Back to School Wisdom

Since school has been in session, I've made some great new discoveries in the world of lunch making, so I'm going to share them!

First thing is this awesome company called 'NatureBox' that sends you snacks on a monthly basis.  They're basically foodie snacks that you can enjoy without having to worry about preservatives and any other dietary preferences you may have. I know there are other companies out there like this, with this one you can customize your order to what you want.  It's the one I know of anyway.  So we got our first box in and it was a hit.  We got a savory snacks, sweet snacks, sour snacks and dried fruit basically.  And they were all good!  I'm already looking forward to next month's shipment.  I highly recommend this company if you're looking for a fun alternative to the regular grocery store fare.

The other thing is Open Nature hummus.  I've found it at a Randall's near where I work, but it's not in HEB.  They have all kinds of preservative-free products, but I have gone nuts over their Garlic and Chive hummus.  I pack it in my own lunchbox with either cucumbers or celery.  It's a way I can sneak in an extra serving of raw veggies instead of eating some kind of "veggie chip" or some other good intention snack that's not really all that great.  Just eat the actual vegetables.  They're cheaper anyway.

The last thing is I've noticed I keep some staple items in  my house for quick backup.  I don't do 100% gluten free for my kids, so I do keep pretzels around for a quick "cover snack".  They don't eat them on a daily basis - this is just a backup snack for when the Larabars are gone (they love those, too) - but they're handy and they're still better than a lot of other quick-grab snacks.  I also like to have a chunk of the (Hormel??) All-Natural Ham.  It's their "preservative free" type of pre-cooked ham.  It takes almost no time to cube up some of that in a hurry.  And it's protein so it's filling!  Last thing - and I always say this when I talk about lunches - keep apples around.  Apples are always good.  They're like bananas.  You should just have them in your house.  There's no excuse for crappy snacking when you maintain a supply of apples and bananas.

And that's a quick little snippet of some recently attained lunch wisdom, so ... you're welcome.  :)

Oh, the Woes of Pesto!

As a "foodie mom" with "foodie kids", the issue of olive oil stains is a real one.  Not all parents understand the quandary some of us find ourselves in when dealing with that perfectly delectable Italian-style condiment: pesto.

Now there are all kinds of pesto, from olive-based Mediterranean style to the sinfully tasty sun-dried tomato pesto.  Regardless of the flavor, they all have one thing in common and that's OLIVE OIL.  While wonderful as pesto, this sneaky oil can slip through even the tiniest cracks in containers and has a way of lingering FOREVER.  For those of us whose children transport their food in a box within an insulated fabric bag of some sort, this can be troublesome.  Olive oil doesn't just rinse out, y'all.  It stays.  And stays and stays and stays.  Thankfully, pesto smells quite good, so it's not the end of the world, but it sure makes it look greasy!

With my PlanetBox, I soon discovered that not even this ingenious box with its nifty little metal container designed just for such "moist" dishes that might leak was enough to contain the pesto.  One of my girls' favorite things to take to school for lunch is three-cheese stuffed tortellini with our favorite brand of garlic pesto stirred into it.  It's the bomb.  We soon discovered that this dish would need special attention when one girl came home with a wet-looking lunchbox which I could quickly smell had been somewhat tainted by this treasured lunch item.  Bummer dude.

So the next time I packed it for them, I wised up.  When packing unpredictable foods such as those bathed in oil, I recommend wrapping the container holding it with some sort of napkin or paper towel.  In my situation, it's easy to secure as it's closed into a tightly fitting armored carrying case.  Nothing really moves in there.  However, if you are packing loose containers into a bag or box, you may want to throw a piece of Scotch tape on there for insurance.  Maybe wrap the napkin layer with a Saran wrap layer.  Whatever floats your boat and seals your juice.

The key here is prevention.  If you're a fabric bag person like myself, take my word for it.  Once that oil gets into the fabric, you're going to have to work way harder than you want to in order to expel it.  I hope this was helpful.  Enjoy your pasta!

Those Crazy Cookie Cutters

So by now I'm sure you've seen plenty of pictures of bento lunches on Facebook and Pinterest - not to mention the lunchbox websites and various other blogs - and so many of them feature these perfectly shaped little morsels that look like hearts and flowers.  Just precious.  It takes things up a notch and shows that you're willing to go that extra mile to make their day.

