who so freely share their ideas. Pretty much everything I've prepared, as well as the whole idea of this blog, was taken or adapted from these folks... so I hope that that they all subscribe to the notion that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" (which I was always told was a Japanese tradition; if that's true, then it's even more fitting).

What is bento? It's a japanese style of packing beautiful, compact, delicious lunches in a very appealing way. It can be as simple as PB&J with fruit & veggies arranged attractively, or incredibly creative & elaborate (see Cooking Cute for some really impressive examples!)

Why bento? If you've ever spent more than a week packing your child's lunch (or your own), you don't need to ask!

Seriously though, here's how it started for me. At Espresso News/Mosaic Books in Boone, I was skimming through a book, The Vegan Lunchbox, that they had for sale while slurping some of their fabulous home-made soup. I accidentally splattered some of the tomato-based soup onto the book (anyone who knows me knows how embarrassingly frequent an occurence that is!!). Of course I couldn't return The Vegan Lunchbox to the bookshelf knowing I'd damaged it, so I purchased it. Later that night I read most of it.

Now, I'm not vegan (though I was for several years, a long time ago), but The Vegan Lunchbox opened my eyes to the possibilities for preparing nutritious lunches that were so appealing that my child might actually eat them. So that very night, I gave bento lunching a try.

Two weeks later, my child still is getting excited about bringing lunch to school, and more importantly is eating the lunch I packed (of course I'm sure the occasional trade of foods occurs, but at least most of what she's getting is balanced and nutritious!). In fact she has started asking me to pack additional "umbrella" toothpicks because her friends keep wanting to try her food!

I have started packing myself an identical lunch on most days too (ok, so the good chocolate goes in my lunchbox and she gets the Hershey's. But what she doesn't know won't hurt her, right?!). Why shouldn't I have fun eating lunch, after all?

I hope I've got the energy to stick with it, because there are a lot of benefits. Here are a few:

• Save money. You rely much less on pre-packaged food, which is good for the pocketbook! Plus you re-use leftovers (in a way that they don't feel like leftovers) rather than having them become science experiments in the fridge while you try to avoid feeling guilty about wasting food.
  
• Reduce waste. You re-use the containers, so it's better for the environment.
• Fun. I know it's hard to believe, but if you're at all creative, it's actually fun to make the meals. And if you're not, there are tons of websites and cookbooks out there that will give you specific how-to's and complete menus to pack.
  
• Nutrition. This was the biggie for me. If you pack the bento box with mostly healthful foods, it's a great way to get in a healthy, filling lunch that is fun to eat. You see, in my neck of the woods, our schools -- as wonderful as they are -- leave much to be desired when it comes to the breakfast and lunch menu. Every meal consists mostly of bland, starchy foods; breaded, animal-based foods (to their credit they now bake more than fry these); and boiled-to-death flavorless vegetables. Lukewarm cole slaw is a staple. Foods laden with ingredients like nitrates and high-fructose corn syrup are served on a daily or near-daily basis. Even the ready-made PB&J sandwiches available every day as an "alternative" to the main meal are something I wouldn't want to feed to my dog (don't believe me? Here's the nutrition info for one). Yes, there is a simple salad bar available each day...and there are exactly 2 kids under age 12 whom I would guess to be likely to use it regularly! I've tried packing lunches for my child, but within 3 days I'm out of ideas and she's sick of alternating ham&cheese with PB&J.
  

How to bento? If you own a shallow-ish food storage container (like Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Corningware, etc), food, basic food prep tools, toothpicks, and muffin pan liners then you've got all the supplies it takes to make a basic bento. It's fun to have the other stuff (cute bento boxes, decorative picks & condiment cups, cookie cutters, etc) but you don't need them.

Is bento a verb, noun, adjective, or what? Heck if I know. I don't speak Japanese...I'm just using it any way it sounds good to me. If you want to comment and let me know, go for it!