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!

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.

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:

What Can You Say About Trix Yogurt?

I come to you today to talk about Trix yogurt — yogurt so colorful it hurts your eyes early in the morning when you put it in the lunchbox, yogurt that’s in a small container with gaudy decorations, yogurt that’s more expensive than the kind you usually eat because it’s in single serve containers. Yogurt Tiniest Tiffin loves. Going, as he does, to a school where a lot of children pack Trix yogurt in their lunch boxes, he naturally feels that he too would like it.

I’m not crazy about Trix.  It’s expensive, and has lots & lots of sugar in it and it comes in colors and flavors that are sort of icky.  The clash between what you want your child to eat and what your child sees other children eating and therefore wants to eat gets more difficult to negotiate as children grow older. I’ve reacted to it by being flexible about an item or two in the lunchbox, not making a big fuss about it, and saying briefly what the pros and cons of Trix yogurt are. It’s a small thing, Trix yogurt, but it’s not without significance:

• you can talk about packaging. That empty trix yogurt container is going to sit in a landfill for a very long time.
• sugars — you might want to look at different yogurt containers and talk about how much sugar you’ll find in it, and how much you want it to have. We do this with fiber — the Tiffin kids are aware that cereals and breads with less than 2 grams of fiber a serving aren’t doing what grains are supposed to do for you.
• the trix rabbit is sort of cute, sort of not. It’s fun to discuss what might really be going on when he says trix are for kids but not for silly rabbits. The idea of having something exclusive and not sharing it is what lunch is all about sometimes.
• flexibility. Your child needs to know that everyone enjoys a treat, and that’s what something like this is. A treat.

So what’s in those two lunches up there in the picture today? Left over tri-tip sliced very thin and placed between whole wheat bread. A piece of banana bread, a lot of tangerine slices (it makes a huge difference to them that the tangerines are peeled ahead of time, a job they’re good at first thing in the morning — they don’t have that long for lunch and sometimes they’ll only get to eat a fruit if it’s peeled already) and, of course trix yogurt.

More on the Great Vegetarian Conversion

                              

Turns out, it’s not that hard to feed the Tiffin Twin a meat-free diet because he mostly lives on air and water anyway, with the occasional infusion of chocolate or spice cookies. All of these items have never, as far as I can tell without doing any research, been involved in anything that was once alive. Plus, he loves soup and I like to make soup. And so today, he had a big thermos of lentil soup, some whole grain crackers, two spice cookies, and two of the chocolate balls St. Nicholas left for him a couple of days ago. The lentil soup contains veggies (carrots, onions, tomatoes) and all those yummy, protein-filled lentils. The cookies and chocolate counteract his habit of never eating, which is why he looks like a much, much younger, and handsomer Mick Jagger, if you can picture that.

Just in case your own child decides to walk the vegetarian road, I do want to give you a tip. It’s this. When a pre-teen makes the ethical decision to avoid eating animals, he will be filled with the fervor of the new convert. And this is as good a time as any to lay down an inviolable rule, one that will stand your family in good stead for all future ideologies and enthusiasms your children might take up. Here it is:

• You may embrace the worldview you wish, as long as it’s not hurting you or other people, but you may not proselytise your family about this worldview.

In other words, when your brothers are eating stir fried brown rice with chicken and broccoli, you may not make gagging sounds and talk about the living conditions of factory farmed chickens. We know all about that around here, because we live in Berkeley, for heaven’s sake. And that’s why we buy Happy Chickens, which as far as we know have never been oppressed.

What Does An Eleven Year Old Vegetarian Eat for Lunch?

                   

Yesterday, one the Tiffin Twins had to dissect a chicken, in preparation for mummifying it (good heavens, was all I could say about THIS science project).  He came home that afternoon and announced he is never, ever, ever eating any kind of meat ever, ever (did I mention he feels strongly about this?) again.

Okay, then.  So how about a piece of garlicky foccacia bread with some tomato sauce and mozzarella (aka pizza?), a couple of tangerines, an apple sprinkled with lemon juice and cinammon sugar and yes, dear reader, it’s true, I’ve actually placed marshmallows in my children’s lunches.  So sue me.  It’s the holidays.  Everyone needs to put a little bit of pizzazz into their lives.  Oh, and that’s holiday trail mix.  Peanuts and red & green M&Ms.  (See above for thoughts on pizzazz.)

