Rainy Day Breakfast

There are few things more comforting than soft boiled eggs (in a proper egg cup — this one is from W’s mother, and there’s a space under the cup for your other egg), and toast soldiers.  And if there are flowers, well, all to the good. 

Green Smoothies

This is the beginning of the green smoothie.  It starts off a lovely yellow color and then it becomes green, right after you add the green stuff.  Here it is kale.

I know.  A little troubling.  In fact, however, they are really quite good.  I’ve been drinking these since the new year, and they are doing me some good — more energy, mostly.  The other claims I’ve seen, the ones about how your gray hair will revert to its original color, and your sex life will become, well, you know, really great, and  your mental state will show great improvement?  Nope.  I hasten to add that none of that stuff has been bothering me anyway.   

I drink one of these every day, and I put it in a stainless steel water bottle thing that I really, really like because it keeps things pretty cold and there’s no weird smell from this thing.  Ever.  

Should you wish to inject more energy into your day, the Green Smoothie basically consists of:

2 bananas

a cup or so of frozen fruit

three handfuls of greens (mostly, I use kale and spinach, favoring spinach because it is already washed from those bags you get at Trader Joe’s, and besides, it’s organic). 

the juice of one lemon

enough water to fill up the blender

I like to think that the whole thing is mine to drink, but one or two of the tiffin children generally  have some too.

 I know it’s February, but happy new year anyway!

Berkeley Bowl Lunch

This was a beautiful lunch. I mean, I am aware it’s totally blurry in the picture, but it was a thing of beauty. Spicy tuna, a little bit of lettuce, crisp cucumber, and the avocado. There was rice at the bottom of the bowl. I mixed my wasabi with some soy and poured it over and it was incredible.  I’m not capable of producing something like this at home — so I’m very glad that our local grocery store (which is called The Berkeley Bowl) has it in its prepared foods case, and it is so fresh and delicious.

Tiffin Tin Lunch: Pasta & Cherries

Although it is not insulated beyond the natural insulation stainless steel provides, this is my favorite tin. It holds a lot and it is very attractive in its neat way. The water bottle comes from lululemon, which is hard to type but not hard to find in my neighborhood, because it’s in a HUGE story across the street from Cafe Roma in Berkeley, on the corner of Ashby and College, which is ground zero for a lot of good things.

What’s inside? This:

Whole wheat angel hair pasta, a little good olive oil and cracked pepper and some sauce from the jar with parmesan on top. The work of the moment. The greatest part of this lunch though is that it’s cherry season. Eat up!

Vegetarian Lunch (aka salad)

Here’s the thing — this lunch, which is something I have all the time — comes with stuff I always forget to tell them to leave off, so I have to scrape it off to the side.  I don’t want to eat tons o’ sour cream and guac at noon. 

This salad — which is called the Ensalada Mexicana, comes from Ananda Fuara, the nicest vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco.  Really lovely women in saris, who remember your name, serve you some of the best stuff you can get in the Civic Center at lunch time.

Oh, and I have to work late tonight.  I might even post my dinner. 

Nope. I ate it too fast. And I’ll add, while I’m at it, that this salad doesn’t look as good as it tastes. But when you get to the black beans, brown rice, and corn tortilla on the bottom, you have arrived in a kind of work lunch heaven that’s hard to describe.

 

The Tin is Back!

It’s been a long break around here, as we’ve adjusted to the fact that the children who used to love cute little lunches now insist on having a lunch that’s been thrown in a plastic safeway bag because it is so not cool to have a bento box.

So you know what? A blog must morph under circumstances like this. And morph we will here at the TiffinTin. Into grown up lunches, as often as I can, even if it’s only a photo and a snarky comment. Occasionally, the truth will be told about what goes into the preteen lunches. (Ouch.)

So, thanks for checking in while I was gone (and what was up with the 600 page views back in February? Man, people want tins, that much is quite clear. Well, good. Tins I have. Tons of tins.. And now they’re all mine, mine, mine.

See you tomorrow for the first grownup tin lunch.

xo, Lily

Oh, Oh, Oh!

This summer, I acquired the most wonderful bento. It’s made by those masters of all things bento, Zojirushi, and I just happened to see it in a little shop on Vashon Island, in Washington State, when I was visiting my friend Karen. Here’s what’s inside:

I took these pictures with my phone’s camera, and god or someone divine must be living inside that phone, or why else would top of the bento be lit up with that celestial light? Let’s hope I can think of some heavenly things to put inside. And I’d also like to point out that the largest container is insulated — it’s metal, and there’s a nifty little plastic jar inside. None of these three containers is very large — they’re perfectly lady-like, perfectly delicate portion sizes. If you want more, get two! No one should ever, ever go hungry around here.

Schooltime!

Oh, how I have missed putting things in the laptop lunchbox. This lunch went out the door a few days ago, but involved a blueberry reminder of summer, some Straus Family nonfat vanilla yogurt to dip the blueberries in, dried mango, and a turkey sandwich on the world’s best baguette, from Berkeley’s own Acme Bakery. It was for Tiniest Tiffin, who is actually not that tiny at all, being a third grader.

So here are some upcoming things:

• the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative — I’m getting ready to check out what’s up with the new buffet style lunches
• Some stuff about feeding pre-teens and hungry third graders,
• Orange food.  Halloween is coming.  Last year, we made easy cupcakes.  Last year, at Halloween time, I was not my total healthiest.  This year I am feeling way better, and stronger, and might do something so spectacularly  orange that it will be spoken about in my family for generations.  Or we might just make cupcakes again.
• Plus, I have got to show you my new bento box thing.  It is so utterly beautiful.  And also, my own lunches are much easier to photograph, because in the morning I’m just way too bleary-eyed to photograph my children’s.

