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.

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.  

Where Would You Hide A Gummi Spider?

Yogurt’s a pretty good place to hide an arachnid.  Across from the red guy is ham on herb bread, accompanied by Valencia oranges (on a stick — an arrangement that’s becoming very popular with the second grade Tiffin child.  I keep wondering if maybe he’s using those toothpicks to swordfight.)  And did you know that those Nilla Wafers you ate when you were a child now come in a mini size?  For a long time, I didn’t put cookies or sweets in the boys’ lunches.  And then I realized, a little bit goes a long way. So now I do.  I’ve just got to start adding some veg.

New Lunchboxes

It’s been what — six weeks? — since school started. And in that time, we’ve (well, they’ve) managed to lose pretty much all the lovely lock & lock containers I bought earlier in the school year. Plus two canvas bags. And all our water containers. When asked for an explanation, Tiniest Tiffin said this: “I don’t MEAN to lose the containers except when I forget them. ” (It’s like living with a miniature Yogi Berra; my favorite Yogi Berra-ism I’m not as dumb as I am.)

Huge digression. Sorry. Back to lunchboxes. I went to Koreana Plaza in Oakland, hoping not to spend too much money to replace the many lost lunch containers. They’re almost out of lock & lock boxes. They didn’t seem enthusiastic about ordering more. But then — in the grocery section — I spotted the most incredible divided boxes — about 9 by 9, with four individual containers and a nice-fitting lid. Amazingly, they were only $4.89. I snapped up the only two they had and felt quite good about my replacement lunch boxes. They look a little like lunchables, except of course, they’re anti-lunchables.

As a reward for my good shopping, I bought a very cute little Korean bento box, so small you imagine it’s used only by someone on a rigorous diet or a person so teensy they hardly ever have to eat. Me? I’ve got to make room for Thanksgiving, so I’ll be eating those teensy portions for a little while. And here’s what my boys are eating:

Tiffin Twin is having: 2 Korean cookies, the name of which I cannot decipher, but I can attest that they are delicious; smoked turkey baguette, cantaloupe, and nonfat vanilla yogurt, so rich you’d swear it was made with cream.

As for Tiniest Tiffin, he had something similar:

Except he likes his fruit on a stick, with cantelopes and those slightly scary cherries you can only have once in a blue moon (make that a red moon). He also doesn’t like his meat inside bread. And that closed container? Yogurt.

So, these two lunches, plus my own lunch for a teensy person, and a thermos of hot pasta (with delicious tomato sauce) for the other Tiffin Twin and we’re a family that has enough to last us to the end of the day. Here’s everything stacked and ready to go:

Eat up!

Oh, I Do So Love a Good Thermos

Actually, it’s one of the Tiffin Twins who really likes a good thermos. He’s the hot food child. And although he insists on taking his lunch in a brown paper bag (in this case, a nice one with a handle from Peet’s Coffee, our favorite local coffee roaster), he puts a very fine thermos inside. Today, all the pictures of his lunch made it look so terribly unappealing, that I’m contenting myself with the outsides of things.
Like his lunch bag.

And his new thermos. It’s a 16 ounce thermos and it worked beautifully today. Inside went some nice rice and pinto beans made over the weekend. And when he opened it at lunch? The food was still wonderfully hot.

The Village Market

I’ve returned from the quest for that colorful melamine tiffin tin made by Vivo I talked about in yesterday’s post, and am here today to sing the praises of the Village Market in San Francisco’s Ferry Building which does indeed sell that tin. They’re out, but they get shipments of them several times a week, so you can call them and ask for one.

And you don’t have to live in San Francisco to order from the Village Market. They have a website. Although this tin isn’t up on their site, their contact information is and I have the feeling they might ship it to you if you ask.

Tomorrow, a piece about the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative, which Tiffin Tiniest’s school participates in.

Update: Thanks to reader Kate, here’s another source for a colorful melamine tiffin tin.

Buying a Tin Online

There are few things more frustrating than knowing what you want and being unable to find it. A tiffin tin — that wonderful Indian lunchbox, cunningly constructed out of layers of stainless steel to nicely keep your lunch hot — can be hard to find. Here are a few American sites to help you in the search for this lunching holy grail:

Reusable bags is a great site for all things related to packing an earth-friendly lunch. And, naturally, there’s a tiffin tin.

