Recent lunchbox samplings

I've been a bit lazy so I'll play catch up today and show you a couple days' worth combined. Nothing super exciting other than the fact that I've had fabulous results (i.e., completely empty lunchboxes in the evening!) with these:

Eggs, sausages (boiled, of course), rice rolls, and leek cakes (부추전). For dessert, blackberries and green grapes, with a handful of teddy bear trail mix.

Black forest ham & cheddar cheese sandwiches with trail mix, and bluberries and strawberries for dessert. Justin especially loves having strawberries and whipped cream for dessert after dinner - it's a pity I can't send along whipped cream (I could but it would turn into a milky soup by lunch time!).

It might help that we have a new lunchbox/ container. It's a tomotomo ($1.50 from Ichiban Kan) and it's really the perfect size! The top container is 310 mL (entree) and the bottom is 210 mL (dessert) and comes with a space for the fork and spoon, all-in-one (utensils not included). It's so cheap but the funny thing is the little rubber belt that holds it all together is almost as expensive ($1.00) as the container!

Anyway, he seems to enjoy the portions and the bear on his container. If it works for him, it works for me.

More lunchbox tools have arrived

I was running out of ideas and my box of goodies from Ichiban Kan arrived just in the nick of time.

Justin loves the rice balls but it makes me feel guilty to send him with the same thing over and over again. So this time, I bought a paper punch to punch out little teddy bear shapes of nori. This was a little trickier than I expected - the nori has holes in it, and because the teddy bear shape is really small, if you position the nori the wrong way, the bear comes out without an arm or an ear. Anyway, it works and it's cute, so I'm happy.


I also bought a square frying pan for making eggs. I spent a lot of time at Williams-Sonoma looking for a square pan for this purpose, but could only find the LeCreuset panini grills (I can't imagine what my eggs would look like if I tried it on one of those), and even that for over $100. This pan I found at Ichiban Kan was super cheap - just $7-8. It's small but it makes perfect eggs that doesn't have ugly uneven ends. But I've yet to buy green onions - so I just used nori, again, for color. Justin will be nori-ed out.

As a just in case, I sauteed a little bit of shrimp. The 10-15 count shrimp were larger than I thought and I only wound up packing 2 of them.

For dessert he has grapes and pineapples. We have a great big fruit bowl and I picked the pineapples out of it so they're a little pink from sitting next to strawberries. Another great idea gone bad... I thought I could scoop the fruit out from the fruit bowl but Justin will spit out every thing he doesn't like so now I have to pick through the sticky juice. You might notice, I'm not using both cases of the new Hakoya lunchbox because I agree, it's a bit too large for a preschooler!

Plastic helpers

This week is turning out to be more hectic than planned!

After having sleepover guests on Monday, we now have a dentist visit planned for Wednesday, and there's no school on Friday (teachers' workshop), so we won't have much opportunity to pack lunches at all (whew!).

Yesterday's menu of fried rice and meatballs, grapes and cherries were well received and today after sleeping in, we fell back on the sandwich and nuggets option. So today, instead of a nicely packed lunch, I will share the "tools of the trade".

On the top left are the three plastic rice shapers - a rabbit, dog, and bear (sold in a set of 3). The bottom trio are sauce containers, for ketchup, mayonnaise, or mustard, that open up and seal tightly (sold in a set of 3). On the top right are plastic containers of various shapes and colors (sold in a set of 6, two of each shown). These are useful for packing small portions of food without having to worry about it all getting mixed up. I tried looking for colorful silicone cupcake liners - I thought they used to have them at Crate & Barrel but could only find them at Williams-Sonoma for $24.00. Each of these sets were $1~$1.50 at Daiso (which is also conveniently located between work and home), so compared to $24.00, I think I got a good deal!

What I really need is the 180mL Lock&Lock rectangular container, which I think is the right size for a preschooler's lunch. It's difficult working with the 330mL that I have now, because there's a lot of space to fill, and if you don't pack tightly, then all the food will move around and get mixed up. So what happens is, you pack food knowing you will have leftovers (although I've been pleasantly surprised a few times with a completely empty container). But for some reason, I can't find these 180mL containers anywhere in the US, even online.

Wish us luck with the dentist. We'll be posting more when life returns to normal.