So welcome back to lunch! It’s going to be such a fabulous year.

Summer Break

Dear Tiffin Tinners,

This site is on summer break. I’ll be back in September, with middle school lunches, and third grade lunches, and grown up people lunches, and maybe some new thoughts about how we go about feeding ourselves away from home.

have a lovely summer,

BL

Before. After.

Before:  Kiwis and purple grapes, some vanilla yogurt in the little dip container, turkey and cheddar roll-ups, and cheez-its (a nod to all that’s compelling about fake, orange food).  About 2/3 a bottle of half water/half orange juice.  All those baguette slices?  The kids in Tiniest Tiffin’s class love baguette.  And they never get to eat it.  He’s their new supplier.  At least today anyway.

After:  a couple of kiwis and a stray baguette are all that’s left.  Plus about 1/4 of the juice/water mixture.   It’s a mess, huh?  He either doesn’t know how to put the cap back on the little yogurt container or he’d rather not do it.  The good news is that the whole thing cleans up just like new.

Out to the Soda Fountain

Where do you go on a sick day with a child who’s not THAT sick? To the Elmwood Pharmacy, where there’s a great soda fountain. And what do you eat? A frankenwich (grilled cheese with a hot dog inside!) and a chocolate shake. Oh, and a pickle.

Don’t forget though, if you let your child roam around the pharmacy unattended, well:

Fruit and Yogurt on the Open Market

Here it is then, the lunch to follow up the lunch that got dissed by the kid who hates Valentine’s Day, the kid who told Tiniest Tiffin his heart napkin sucked.

The mighty Tiniest Tiffin’s response: TWO heart napkins. Take that. And some strawberries and cantelope with really good whole milk vanilla yogurt to dip the fruit into. Creamy, yummy. UMMMM. (Not to mention some turkey roll ups, a couple of goldfish and two of those starburst things that have Valentine’s patterns on them. Oh. And carrots.)

We’re coming home and I ask him how lunch went. Apparently, on the open market of the cafeteria, fruit and yogurt is like gold during a serious inflationary period.  Here’s how he made out:

• A gave me a chip for a piece of fruit with some yogurt on it.
• N gave me two yogos for a strawberry with yogurt.
• L gave me two chips for a cantelope with yogurt.
• J gave me a cookie for fruit with yogurt.

L, I’d like to say, is the kid who said Tiniest Tiffin’s heart napkin wasn’t up to snuff.

Tomorrow I’m packing extra fruit & yogurt. I’d say three chips, two yogos and a cookie isn’t going to kill the triumphant Mr. Tiffin and is worth it seeing as how he’s winning hearts and minds through the fruit & yo program.

The Whimsical Lunch

Here it is tiffin fans, our new laptop lunchbox! It’s the purple version, also known as the “whimsical” laptop lunch. It came in the mail about ten seconds after I ordered it from the nice women at the laptop lunchbox website. Along with the lunchbox, we also received a nifty insulated carrying case and a very good book filled with ideas about making healthy, delish lunches.

With this new lunchbox comes a renewed push to involve the boys in the lunch process. This morning, that meant Tiniest Tiffin spent a lot of time opening and closing the lunchbox so he could do it by himself in the cafeteria at his school. (Turns out this lunchbox isn’t that easy to operate at first — the lid opens by pushing down on the latch, which is counterintuitive — but once you get it, the whole thing’s not at all difficult and very cool. Worth the effort I’d say.)

Tiniest Tiffin opted for ham and cheese roll-ups, rather than a sandwich. He wanted strawberries because they look like hearts and he wanted his Straus Family nonfat vanilla yogurt drizzled over the strawberries because … well, because it looks nice. Add some baby carrots, a little ranch dressing and a piece of banana bread and you have a very typical American child’s lunch. It’s good to be back to lunches!

Culinary response:   Thumbs up.  Two carrots left and a little ranch dressing. 

Social response:  The very cute napkin with the heart on it from IKEA was dissed by a kid in his class.  Tiniest Tiffin says this kid is jealous.  And tells people his mother doesn’t love him.  (Something sad happening in that family.)  TT determined to soldier on, demonstrating that even the most manly of second graders can still show love for his mom.  

A Little Break

I’ll be taking a short break — until Valentine’s Day — to finish up some medical treatments. See you in a few weeks!

xo, BL

In With the New

                    

It’s inevitable that we greet the new year with the desire to do new things, be new people. For a very long time I did this in the spirit of recrimination, speaking to myself about my goals in ways I’d never speak to others — you’ve been so awful about food, now you’d better shape up. That kind of thing. And then for a while, I just stopped resolving to do new things at the beginning of the year altogether. This avoided the awful feeling of beginning a new project as penance for being a bad person, which is good. But it also made it difficult to take advantage of the momentum that is everywhere these January days.

And so I’ve embarked on a new course:  I want to create a healthy beginning to the year, a beginning that’s full of beauty and interest and inspiration, and a beginning that relies on small things, like a cake plate full of naval oranges.   I’ve sketched out a series of pieces on small things that can mean a lot and I’ll be writing about those for the next few weeks. I’ll have a few lunches in there too, of course.

The first in this series can be found at the Daily Tiffin.