I think I’ve got the important things here:  tomatoes, cheese, whole grain, protein/peanuts, fruit, marshmallows and m&ms.

Lentil Soup

                              

A heart warming lunch for a cold day — lentil soup, beets (yes, I know, they look like tomatoes, but they’re not!) with feta cheese, and some nice crackers.  I like this tiffin tin, by the way.  It’s pretty small — just right for my soup in the bottom and the beet salad in the top.

Beets are easy to roast, and when prepared as I’m about to describe, they’re wonderful.  These are not those scary salad bar beets.  Use golf ball sized beets for this, by the way.  Smaller beets are yummier. 

• Cut off the top and the bottom, and place about six beets in a shallow baking dish.  Add a little water and cover the dish with aluminum foil. 
• Roast at about 375 degrees until a knife pierces right through them, about 25-30 minutes. 
• Peel your lovely roasted beets, trying not to burn your fingers as you do. 
• And then, while they’re still warm, sprinkle them with a little red wine vinegar, some salt and toss with as much olive oil as you think appropriate. 

Cut them into whatever shapes you like and eat them any way that makes you happy.

A Civilized Lunch for Mom

                        

There are days — not too often — when a working mother should take herself out to a nice place, and have a beautiful bowl of soup in civilized surroundings.  She should eat slowly, and sip water, and perhaps talk to a companion, or maybe just look out the window and remember to breathe and to pay attention to what’s happening in her life. 

It’s only when you slow down and look around you that you realize how many truly lovely things there are about being alive. 

This, by the way, is something every human being should do every once in a while — all of us:  women who work in their homes, women who work outside their homes, women with children, women without children and men of those same descriptions. 

The Day Nobody Washed Dishes

                           

Let’s be clear about one thing.  They don’t serve mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving at Caesar’s Italian Restaurant.  They serve pasta.  And sweet potatoes.   I got over that huge disappointment, however, because we were cared for by a waiter so kind, and gracious, and funny, that the absence of potatoes did not linger long enough to cast a pall over anything on Thanksgiving. 

As is often the case on holidays with loved ones, it isn’t really the food we’ll remember. 

 It’s the sign.  And how understanding the entire staff was when Tiniest Tiffin managed to knock over his Shirley Temple and then, not five minutes later, tipped forward on his chair and came crashing to the ground.  Not a single person who worked there made him feel anything other than like a child who’s had a bad moment and needs an ice pack and a big piece of chocolate.  It suddenly seemed churlish to have cared for even a moment about the mashed potatoes in the face of so much kindness. 

Mondays at the Daily Tiffin

I’ve posted a piece over at the Daily Tiffin this morning, all about making lunch for a bunch of people (three, which is not technically a “bunch,” but when you also have to get yourself dressed and fed, it feels like a crew.)   Tomorrow, I’ve got some photos of Thanksgiving to share.   Have a lovely beginning to your week.

Pain au levain, satsumas and lemon cookies

                                  

Here at the Tiffin household, one of our favorite breads comes from Acme. It’s called pain au levain and it is as delicious as it looks in the picture you see.

My boys have invented a sandwich with this bread — a sandwich that’s sort of a simple pain bagnat. For those who don’t know, pain bagnat is a sandwich. The nicest thing about it is the way the filling you put in it while hot becomes part of the bread, through the simple method of pressing the bread and filling together — sometimes with a brick, sometimes just with a tight wrapping of foil.

The Tiffin Simple Pain Bagnat involves a child taking several slices of the bacon we sometimes have for breakfast and, while it’s still hot, piling it between two pieces of pain au levain, smushing it down and wrapping it in foil. All the lovely bacon juices permeate the bread and the sandwich is a small piece of kid heaven. One piece of bread cut in half, two pieces of bacon, and that about does it.

There were also nice satsumas this morning and organic orange juice, because we’re trying to remember what summer feels like. And the cookies? They’re those tiny Italian bites that have a little kick of citrus to them. Another little outpost of sun for this November day.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I’ll be taking lots of pictures of our family dinner, the one at Caesar’s in San Francisco.

Monday Tiffin

Even on the coldest of Monday mornings, it’s possible to make a lunch to remind your loved ones that summer still lives somewhere, and that it’ll be around again. And that’s what I’ve posted about over at the Daily Tiffin, in the first of what I hope are many regular Monday posts.