Curly Carrot Bento

If I open up the thermos to take a photo of what's inside, a lot of the heat would escape. And lately she has wanted something in her thermos every day. So until I figure out a better way, I will just label the closed thermos.

Not-every-lunch-can-be-beautiful bento

The fog is thicker this morning than I've ever seen it in Colorado. Charlie was alarmed when we let him in the backyard this morning. R said "look at his tail, he is not feeling confident." It was tucked as far between his legs as he could get it. He tried to climb up me to jump in my arms when I went outside. He is such a little border collie. Don't we know, sheep get lost in fog like this! This is terrible! He got used to it after we walked around with him for awhile.

I had to take the lunch picture inside, with bad lighting. It was not the most attractive lunch to begin with. But it's nutritious, and I know she will eat everything that's in it.

Back to the Grindstone Bento

That was nice, Thursday and Friday last week without school. Teacher conferences, and then a teacher in-service day. It was the first snow and the first really cold temperatures too. Nice to stay in your pj's until lunch and read books together in bed.

I asked R if she was going to show her friends that she has a red pepper cat and dog in her lunch today, and she said "Mommy, no one cares about my lunch." At least with a six year old, you know where you stand. No subterfuge, no softening the blow.

Out of Uniform Bento

Today was a long-awaited out-of-uniform day at school. That is so exciting that it's ok if lunch is a little boring.

I am making headway on the baskets upon baskets of green tomatoes we rescued before first frost. We wrapped a lot of them in newspaper and set them to ripen in the basement where it's dark and cool. I've frozen batches of puree to make soups and sauces later on. I made and frozen green tomato curry sauce from this book.

I've also canned several batches of green tomato salsa, and made jam.

Canning salsa is tricky because for saftey, you have to use an approved recipe and keep the proportions of vegetable to acid exactly the same. This is from the National Center for Home Preservation website. Tomatillo Green Salsa

It's safe to substitute green tomatoes for tomatillos, lime juice for the lemon, and switch out some of the hot peppers for milder ones. Which I did because I am the only native New Mexican in my house. It has a very strong lime flavor. All that lime juice is necessary for safety. But it's great with chips, or pureed as a sauce for enchildas, or mixed with plain yogurt or a cream sauce to tone down the acid a little. It has such a bright flavor. I think it will be wonderful to open a jar one cold February day, and taste the summer tomatoes ripening on their vines.

Yeterday I made green tomato, orange and apple jam from
this book.

Canning at high altitude is frustrating, because the boiling temperature is different and you can't go by the time or temperature for gel set in a recipe. A few weeks ago I made Christine Ferber's Peach and Pinot Noir preserves, and they nerver set up. I ended up with jars of peaches in Pinot Noir syrup. They're really good, but they're not jam. This tomato jam, I cooked too long, and the set is too thick and sticky. I finally have a digital thermometer and a scale to weigh the fruit (maddening French recipes with everything in grams!), and I'm getting better.

And finally, here is Charlie as of about five minutes ago. He turned four months and had his last puppy shots. His rabies tag indicates that he has been domesticated and registered in the system. He belongs to The Man now.


We're so happy he's here. What did we used to do for fun before Charlie came along?

Cold Rainy Monday Bento

Hot soup for a cold October day.

Last night's dinner was ratatouille from the last garden vegetables we salvaged before frost.

I used Julia Child's recipe, where you cook the peppers and onions and then the tomatoes and garlic slowly, then layer them with zucchini and eggplant that have already been sauteed, sprinkle each layer with fresh parsley, and cook it down at low heat until it melts together.

R was very excited, because she loves the movie with the little rat. Then she was devastated when she saw me making it. "Ratatouille doesn't have vegetables in it! It's SAUSAGES!" She did eat some in the end. One of the sweetest scenes in any movie, when the jaded restaurant critic takes a bite of his ratatouille and it transports him back in time to the little boy in short pants in his French village, sitting at his mother's table. Not as magical at our table. But it was good, and authentic, because it's actually not supposed to have sausages.

Purple Antioxidant Bento

Purple foods are supposed to be high in antioxidants. Does that have anything to do with strengthening your immune system so you don't get the flu? I don't know, but it's worth a try.

I am also shooting for the kids' bento lunch ideal--dinner leftovers that are appetizing served cold. Which is harder than it seems. Pineapple chicken in peanut sauce--often a favorite, always nutritious. The purple cabbage caramelized with balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar is from a Chicago Tribune magazine recipe many years ago, and I still love to cook it that way. The original recipe calls for goat cheese, right at the end, which is so very nineties, but also so very good. R will eat it without cheese, because it's sweet. She also likes any kind of rice, which makes it easy to serve brown, wild, Chinese black, Korean brown sticky, and any number of other nutritious varieties.

"Flair is good for their brains"

What a great article from the New York Times today about a team of school lunch cooks at a middle school in Queens who fight to cook real, fresh food from scratch. (clickable link in the post title.) This was such a wonderful article to read. Cooking whole food, and fresh food, gets discouraging on the scale of one household, or at least it does for me. And when you apply the same challenges to the logistical and budget restrictions of an entire school--what this middle school is doing seems heroic. And funny, and inspiring. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Many advocates for better, healthier school food have begun to believe that the only way to improve what students eat is to stop reheating processed food and start cooking real, fresh food.

"(Kitchen Manager Sharon) Barlatier is a rarity in a system that feeds almost a million children a day: she can cook, and she has the kitchen equipment to do it. "

"When Mrs. Barlatier arrived in 2007 and started to improve the food, it didn’t take long for (Principal Mastrogiovanni) to see that the children not only ate more of it but seemed happier at lunch.

“They needed a little flair in their food,” (Principal) Mrs. Mastrogiovanni said. “It’s good for their brains.” "

"(Barlatier) will not tolerate cooks who say students will eat only hamburgers or pizza or who complain that there is not enough equipment to cook the more complex recipes the district is trying to encourage.

“It’s not the limit of the equipment,” she tells them. “You can have only a steamer and make a sauce. You can have one burner and make a sauce. There is nothing stopping you.”

“The kids love this curry,” Mrs. Barlatier said. “It makes them feel comforted and cared for, which is what we want to do.” "

"No matter how delicious her food is, (Barlatier) battles daily with the mercurial palate of the middle school student.

“You could have steak here and they are going for that deli,” she said, exasperated.

It was time for action. She shut the deli bar, enduring shouts of protest and the kind of incredulous eye rolls that only a seventh-grade girl can deliver.

A sixth grader, asked why people were so crazy for what looked like a fairly unremarkable sandwich, explained.

“It’s like Subway,” he said, “but you don’t have to pay.” "

I just like to see a group of people in a non-elite setting say with confidence that a hand-carved tomato rose is good for a child's brain. (Alice Waters is admirable, but that wispy voice and the withering condescension, whether it's intentional or not . . . I can hardly watch interviews with her any more.)

It does seem likely that the made from scratch curry makes the kids at this middle school feel comforted and cared for. How they are pulling this off on the scale they are, I don't know. Kids still gravitate towards whatever looks most like Subway. The pressure to give in to that on the scale of one family is daunting--what about cooking for an entire middle school? I love how the kitchen manager is like "oh, hell no" when the deli line is keeping kids from eating lunch before the bell rings, and she shuts it down and routes them back to the curry.