This one surprised me. It’s from a classic hardware store. Of course a tiffin tin can be used to store your nails. Still, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t put it to its intended use.

Here’s another earth friendly site. Tiffin tins to be had here.

JBoxstocks a wonderful array of containers. They’re bento box people, but I’m including them because this is a wonderful site and some of these small containers are quite good for storing things like dipping sauces and salad dressings.

Now here’s one that’s giving me trouble. Long before I learned they’d featured these colorful melamine tiffin tins on Real Simple, I’d spotted them at a great store in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. A week later, they were out, probably because of Real Simple. The guy at the store told me they would be ordering more. They’re made by a mysterious entity called Vivo that doesn’t seem to want to answer its phone.  Look here for something similar. 

That’s it for today tiffin fans. Tomorrow, Sunday, a note about shopping for a middle schooler’s lunch. (Middle school starts next week, and the Tiffin Twins are gearing up for it.)

Lifeboat Tea

Some people are born tea drinkers, some people come to it later in life and have to feel their way.

I’m in the latter camp. When I was in my twenties, I lived with two wonderful people — an English woman and her husband, who’d grown up in Los Angeles, although you’d never know it because he sounds more English than she. Every morning, Jamie would bring Catherine a cup of tea. He’d make it in a plain blue tea pot. It had milk and sugar in it. (She liked her tea weak back then — “just show the bag to the water,” she’d say, which I think meant you were only supposed to keep the tea bag in the water for a moment.) This, and my first trip to England, around this time, is the origin of my love of tea.

Sometimes, in the market, I stray from my usual tea (which is Peet’s Assam Golden Tip), and buy something else. (In truth, I do this a lot. This morning, my husband, who likes to quantify things, informed me that I have thirteen boxes and tin containers of tea in our cupboard and couldn’t we please throw a few of them away? In fact, no, we can’t. But that’s another story.)

At the market yesterday, I bought the two teas you see in the picture. The Lifeboat Tea I’ve not yet tried. But somehow, somewhere, sometime the owners of the Berkeley Bowl are handing “4p” over to the charity that runs Lifeboat Tea. How that money gets to England I do not know. But I’m happy to be part of such a worthy project.

Are you wondering, when, exactly, is she going to get to the container part? Now, dear reader.

I have spent a good part of the last two years looking for a decent to-go cup for my morning tea, the tea I drink in the car on the way to the BART station. My requirements for this container took shape after several unpleasant, and all-too common experiences with to-go cups. Mainly, they all leak. They just leak differently. Some of them leak at the place where you screw the lid onto the cap. Some of them leak when you drink from the cup. And some of them leak when the cup leans just a little too far forward.

The cup in this picture does none of these things. I cannot tell you how to buy it for yourself because I couldn’t find it online when I looked. Perhaps that’s okay. Finding the right to-go cup is a holy grail kind of journey, one we should all have to go on ourselves. (In case you’re not up to that, here are a few clues: I got this container at Barnes & Noble. It cost $4.99.) It does not leak — in any way at all – thanks to the very clever way they’ve made the top, with those slits they’ve constructed on the lid. That it has pictures of famous authors on it, when I’d rather have a pattern that is plainer or at least abstract, is something I can live with.

One thing that the typical to-go cup cannot do, and probably will never be able to do, is duplicate the experience of drinking your tea from a cup that leaves no flavors of its own. All to-go cups add their own small smell to the tea. It’s the plastic and the stainless steel, I think. My solution to this is to make sure that when I really, really want to drink good to-go tea, I make tea that is a little aromatic. This is also a good solution to the kind of tea that you get in restaurants where they don’t really boil the water, but just spurt it out of the cappucino machine. Aromatic tea covers these small flaws. That’s what the organic Earl Grey is about. You’ll note it’s made in France. That doesn’t bother me one bit, and it’s actually pretty good tea, even if it’s not English.

So there you go: the perfect tea container, and some advice about how to make tea to-go that tastes pretty good. This is what makes life golden.