I recently packed the items below for my daughters' lunches and they loved them.  I made them at around 9pm the night before, whereas I usually make them quickly in the mornings, so I had extra time to put into them.  I went nuts on the cucumbers, which are easy to cookie-cut as well as their sandwiches, which were like trying to cut through two layers of cardboard and some styrofoam, but I did it!  My love was proven to my children through the daisy-shaped stigmata I bore on my palms for the next 24 hours.

As cute as they were, I have to be honest.  It was a pain in the hand and it wasted a LOT of food.  So if you're on any kind of a budget, i.e. time or money, this is not something you want to commit to.  Birthdays, special occasions ... sure!  Go for it.  Press away.  But for every little flower-shaped cucumber that you see in this picture, there was an equal amount of wasted veggie in my trash can.  Don't even get me started on how much of that tortilla didn't make the literal cut.

However, the biggest gripe I have about these fancy-shaped lunches is the fact that my kid only ate a fraction of what she normally does all for the sake of aesthetics.  My girls can eat - especially when working on a growth spurt.  My 11 year old loved the sandwich turned sandwiches, but told me she was really hungry by the time she got home from school.  I consider that a bit of a school lunch fail.

In addition, I normally leave most if not all of the skin on their food.  Food Nazis can argue it both ways in regards to the safety of such a practice, but I prefer they eat the skin of their fruits and veggies for the potential fiber they get from it.  It also fosters a level of food acceptance that I feel is important for kids to have.  I don't want my kid to go to someone else's house and turn their nose up at dish full of delicious homestyle mashed potatoes because of the 'brown stuff in there' (also known as tater skin).  That's diminishing their quality of life because few things on Earth are more delicious than homestyle baked potatoes, but more importantly, IT'S RUDE.  The health and social benefits of eating WHOLE foods is significant as far as I'm concerned, so to purposely go to the extra trouble to remove that from their food in the name of "happy shapes" is, in my opinion, just silly.

So in conclusion, I'm not anti-cookie cutter.  I'm not a shape hater.  I'm just not a huge fan and I have no plans to make "tortilla de Tejas" a regular part of their lunch.  Rather, that will be their reward for making it to another birthday, or being Student of the Week or some other meaningful allusion to their awesomeness.  However, on all those other days that end in "Y", I will continue to provide them with multi-colored, whole, natural foods that represent all four food groups as I have for the past 9 years.  They have eaten about 97% of their lunches in the shapes they naturally came in and none of them are worse off for it.  My love has never been brought into question because I failed to provide them with food shaped like Valentines.  I think the silly eCards they found in the side pocket sharing poems about bacon got the message across just fine.

2014 - 15 School Year Theme: Temperance

And we're off!  It's the first week of school and I am READY! As you can see, I'm already catering to their individual tastes the way I try to avoid, but hey - it's all healthy so it's all good, right?

I have recently purchases two of the Rovers from www.PlanetBox.com and I couldn't say enough good things about it.  I'm still rocking the sliced apples - these have pretty much been a staple in their lunches since Day 1.  The top photo is Roo's lunch (my 8-year old) and she likes the Gluck's Veggie chips.  She also prefers salad to tomatoes, so that's what she has with her Hidden Valley Ranch (which I'm not crazy about, but it's a very small part of her diet).  My 11 year old, Baloo, opted for the tomatoes rather than the salad and she likes Simply Natural Organic Honey Mustard dressing.  She also likes pretzels rather than veggie chips.  She "doesn't like green food" to quote one of her favorite movies.  They also have the Boar's Head Salami and Mozzarella roll sliced up and split between them.  They also both got some green grapes ... no they're not organic.  Sue me.

I'm all about balance.  I have always tried to strive for nutritional perfection, but I'm not WonderWoman, contrary to popular lore.  I actually get in hurry sometimes and default to what I can afford over what I know is a better choice.  I understand all the reasoning behind "investing in your health", but I'm also a human who lies in a world that simply commands a certain degree of tolerance.  I figure if I run through small amounts of poison, it'll make us tolerant in the event of a zombie apocalypse where we are living off the pudding cups and Twinkies that are there for the taking.  We will be able to survive, but in case that never happens and we live long enough to suffer from side effects, I'm hoping I can keep the toxins on the down low.  

Makes sense, right?  So when you see inconsistencies in my posts that start out healthy and end with a small bumble bee made of Swiss chocolate, you'll understand why.  It's for their own good ... 

Roo's Lunch

Baloo's Lunch

Still At It! Back to School with PlanetBox!

