How to Pack an Excellent Lunch: The Elements of Style

I Hate Sandwiches


Actually, I only hate sandwiches when they've been sitting around for several hours, like the sandwich in a packed lunch has.  Sandwiches for vegetarians are especially susceptible to the problems that beset a sandwich when it's been sitting around.  The cheese gets slimy from being next to the lettuce and tomato, the lettuce wilts, the tomatoes' texture gets strange, the bread absorbs too much moisture from the vegetable fillings.  And really, bread and cheese are quite dry and hard to eat together unless they're freshly toasted.  Who's got a toaster oven in the office?  Not me.  Honestly, I'd rather eat all the parts of a sandwich individually than suffer through a sandwich that was assembled the night before.  A bit of salad or grilled vegetables with bread and cheese on the side works.  Sandwiches just don't. That rules out what's probably the number one lunch in the US. 


A Dazzling Array of Side Dishes

I cook lunch for the whole week all at once, on Sundays.  I'm not home much in the evenings, and that allows me to have delicious lunches without becoming an insomniac.  It also means I eat the same thing for lunch every day most weeks, which is why side dishes are crucial.  I keep around a few "staple" snacks, and lunch isn't complete without at least one of them.  I'm more likely to enjoy the main dish I pack if it's not the only thing in my lunch.  Monotony ruins a lunch, ad variety elevates it.  Here are some of the snacks I like:

• apples with peanut butter
• carrots or other vegetables with hummus
• nuts
• dried cherries (usually with nuts)
• berries, with or without yogurt
• salads (especially non-leafy salads, which don't wilt as quickly)

Sauce for Everything


Sauce is a crucial ally in my anti-monotony crusade.  Sure, samosas taste pretty good on their own, but they're better with chutney.  They're even better if you have tamarind chutney and green chutney.  Apples are similarly great on their own, but with peanut butter they're more filling and they contribute a sweet-savory combination taste to the meal instead of just being fruit.  Carrots go with hummus; they're boring on their own.  When I make Big Gujarati Lunch, of course I include pickles and pureed mango sauce too.  Sauces and garnishes keep food interesting and remind us that even poor, maligned, packed-from-home, eaten-quickly lunch deserves to be delicious.


Always Pack Dessert

Lunch deserves to be delicious.  We deserve to enjoy our lunches, not just to refuel so we can make it to dinner time.  Dessert is there to remind us of that.  It doesn't have to be a lot -- often I just pack a couple of ounces of dark chocolate.  It just has to be present.  The way I like to pack lunch turns it into a true meal, and a meal is more satisfying when there are a variety of dishes and a dessert.


Can I Microwave This?  Can This Keep in the Fridge?
I've made a big deal of variety, but this last point limits the variety of foods that work well in a packed lunch.  Food I pack has to be good cold, or I have to be able to reheat it in the microwave.  It also has to survive overnight (or even a day or two) in the fridge.  I don't pack things that have to be reheated in the oven or toaster.  I never dress leafy salads beforehand -- I use tiny salad dressing containers to take dressing along separately.  Basically, I think lunch should taste good when you eat it, not make you wistful for what it must have tasted like when it was freshly cooked. 

Excellent Lunch 2: Cold Soba Noodles

Yesterday F. and I stopped by Reliable Market to pick up some groceries, but we'd just been at jiujitsu practice so we were tired, hungry, and impulsive.  At the store they were giving out samples of kimbap and cold soba noodles, both of which were delicious.  We took some kimbap home to eat for lunch right away, and bought some soba noodles, which we cooked up this afternoon.  The bottled soba sauce they had wasn't vegetarian, so we made some of our own.  The noodles were great with the sauce, ground radish, green onions, tofu, wasabi, and shredded nori.

