What's in your lunch box? An extended answer.

Elaine writes about lunches at home and at school:<br /><blockquote>I just wish someone would make me the Bon Appetit lunches--an awful lot of work even for a retired person. I usually eat at home, often one of the Yoplait yogurts that you decry for their lack of good nutrition, a piece of fruit and some bread and butter and jelly. (Or cookies or pie or cake if we have some). I think eating the yogurt in addition to a sandwich would be excessive, but instead of it's not so bad. I used to often pack the same lunch when I was working. </blockquote><blockquote><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/89/2828/1600/delmar-harvard.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/89/2828/320/delmar-harvard.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Delmar-Harvard Elementary School where we ate those lunches<br />(though the cafeteria was in another building)</td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><blockquote>I mentioned earlier this year that I've gone back to peanut butter after many years hiatus, but now I sometimes use creamy style horseradish instead of jelly. I remember once as a kid that Mom put butter on my peanut butter sandwich instead of jelly. It was probably worse for me and tasted weird. I also remember the Halloween peanut butter open face sandwiches, cut round with jack-o-lantern faces. Those were served at home on Halloween, before we went back to the school parade. (Butterscotch pudding with jack-o-lantern face was I think for dinner dessert). I loved those! </blockquote><blockquote>As a member of the local school parent council when the kids were small, I designed and administered a survey at the elementary school to see what the kids liked and didn't--most of the disliked stuff went into the trash, since there were no eating enforcers. The items they hated the most were green and gold salad (cheese and peas) and Reuben sandwiches. We shared our results with the cafeteria directors but am not sure we got much attention. The staff wanted to open the minds (palates) of the children, but the kids were pretty much completely closed to some of the ideas, and I doubt they actually tried some of the food.</blockquote>

What's in your lunch box? An extended answer.

Elaine writes about lunches at home and at school: I just wish someone would make me the Bon Appetit lunches--an awful lot of work even for ...

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What's in your lunch box? Another answer.

Evelyn wrote about what's in lunch boxes packed at her house:<br /><blockquote>I read your blog entry about packed lunches, and I think maybe I don't agree with some of it. <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha3l4WWe8AMD0PHeWKyUstbbFTBp-froQfJb94LFkcAiCZzbjv1ImYuzCe5Ak1PNJ9dVTVSQL2gcThF0zjgmblE2fFnhj_qHioTkyH1RKBwZDqRVNOvMr1JAqz6gDJFf0VFBU1u7R-MTPl/s1600/pesto-chicken-rolls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha3l4WWe8AMD0PHeWKyUstbbFTBp-froQfJb94LFkcAiCZzbjv1ImYuzCe5Ak1PNJ9dVTVSQL2gcThF0zjgmblE2fFnhj_qHioTkyH1RKBwZDqRVNOvMr1JAqz6gDJFf0VFBU1u7R-MTPl/s320/pesto-chicken-rolls.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pesto-Chicken Rolls <a href="http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/family-meals/slideshow/25-quick-and-easy-school-lunches-to-pack-for-your-kids/?slide=25">from Bon Appetit</a></td></tr></tbody></table>For example that <i>Bon Appetit</i> article -- maybe a little pretentious, but I am going to show it to Alice, because I bet she would get up early to make herself some of those lunch ideas. They actually sound very good for dinner with leftovers for the lunch. Maybe that's why it sounds pretentious -- I seriously doubt anyone really makes those only to pack in a lunch, whereas as a leftover that would be completely reasonable. Miriam even made sushi for dinner a few times for the purpose of taking it in her lunch the next day. </blockquote><blockquote>I don't think that Miriam and Alice's lunches are too far off from the norm, or they would rebel, and yes they often have a piece of candy or a yogurt, but they don't seem all that much worse than what you described you bringing healthwise. For example, today Miriam had a PBJ sandwich, 5 ritz crackers, a bit of candy, a peach, and a chocolate milk (It's not really just her lunch -- she has been eating a little lunch at school and finishing it up the rest for afternoon snack). </blockquote><blockquote>Alice had the same crackers and candy, but she had a tortilla wrap with melted swiss cheese for her sandwich, a fruitable for her drink (it is fruit juice with water added), and blueberries for her fruit. This seems to be well within the range. Yes, it has more sugar than you had, but not enormously more. </blockquote><blockquote>My own lunch was leftovers from the salad last night for dinner -- quinoa, avocados, tomato, corn cut off the cob, garlic, onion, and the wonderful Cajun seasonings you brought me from Baltimore (which I have been adding to pretty much everything all summer). That is just as pretentious as any <i>Bon Appetit</i> lunch in that article! But this was an exceptional day -- on Tuesday I didn't have time to make a lunch at all and had a pain au chocolat from the coffee shop. And  I'm sure that kind of lunch is exactly what Michelle Obama is talking about.</blockquote>

