Today's lunch

[pegkerr]

Egg salad sandwich on wheat bread; yogurt mixed with pumpkin and maple syrup; homemade peach pie with rolled oats crumble topping. Recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook; fresh beets and onions, oven-roasted in balsamic vinegar.

Comments

[rachet.livejournal.com]

Wow that looks good.

Except for the beets.

I am a firm believer that beets were put on this earth by Satan. Euw.

But WOW do I want the yogurt, peach pie and sammich!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

To make the sandwich really perfect, I would add blue cheese crumbles. I love egg salad prepared that way. Alas, I was out.

[mjryan.livejournal.com]

Due in no small part to your lunchbox pictures, but also to a desire for my children to eat better, I bought two laptop lunches for them. Today is day three of using them. While my creations aren't nearly as interesting as yours, their obligatory pb&j as been paired with carrots, apples, grapes, blueberries, strawberries and pretzels. (not all at once, of course) Today, they got a homemade chocolate chip cookie treat. Tonight, I'm going to try a new recipe for spring rolls. I'm hopeful they will like them and want to take them in their lunch.

I love the concept of the bento boxes. They like the novelty of it. So far so good.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic! I'm so thrilled to be a good example . . .

I've made it a goal to always include at least one fruit and one vegetable with every lunch. Try to enlist your kids in this goal, too, letting them explore things they've never tried.

A GREAT source for ideas is the Flickr.com Laptop Lunchbox photo pool. You also might consider picking up the Vegan Lunchbox cookbook by Jennifer McCann (see her lunch-inspirational blog here). Now, I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, but she has a lot of great ideas. I have the first (earlier) edition of this book and I like it a lot. The new one is updated, with a better index and more photos.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

OMG, that looks fantastic!

[dreamingcrow.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say that after all your talking about these, I've decided to get them for the boys for lunches this year, as well as myself when I head back to work. Thanks!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I love your lunch pictures. I have pretty much given up on my Laptop Lunchbox, but I now have a couple of other Americanized versions of bento boxes that I use at least a couple of times a week. It's surprising how much fun it can be to put together a lunch for just yourself that looks good as well as being tasty, filling, healthful and all the other things you want a lunch to be.

I must say that mine never look quite as good as yours, which have that quality of perfection that you usually see only in TV commercials. Come clean now - how much time do you spend swirling the yogurt just so, rearranging the sandwich fillings and tucking wayward crumbs down under the edges of the crust? ;-)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*laughs* No, I don't employ a food stylist! What you see if what you get.

It sounds like you already have found a good substitute or two for the Laptop Lunchbox. If not, you might want to take a look at the products by Lunchsense.com. Pretty spiffy: every container is lidded, and you can unfold the lunchbox itself into a placemat!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a nice set! Obscenely expensive, though. $44 for 4 tupperware containers and a nylon carry sack???

I keep trying to assemble a set like this myself, and never find a set of containers just the right dimensions.

The biggest problem I have with all of these plastic lunch sets is odor. Richard cooks with a lot of garlic, onions, and curry spices. When I put leftovers into plastic containers, they pick up smells that I just can't get out. The one lidded Laptop Lunch container was particularly bad, which is the main reason I stopped using that set (that and the broken zipper on the case). Do you have any special tricks for cleaning these things?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The Lunchsense set says that the cover can be thrown right into the washing machine.

You might check to see if it can be found at a local co-op. I bought the Laptop Lunchbox at a local co-op for 1/2 the price it was on the website; that may be true of other lunchboxes like the Lunchsense one.

I've never used the case for the Laptop Lunchbox myself--I just carry the box in my gym bag. As for odor in the plastic containers themselves, I've found that if I have a tough odor or stain that making a thick paste of baking soda and water and spreading it in the bottom and letting it sit over night and then cleaning it the next day pretty much took care of any odor or stain. I also find that if I'm putting something in that is likely to stain (like curry or chili or tomato) that it helps to coat the inside of the container with a spritz of cooking spray before I put the food in.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I thought you might like to know that I was inspired by your luscious lunch pic that I dug out my Laptop Lunchbox again and used it for lunch. It had been sitting with baking soda sprinkled inside for long enough that it didn't smell anymore. Maybe the secret to using plastic lunch containers is to keep rotating them so they have time to air out between uses.

I actually found myself recreating your lunch, sort of, with a sandwich, yogurt and fruit, and a side dish. Except I decided to put a little crumbled mango-cheese with the fruit instead of yogurt, and my leftover side dish was much less attractive than your beets, and my bread is the wrong shape so it doesn't fit so photogenically... so my lunch looks really mediocre compared to yours. Oh well, I'll bet it will taste good.

Clearly you don't need to employ a food stylist - you ARE a food stylist! Maybe it's all that collage work you've been doing...

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! I'm glad you've gotten back to it, and glad that the baking soda worked.