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.

Nori rolls (again) on Tuesday

Rolls again? As a lame excuse, every time I pack sandwiches Justin comes home with a full lunchbox. Honestly? I'm out of chicken nuggets (which he does eat) and Kraft Singles (which I need to make sandwiches). But of course, most importantly, he just likes rice rolls.

So today he's getting plain rice rolls (the rice balls didn't fly so well yesterday - only a 50% hit ratio) that I know he likes, with ham-carrot-green onion-egg cakes (a.k.a. 전) and diced daikon for sides. For some reason he only ate the oranges yesterday, so although I feel like he would eat strawberries today, I'm going to hold back the urge to recycle and give him organic D'Anjou pears (courtesy of The Fruit Guys) for a change. I hope he likes these. I ate the scraps in the morning and they were good!

I had a little fun with the pears. I bought the cutest cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma (but they don't have them online!), and have been using them to cut up sandwiches (that he will not eat), but it's so much easier with pears! There are 10 different shapes - I only used 5 of them today. We'll see which ones he favors.

They do serve milk and water, but I've noticed that they serve water in the milk cups without completely rinsing them out. I suppose it's all the same when it gets into your system, but for some reason that seems too gross for me (especially because I don't drink milk) so I'm opting to pack his water separately.

This is what it looks like when it all comes together:


While Justin was (hopefully) enjoying his lunch, we took a (well-deserved) break this afternoon and splurged on lunch at University Cafe, with a steak stir-fry and a Sunny Platter. The Sunny Platter is absolutely perfect for someone like me who can never make up their minds between savory and sweet for breakfast/brunch. It combines eggs benedict and potatoes (savory) and french toast with fresh fruit (sweet) on one plate! Of course, the steak stir fry was really good, too (other than the fact that we ordered it medium and got a really well-done steak). Tomorrow, Justin will get a more interesting lunch. Promise.