What's in your lunch box? Another answer.

Evelyn wrote about what's in lunch boxes packed at her house: I read your blog entry about packed lunches, and I think maybe I don't...

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What's in your lunch box? First answer.

Arny wrote on my FB page:<br /><blockquote>"This is my 60th consecutive year of going to school. When I'm not on sabbatical, I nearly always bring a lunch bag. Nowadays it's usually a small insulated bag that lasts a year or two. I still use a couple of baggies; I haven't made an effort to find the right containers for the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the cup of carrots, but I do recycle the coke can, and the apple doesn't need packaging."</blockquote>

What's in your lunch box? First answer.

Arny wrote on my FB page: "This is my 60th consecutive year of going to school. When I'm not on sabbatical, I nearly always bring a...

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What's in your lunch box?

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBaRBvbdbeWZR8hGUow8G8ufCtuSBevzDGH4KsYMYfQuT5rqF6JQulS0Y_Y_evgMxQWeeKBRqBShlZrJggDa14bdiohUNdt2aPpekdu4p9dKPLqpGvtMdGJbVZ76uPb70LwX6B_FDTRMqC/s1600/mona_lisas_dachshunds_canvas_lunch_tote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBaRBvbdbeWZR8hGUow8G8ufCtuSBevzDGH4KsYMYfQuT5rqF6JQulS0Y_Y_evgMxQWeeKBRqBShlZrJggDa14bdiohUNdt2aPpekdu4p9dKPLqpGvtMdGJbVZ76uPb70LwX6B_FDTRMqC/s400/mona_lisas_dachshunds_canvas_lunch_tote.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mona Lisa Lunch Tote from <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/+mona_lisas_dachshunds_canvas_lunch_tote,690632398">Cafepress</a></td></tr></tbody></table>School started yesterday, so I've been thinking about what goes in all the lunch boxes and lunch bags all over the country. I remember from childhood the smell of a lunch in a brown paper bag. When I was in elementary school, I went home for lunch almost every day. But in Junior High, I remember the smelly brown bags with wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches, probably on white bread, and an apple every day. Maybe a carrot stick or a cookie. Inside the sandwiches: peanut butter (no jelly for me) or sliced cheese; cream cheese or some sort of meat; maybe tuna fish. My mother, who packed our lunches, didn't think it was a lunch without a sandwich. I almost always brought my lunch right through high school. I didn't like and rarely ate cafeteria food -- for one exception, <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-school-lunch-and-chili-month.html">see this</a>.<br /><br />Here's what I think is odd: the lunches my mother packed would mainly comply with the advice that parents are getting now to encourage healthier eating. If the food industry made small-sized bags of potato chips then, we never heard of them; Lunchables were distantly in the future. Yogurt wasn't a commonly sold or eaten food until some time after I was in school; it seems to have become a staple of lunches brought from home. Most yogurt -- especially the ones targeted to kids -- is a heavily sweetened and not particularly wonderful food masquerading as healthful.<br /><br />The lunches we rejected from the cafeteria were probably no better in nutritional value than the ones that are under scrutiny now, and probably didn't taste any better than the nutritionally improved ones kids are rejecting, either. I suspect that politics is behind some of the big objections that kids (no doubt encouraged by their parents) are making to the changes in school cafeteria food when the objectors seem to all be from tea-party country and they mention Michelle Obama by name and hold her responsible. I have this funny feeling that only a satirist (like <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/mom-unaware-little-note-she-packed-with-sons-lunch,29281/">The Onion </a>or Andy Borowitz) could do justice to the politicization of school lunch contents as well as to some of the other excessive trends.<br /><br />Lunch boxes, for some reason, weren't cool when I was a lunch-taker; neither were thermoses. I think they were for littler kids. After lunch, we could throw away everything that came with lunch. That didn't usually include any food: we were all inducted into the Clean Plate Club though no one ever named it. A few years after I was in school, instead of waxed paper or waxed sandwich bags, plastic baggies became common. Much more recently, schools have been nudging both mothers and kids towards reusable containers instead of disposable wrappings.<br /><br />Will this trend continue? Two years ago, an article in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/business/energy-environment/education-officials-and-retailers-push-for-environmentally-friendly-school-lunches.html?_r=0"><i>New York Times</i> reported</a> "Sales of environmentally friendly back-to-school products are up just about everywhere." By that time at Miriam and Alice's Oak View Elementary school, kids had already done an experiment to compare the trash on a day when everyone brought lunch in disposable bags and on a day when everyone who could brought their food in reusable containers. The resulting trash quantities really impressed the whole school! Nobody wanted to be seen making piles of trash like that.<br /><br />In the family, Miriam says she plans to take only a little bit for lunch because she'll be eating very early, so she got  a new small lunch box to start Junior High. Alice says she doesn't have a new lunch box yet. <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2012/10/school-lunch.html">Last year in Minnesota</a>, they did eat school lunches, which were designed to have healthy food and lots of vegetables in them and also were usually served on reusable plates. They also had a deal with a farm to send the edible leftovers and plate scrapings to the pigs.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2BgWFCBXi6Qrs4wqsxMOVvZAWvKT4fNLTMbepqmDVJqux4jqABMmAMoyPoSrMkTfS7GhC8OyAGnJObxvAZ1PBaTjHOvwaq8Sm8VTfVZueutRFAe4e8gbU9t5n9aQhbpy5ilb_Aw3UBj2j/s1600/bento-lunch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2BgWFCBXi6Qrs4wqsxMOVvZAWvKT4fNLTMbepqmDVJqux4jqABMmAMoyPoSrMkTfS7GhC8OyAGnJObxvAZ1PBaTjHOvwaq8Sm8VTfVZueutRFAe4e8gbU9t5n9aQhbpy5ilb_Aw3UBj2j/s320/bento-lunch.jpg" width="284" /></a></div>Overall, in lunch boxes this school year, I suspect that there will be lots of interesting and exotic foods as mothers strive to meet more and more competitive demands for health and fanciness. A few mothers might follow the trend of making highly decorative Japanese lunches, as illustrated by a screen shot from google images. A few might make labor-intensive gourmet treats based on recipes like those in a<a href="http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/family-meals/slideshow/25-quick-and-easy-school-lunches-to-pack-for-your-kids/?slide=1"> pretentious article in <i>Bon Appetit</i>.</a><br /><br />Most kids' lunches, according to the news, will be some combination of convenience lunch food like yogurt cups and mini-bags of chips or carrots and traditional choices like my mother made. I hope there's really a trend towards better health and environmental responsibility, but that might be wishful thinking.

What's in your lunch box?

Mona Lisa Lunch Tote from Cafepress School started yesterday, so I've been thinking about what goes in all the lunch boxes and lunch bag...