Directions:

1. The dipping sauce I used is called tsukejiru. Here's the recipe I used, modified from The Japanese Kitchen: 6 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons tamari, 1 tablespoon sugar, 3 cups of mild veggie broth, and a chunk of dried kelp.  I put the kelp in there because the original recipe uses fish broth, and the kelp helps replace the ocean-y taste but is still vegetarian.  Let the sauce cool.
2. In a food processor, grind a daikon radish or one of those big Korean non-daikon radishes, depending on how strong you like your radish taste.
3. Slice some green onions.
4. Slice some nori into pretty shreds for garnishing.
5. Cut some fresh tofu into cubes.
6. Cook some soba noodles.  Run them under cold water immediately after they're done so they don't overcook.
7. I think the "official" way to eat this is to add wasabi, ground radish, green onions, and nori to a small bowl of dipping sauce and then dip the noodles in, but I couldn't find a logistical way to include the tofu cubes I wanted in there.  Instead, I topped the noodles with all the garnishes and tofu cubes, then poured a little sauce into the plate.

Excellent Lunch 1: Bi Bim Bap

Lunch packed for tomorrow: brown rice bi bim bap with carrots, broccoli, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, baby bok choy, shitake mushrooms, and fried tofu.

Directions:

1. Cook some rice.  I have a rice cooker, so that's all there is to this step.
2. Choose 4-6 kinds of vegetables, and slice them thinly or cut them into suitably small pieces.  
3. For each vegetable, you have two choices.  EITHER: blanch them in some boiling water, then toss them in a little sesame oil and salt, OR pan-fry them in some sesame oil.  This choice really depends on the vegetable.  I blanched the baby bok choy and carrots, but stir-fried the mushrooms.
4. If you like, fry some tofu.  Or cook some meat, if you swing that way.
5. For each serving, first scoop a good amount of cooked rice into the bowl.  Top with about 1/4 cup of each kind of the various vegetables.  It looks nice if you keep each vegetable in its own zone, like in the picture.  
6. Put the tofu in the middle.
7. Put a just-barely-fried egg.  You want it extra runny, because if you're packing this in your lunch you'll probably have to microwave it, and that will cook the egg a little extra.
8. Squeeze on some bi bim bap sauce.

Lunchtime at home

I'm working from home today because my officemate gave me his cold.  Yuck.  To console myself, I used up the last of the dosa batter to make an uttapam for lunch.  With chai and sambar, because I don't do things halfway.

More posts about fighting and food

Actually, just food this time around.

I haven't posted anything here for a while because I was busy talking about getting married to F on that other blog where I talked about getting married. That was great. Now it's done and I'll get back to my usual favorite topics.

It's spring, and although the weather is disappointing the vegetables are holding up their end of the bargain. I have some great meals planned for the next week or so. I'll describe them now, and when I have made them I'll put up some pictures.

• Friday, dinner with some friends at our house: potato gnocchi with garlicky broiled asparagus, a fried egg, lemon & basil from our newly established container herb garden.
• Sunday, brunch with some other friends at our house: masala dosa (that's when you fill the dosa crepe-style with spicy potatoes) with sambar, coconut chutney, and sweet yogurt sauce. Maybe uttapam too (that's when you embed things like tomatoes, onions and ginger in the dosa batter, blueberry pancake style). And chai.
• Dinner #1 sometime next week: Brussels sprouts broiled with cumin and mustard seeds, greek yogurt (probably also gujarati spiced), and some polenta or something.
• Dinner #2 sometime next week: My family's go-to Thanksgiving wild rice stuffing with dried cherries, mushrooms, celery, onions, and herbs. I will probably add some tempeh to this so it'll be more main-dishy, and might use wild rice & quinoa instead of wild rice & brown rice. The recipe is based on this one from epicurious, but I replace the pears with cherries and leave out the sausage because I'm vegetarian.
  
• Dinner #3, sometime when I am feeling homestyle: bataka poha, because F likes it so much. Bataka poha is potatoes (bataka) cooked with "flat rice" (poha), spices, and topped with cilantro & lemon. I think flat rice is partially cooked, pounded flat, and then re-dried. Here's what bataka poha looks like:

Come to think of it, I'll post some photos of the back porch garden later, too. I'm very excited about that.