Hey there ... so I'm back at lunch making and I'm going to try to share it as best I can via this and my GypsyChique Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GypsyChiqueFanPage in case you want to follow there without all the words.  ;-)

I haven't blogged about this in a long time, but I've still been making lunches.  I may just start going through  my old lunches and pull out the ones that are noteworthy for the creative aspects.  What do y'all think?

I have to tell you all though ... I've moved away from the plastic bento box that I was getting through Lunchboxes.com ... I'm now "into" the PlanetBox that I got from www.planetbox.com and the reason I'm so crazy about it is because of our poor lunchbox hygiene.  We've twice gone through a school holiday without washing out the box and have had fruit fly/maggot issues.  That's not good when you're talking about poreous plastic containers.  Not good at all.  If it holds the smell of pesto for a week, you can only imagine how basically useless "maggot smell" makes a container ... for good.  I'm not even trying to deal with that.

So this year, since it was time to upgrade and get new lunchboxes (we had the Laptop Lunchboxes for a solid 2 years), I decided to go with all stainless steel PlanetBoxes to see how those worked out.  We're a week in, and so far, it gets 4 stars out of 5.

First of all, I love their look.  They're all metal, so they're kind of retro-looking and the magnets make them "happy" looking.  Because they are basically two metal trays on a hinge, they're VERY easy to clean and run through the dishwasher.  Sterilization.  BAM.

The "four out of five" start thing has to do with the metal food containers that come with them.  I am glad they're metal for sanitary reasons, but my daughters have had a tough time with the larger container that comes with the Rover kit.  One daughter seems to be able to get hers off fine, but the other one (my 11-year old) can't seem to get it open all the time.  Maybe if it was designed more like the smaller ones they come with, it would be easier to get in and out of?  The smaller containers ... "dippers" ... are easy to open, but they also hold their seal.  So I don't know what's up with that aspect of the lunchboxes, but when it comes to everything else, I LOVE IT!!!

So I'll be showing those off going forward - unless I'm flashing back just for the sake of sharing some old lunch ideas that I've used in the past.  My kids don't have any type of dietary restrictions, so they eat a variety of things, so I don't expect these lunch ideas to work for everyone.  But I am pretty sure just about everyone can find SOMETHING they can use in the stuff I post at some point.  ;-)

Be on the lookout.  I'm on my way back to lunch blogging!

How To Slice a Star Fruit

I have had a few questions about this one. My first experience with a star fruit was long and tedious and very silly. My impatience with removing the entire peel along with my confidence in the internet led me on the path to discovering that yes - there is a better way than the one I had tried.

First, make sure you get a ripe star fruit. It should be yellow with a brownish tint to the edges of the skin. It should also be about the size of a Roma tomato. (The one in this picture was about the size of a mango and it was very bland. The smaller ones are much tastier.) The brown edge is all that needs to be cut off as it's fibrous and hard to chew up. The yellow part of the skin chews up easily ... like an apple. So do the seeds ... don't worry about them. They are soft and chew up, too.

Run your knife up each edge of the fruit, shaving off the brown part from one end to the other. Then slice off each end and the rest is cake! Er ... fruit ... but you know what I mean! Simply slice the fruit about 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick, depending on how you like it.

And VOILA! You have STAR FRUIT!

One more tidbit of wisdom: Don't be afraid to add a little something. Star fruit is not exactly loaded with flavor like a plum or a nice, red strawberry. Star fruit is a little tart and not extremely sweet. I don't buy this very often because it's not cheap, so when I do, I indulge the girls by covering the slices with a light sprinkle of sugar. By the time they eat their lunches, the fruit has marinated in its own sugars for several hours and it makes them pretty yummy! And if you sugar your star fruit, be sure to pack it in a covered container as it will be VERY JUICY by the time they get to it.

And that's my take on the exotic and super fun star fruit. Enjoy!

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star ... Fruit

It's amazing how one little change can make a boring lunch look suddenly magical.

RED: Star Fruit
(fruit)

How FUN is a fruit shaped like a star?! And it's so bright and juicy! I took a normal hum drum lunch and gave it some edible bling by throwing in some star power! Rock 'n' roll!

Note: Lightly sprinkle with sugar or drizzle with honey as this isn't the sweetest fruit in the world. It's got a good flavor, but it's not red grapes or plums. The girls really like it with sugar, so it's kind of a 'mulligan' fruit dish - but it's not a regular lunch item, so once in a while won't kill 'em. :)

GREEN: Sun Chips
(carb)

YELLOW: Celery & Ranch Dip
(veggie, dairy)

PURPLE: Turkey Sandwich w/American Cheese
(carb, protein, dairy)