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School Lunch

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/8087959278/" title="IMG_1224 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="IMG_1224" height="375" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8331/8087959278_899c213c1e.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />School lunches are much in the news this fall, as recently-enacted nutritional standards are mandating changes. The public schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, have been experimenting with new programs for a few years, so I was very pleased to receive an invitation to have lunch at the Horace Mann Elementary School barbecue while visiting Miriam and Alice this week. I ate with Alice and several of her friends.<br /><br />"Sometimes they have completely gross foods," says Alice, "but others are the best. I like the veggie pizza, but the chicken teriyaki and other meat items are gross."<br /><br />As is evident in the photo, there are lots of vegetables -- and the classroom teachers discussed this with the children earlier in the year. Each child is required to try some veggies, which at least on the special family barbecue day were served on a sort of buffet in the cafeteria (which is also the gymnasium), after the line where the cafeteria ladies put the hot dog and baked beans on our foam trays. I gathered that there used to be things like chips on the menu which have disappeared this year.<br /><br />The hot dog came on a whole-grain bun, baked in the central food prep kitchen according to the various articles I read earlier this fall. Alice ate the bun but not the hot dog. The children separate the food from the foam trays after lunch, and the edible rejects go to feed pigs at a special farm.<br /><br />The "breakfast cookie" had lots of healthy ingredients, but didn't taste bad -- a tiny bit salty, I thought. Beverage choices: milk or chocolate milk. I doubt that I've tasted chocolate milk since I was eating in school cafeterias myself -- this was not as sweet and creamy as the chocolate milk of my childhood, if my memory serves.<br /><br />During lunch Alice and her friends normally play a game called "Hello, Bob." Someone starts by saying, "Hello, Bob. Say hello to Bob, Bob." The response is to say "Hello Bob," and turn to the next person and say the same thing. Everyone has to talk in a sort of British or Australian accent. Eventually they also say "Hello, Sheila," or "Hello, Steve Owen." Hard to describe this one, but a couple of other visiting fathers and mothers and I played along with the group.<br /><br />"The school lunches are better than our old school lunches," says Miriam, who ate lunch with Evelyn and Lenny and some of her friends elsewhere in the lunch room. "But home made lunches are still better."<br /><br />

School Lunch

School lunches are much in the news this fall, as recently-enacted nutritional standards are mandating changes. The public schools in St. Pa...

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It's School Lunch and Chili Month

October is <span class="Apple-style-span" >School Lunch Month </span>and also<span class="Apple-style-span" > Chili Month</span>. For me this is quite appropriate, because my first taste of chili was in the school cafeteria at Delmar Harvard Elementary School in University City, Missouri. This was exceptional: I normally brought a bag lunch consisting of a sandwich, an apple, and sometimes a treat like a cookie or a piece of candy. My mother made our lunches almost every day, so I can't remember how I was able to try the chili in the cafeteria instead of my sandwich. I'm sure it wasn't in the least hot, as no children in Missouri at that time would have been expected to eat spicy food. It was served in a heavy white china bowl with a little cellophane packet of crackers. I was always curious to try things that were different from what my mother made, and this was really different.