Bringing Lunch

There are A LOT of places to eat in the neighborhood where I work. Fortunately, most are sit-down restaurants and as a working parent, lunchtime has to be maximized, so I don't frequent them very often. And for some reason, the Boston area hasn't yet seen the rise of gourmet food trucks that I keep hearing about in other urban centers. So for now, it's bring your own lunch for me.

But who says bringing your lunch has to mean peanut butter and jelly in a paper bag? Below are some photos of my favorite lunch containers and a few comments about how I use them. Sure, an old-school insulated Thermos food jar would also work just fine, but until the foods trucks come rolling into Harvard Square, I like to have something to look forward to as I eat my leftovers each day. Incidentally, none of these containers can be microwaved, so I keep a dinner plate, soup bowl and utensils in my office and wash them each day. No escape from dishes!

Above is an Indian "tiffin", which is made of stainless steel. It contains two levels with a plate in between, and when assembled, has its own handle. Shown is a favorite meal of frozen blueberries and mangoes on the top (they thaw by lunchtime) and a quinoa-black bean-feta-pepita salad on the bottom. The tiffin fits nicely inside my Built lunch bag, with some extra room for an afternoon snack. The little bag is made by me out of PUL (polyurethane laminated) cotton fabric; I call it my "almond bag" and it reminds me to eat healthy nuts each day instead of heading for the vending machine!

This next photo is of a Japanese "bento box". It has an image of a rabbit on it so I call it my "bunny box." The top has a handy removable divided insert for condiments. Since the top has a lid and the bottom doesn't, I usually put grains or pasta in the bottom and the sauce or veggies on the top.

Below is what it looks like assembled. The other one is a "male bento box" whereas the bunny one is a "female" version. Not surprisingly, the male box is about twice as big so the big, strong, hungry man can eat more food! Ha, not in my house! I do sometimes use this one but don't like it as much because it looks so boring. I think these used to be made of lacquered bamboo, whereas now they're just plastic.

Finally, a photo of my latest acquisition: a plastic 4-tier, tiffin-style container from of all places, Target! We haven't given it a name yet, but fell in love with its great colors and large capacity. On Mother's Day we took it for a picnic and it carried enough food for everyone in the family to have lunch! What I also like is how the different levels serve as a reminder to include a range of food groups. Since this was a picnic, I wasn't too concerned with nutrition, but we had one level with veggies and dip, another with fresh fruit salad, another with cheese and crackers, and finally a level for that all-important dessert food group. Each level could probably hold a person's sandwich and veggies or a decent-sized serving of pasta salad if you wanted to divide the food that way. This thing is definitely coming to the beach with us this summer!

On a last note, we are also big fans of the Laptop Lunchbox, a modular plastic lunchbox that has four different sized colorful inserts to help remind us to include a variety of food groups and veggie/fruit colors. Enjoy your lunch today!

Foraging at Home

Each year around this time, I begin to get excited about the first round of harvest. Sure, there was the overwintered harvest, a bit worse for wear, and I've been picking individual radishes, lettuce and chard leaves, flower petals, green onions and herbs throughout the spring. But at the beginning of June when the farmer's markets re-open in New England, it's time to start thinking again about how to manage and make best use of the glut of fresh vegetables. Specifically, the big bunches of greens, and there will be several more posts about that.

But for now, it's time to start making space for the first harvest. Check the pantry and dig out the last few jars of green tomato salsa and chutney to mix with beans and fresh herbs as a salad or to serve warmed over rice. Stir a jar of quince jam and some cinnamon into a container of plain yogurt. Open the freezer and pull out that last bag local corn (remembering what a pain it was to cut it all off the cob last August!), the last container of pesto for a pasta salad, bake the last bag of chopped up fall apples into a pie. Decipher which re-used yogurt containers have mushy vegetables from making vegetable stock all winter long, thaw them out and mix with curried lentils for stuffing handheld veggie pies. Bake any remaining bags of blueberries into muffins.

This activity reminds me that it's been a while since I evaluated our stock of raw nuts and seeds, cold-pressed oils, whole-grains and whole grain flours. Many of these are kept in the fridge or freezer, but those stored at room temperature need to be checked for rancidity (easy to smell/taste it!) and if they are still okay, use them up as soon as possible.

It may not be quite as exotic as combing the deep forest for rare mushrooms, but foraging at home has its own rewards. It's a great way to save money by not wasting food, it facilitates buying local on as big a scale as your household can manage, and you may receive some culinary inspiration along the way. That said, I'm off to put together a black bean-corn-mango chutney-cilantro salad!