NOM

I invented a delicious meal-in-a-bowl yesterday. Just pile these things in this order:

cooked wild sticky rice (also called wild sweet rice, though it's not very sweet, or black glutinous rice, or other permutations)
cheese
arugula
a somewhat runny fried egg
sliced avocado
pico de gallo style salsa

The heat from the rice & egg should wilt the arugula and soften the cheese somewhat. With other salad-y greens I might not recommend the wilting, but arugula is as good wilted as it is cold and crunchy.

That's all there is to it!

fruit and vegetables failure

My office is having a "fruit and vegetables challenge" where you track how many servings of fruit and vegetables you eat and get points for them, and the points enter you in a drawing. I really love fruit and vegetables, so I thought about just tracking the ones I already eat, but then I looked at the prizes: a diet cookbook, a diet book, a book about controlling high blood pressure (mine is on the low side), a salad spinner & other kitchen knick-knacks (I've got 'em all), and an organic fruit basket. Hmm. 4 things I don't want, and one thing I already get once a week. Not worth the effort.

But I wonder how many people would actually want those things. If you don't like "health food", a diet cookbook is not going to help. A fruit basket is tasty but not really "grand prize" worthy. The stair-climbing challenge they did a few months ago had a big-screen TV as a prize. This one should offer a year's subscription to a farm share or something equally worthwhile.

Shaak-umentary

Yesterday F. and I set out to document the process of making potato-cauliflower shaak so that we can send the recipe to the wedding catering folks. It turns out that we are not as certain about the method as we thought we were, and we learned some stuff about the recipe while we were making it.

Start with 4ish medium potatoes and a head of cauliflower. The sizes of vegetables can vary, but just try to have an equal volume of each.


It is a good idea to microwave, bake, pressure-cook, or boil the potatoes beforehand because then they don't have to be stir-fried as long. You want a pretty soft texture so they're easy to pick up. We didn't do it that way this time, just to see how long it would take to stir-fry them. Normally we pre-cook them though, and I think it works better that way. F's mom also pre-cooks the cauliflower, but I like the cauliflower less squishy than F. likes it.

Next, peel and cut up the potatoes into 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch cubes.


Cut the cauliflower into comparably-sized pieces.


Now for the cooking! Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan, then add 1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds, 1/2 tsp whole mustard seeds, a few chopped fresh chilies, and about 3 big pinches of asafoetida (hing). I have never met anyone who knew what hing is called in English who did not also know what it was called in hindi or some other Indian language. It's like jaggery that way. Only Indian people know that it's called that in English, I think.


Fry those spices in the oil until they start to smell good. Then throw in the potatoes and cauliflower (if they're both pre-cooked -- if not, put the potatoes in a bit earlier than the cauliflower). If you didn't pre-cook your vegetables, you may find that periodically adding a splash of water helps them get soft. They need to be pretty soft so they're easy to pick up with bits of bread.

Stir-fry the vegetables in the oil for a little bit, then add 1/4 tsp turmeric and some ground chile powder (we used about 1/2 tsp, I think, but you may want more or less, as you like it). Different varieties of chiles have different flavors and different levels of spiciness, so be careful with that. Indian ground chiles are labeled "lal mirch" at the Indian grocery, and they are pretty hot but not very "warm" tasting. I think the closest American thing is ground cayenne pepper. Add some salt. There are a lot of vegetables in here, so I put in up to 1 tsp.

Finally, garnish it with some chopped cilantro. We forgot to take a picture at the end because we were too hungry. But this blogger added soy beans, too, which could be pretty tasty. Their final dish looked like this:

Simpleicious

Yesterday F. and I made a delicious pasta dish. The farm share has been giving us a lot of sweet potatoes, so we cut some up and roasted them, then served the chunks over pasta with wilted arugula (also from the farm share) and a sauce made from white wine, olive oil, brown sugar, salt, pepper, and tarragon. The sauce was intended as a salad dressing (does it count as "sauce" if you don't cook it?), but the ingredients of the salad were too sweet for such a sweet dressing and it actually went better with the pasta.

I imagine we could also serve those sweet potatoes with polenta, risotto, or just by themselves.