<div><br /></div><div>I did have chili once at home -- that was later, when I was in high school. My Aunt Florence brought us some of her home made chili. I remember her describing what she put in: ground beef, canned beans and tomatoes, bell peppers, chili powder, and probably a couple of other things. Compared to my mother's cooking it was exotic.</div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPi6L1VlnwLPSz_ErgGcojCywmgCIo7nT7M3IEfGEur_Ysnu2gD_7-34rXRODv_4cdXvrfnnLfNn0b_x5bnZw1isb8AGT3LT8h_nO86jN6Jn34pUec3LwQk9UWu0BXkXaUREXiGV-VW5q/s1600/warhol-chili.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5663116795976655986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPi6L1VlnwLPSz_ErgGcojCywmgCIo7nT7M3IEfGEur_Ysnu2gD_7-34rXRODv_4cdXvrfnnLfNn0b_x5bnZw1isb8AGT3LT8h_nO86jN6Jn34pUec3LwQk9UWu0BXkXaUREXiGV-VW5q/s400/warhol-chili.jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 191px; height: 265px;" /></a>Later when I had a kitchen of my own, I found the very bland taste of Campbell's Chili Beef Soup to replicate my school-cafeteria memories. (I put the Andy Warhol soup can image in this blog post to reinforce that memory.) By that time, I was living in California and trying out the inexpensive and maybe even somewhat authentic California Mexican restaurants in Berkeley (which was not yet the gourmet paradise that it later became). The familiar school cafeteria flavor didn't seem exotic at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then I got adventurous and began to make chili from recipes that I found one place or another, most likely starting with the recipe "Chilly-Night Chili" on page 16 of the <i>I Hate to Cook Book</i> by Peg Bracken. Instead of going right to the Campbell's Chili Beef can, it uses a can of tomato soup along with onion, beans, hamburger, and optional olives. Aunt Florence did it better, but pretty soon, so did I.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Here's a chili recipe that I posted a few years ago. This time I know where it came from, but it's not from a cookbook, it's from real people who at the time they gave me the recipe were really living in Texas. Alec, in fact is a native.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); "><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); "><span style="font-weight: bold; ">Ellen and Alec's "Texas Red" Chili</span></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); ">2 to 3 lb. lean beef cubes: trim off fat if necessary<br />2 chopped onions<br />3 cloves chopped garlic<br />Several fresh chopped chilies (such as jalapenos) or 1 can Old El Paso chopped chili peppers<br />1 to 4 tablespoons of chili spice (recipe follows — blend of spice is essential)<br />8 oz tomato sauce and 8 oz water<br />1 lb can of tomatoes, cut in pieces<br /><br />Brown onion and garlic. Add fresh peppers (if using fresh). Remove from pan. Add beef and brown. Drain excess fat. Return meat to pan. (Add canned peppers.) Add spice, then tomato sauce, water, and tomatoes. Simmer several hours on top of stove or in 275 degree oven, until meat is soft.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); ">One heresy is to add a can of corn, a can of black beans, and/or a can of red beans towards the end of cooking. I'm not enough of a heretic to make the beans or corn dominate the chili. That would be a different recipe.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0); "><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); ">Chili Spice Blend</span></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); ">In a mortar or spice grinder blend 1 crumbled bay leaf with 1 tablespoon of each of the following spices: Whole Cumin, Dried Oregano, Chili Powder. Optionally add 1 tablespoon each of onion flakes, parsley flakes, and dried basil. Add at least 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper, dried hot pepper, or hot pepper flakes.<br /></span></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div>Thanks again to Louise at <a href="http://monthsofediblecelebrations.blogspot.com/">Months of Edible Celebrations</a> for inspiring me and so many others in new areas of food blogging this month. I celebrate all the huge number of chili recipes and variations that I've ever tried, and the rather pathetic memory of the school cafeteria.</div></div>

It's School Lunch and Chili Month

October is School Lunch Month and also Chili Month . For me this is quite appropriate, because my first taste of chili was in the school ca...

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Lunch with Alice at Oakview Elementary School

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy9tM4zAhiaufxOGQwIUiYvEtBqg1zh-k_cN-4FzjGmHMMNRMzoAGu1EAiUFZgCzUdQ_tfU2cH9RsuhUOYDFfnCKYGIlWC3GdhdB72Ro3ncjWy8svOchL8nFaqLAtQnDukboNx8ccCwmBu/s1600/alicelunchrm1883.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466038780805292338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy9tM4zAhiaufxOGQwIUiYvEtBqg1zh-k_cN-4FzjGmHMMNRMzoAGu1EAiUFZgCzUdQ_tfU2cH9RsuhUOYDFfnCKYGIlWC3GdhdB72Ro3ncjWy8svOchL8nFaqLAtQnDukboNx8ccCwmBu/s400/alicelunchrm1883.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 301px;" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1lPX4fE9Sa9-ZJLrquG-mXqop2om3C6l6XznbNAa5fumITJ_Hn1ZEVAQFGjp1a659mpolMlttbHq_QkSlgraSN5sduOqCKao7Q9LKrY73b4K6FxW9iWncheoVfgb9Xd1rE_0M1u8QX_-9/s1600/alicelunchrm1878.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466038766399844290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1lPX4fE9Sa9-ZJLrquG-mXqop2om3C6l6XznbNAa5fumITJ_Hn1ZEVAQFGjp1a659mpolMlttbHq_QkSlgraSN5sduOqCKao7Q9LKrY73b4K6FxW9iWncheoVfgb9Xd1rE_0M1u8QX_-9/s400/alicelunchrm1878.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a>

Lunch with Alice at Oakview Elementary School

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