Farm shares are exciting

F. and I get to pick up our farm share today. Last week was our first week ever of farm share vegetables, and it's been awesome. F. has been making and freezing soup -- we would have just eaten it, but his parents visited and brought at least a week's worth of food so we have to store it somehow. This week we get some greens, various root vegetables, apples, and basil (from a local farm that has greenhouses). I might use the basil and carrots to make Thai curry. That would be delicious. So far I love having a farm share because I get a surprise every week. It's like Christmas but with vegetables.

I decided to try making paneer. It's pretty easy. You boil & curdle the milk, then you strain it and squish it into a cheesy form.



And for lunch I had carrot-ginger-sweet potato soup, which was great.

perennial dinnertime favorites

An egg taco, fresh from the skillet. The avocado is a little less than pretty, but still delicious.

cleaning out the fridge

A while ago, Meijer had salad greens on sale, buy one box get one free. So I had a whole lot of arugula. But I never got around to eating it, and it was wilting in my fridge, until I did this with it:

Arugula is a little bitter, so I added some sugar, and it's a delicious late lunch (with plenty of leftovers, of course).

minty milk

I bought some fresh mint the other day to cook with some fennel and onions I was making. But what do you do with the extra mint? That's always my problem with fresh herbs - unless I'm making a lot, I can never use it up before it gets dried out. This time, though, I have a delicious solution to the extra mint problem.

First, I shred up 6ish mint leaves and put them in a short glass with a teaspoon or two of sugar.

Then I put in a tablespoon or so of milk and muddle them around as if I'm making a mojito.

Then I fill it up the rest of the way with milk. It's very refreshing, and it reminds me of some "fresh mint" gelato the co-op sells. But it doesn't cost $5 for a pint, even if I use Oberweis milk.

beverages

I have a stuffy ear (I didn't know ears could do that), so I've been drinking a lot of Mom Tea.

meals: greatest hits

These are some of the food pictures I emailed to my envious friends before I thought to put them up here (most recent first).

I made this cake for my family when I visited them over Labor Day weekend:
For a week or so, I was making avocado and roasted pepper spring rolls for lunch:

You can't see much of the food, but for this birthday party I made veggie subs, vegan chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, and margarita chiffon cake.

I ate this mango, too.

This was my entry for Iron Chef Urbana. Nobody really dug my "rustic home cooking" theme, so I lost to the fancy seafood dishes. But actually the twice-baked sweet potato with grapefruit on top was really good. Next time I might make it with some kind of grapefruit glaze, so it's easier to eat.


I ate this for breakfast a couple of times:

dinner

I've been taking pictures of my meals and sending them to people. They are invariably envious of whatever I'm eating. So I thought I'd start blogging about food instead of sending email - that way the envy could be less exclusive.
Today I made a version of this zucchini kurma, from one of my new favorite food websites. I used patty pan squash, though, because it's always been my favorite and I brought some back with me from Michigan.

I chopped all the vegetables...


Then I had to fry some onions and spices...


Here it is bubbling away with all the vegetables added...


I finally ate it with rice and some leftover potatoes. Don't you wish you were also eating my favorite squash?

This weekend

Delicious: three cups chicken

Exciting: Porn Chowder at the Iron Post

always never forget to check your references

This is the sticky cake recipe I like.
http://www.chiff.com/recipe/pages/10125.htm

I love to eat

Wikipedia has a whole section about Chinese vegetables. I spent a lot of time at work last week reading about hollow vegetable and Chinese broccoli. It's exciting to me, because I love food. Bdon & I went to a new grocery store today and found some tiny, tiny all-green bok choy. They were delicious! You could put the whole thing in your mouth at once!

When I go to my parents' house for vacation, I need to remember to bring some things along that I don't want to look for or go without while I'm there. For instance, my brothers and I have a secret plan that will require some sweet rice flour. I also want to bring my yoga mat, in hopes that it'll be a portable way to keep working out regularly. And I should probably bring along some Chinese to review - maybe these children's books that I have. They look fun.