Spring Time Salad

So since today was so lovely in the end I decided we need something to go along with it. We had a mixed green salad with yellow peppers, tomatoes, feta, and an apricot horseradish dressing. On top were baguette crouton/crustini and our grilled flank steak. I am really not that huge of a fan of beef and/or steak but one of my families favorite is flank steak, seasoned, and sliced thin against the grain it is lean and flavorful. It is also good warm or cold, so it is brilliant in salads. My husband was incredibly trepidatious when sitting down to eat this dinner but he commented several times throughout that it was very good. Molly did a pretty good job with dinner, she is getting better with salads she ate the meat well, tried the yellow pepper and at first seemed into it and then spit it all back out. She always loves tomatoes, and I made a fresh fruit salad to go with it that she ate a TON of. She loves blueberries, I like to call them brain food, she can eat as much of them as she wants as far as I am concerned.

So my obsession with bento has only intensified. I was looking at blogs about bento for kids all day today as well as trying to figure out what to buy to get started with Molly's lunches. I realized today that this isn't just appealing to me. Two years back I saw an advertisement in one of my magazines for a book on lunches called Lunch Lessons. The cover was so appetizing. Now this was before Molly, and I was really looking for some ideas to jazz up my lunch and my husband's lunch. At the time he was still eating lunch downtown everyday and it was costing an arm and a leg, I had had enough and wanted to save money by making him pack a lunch. As a teacher myself with less than thirty minutes for lunch it has never been feasible for me to "go out" for lunch as it were so I always packed a lunch. I just wanted to make it more appeasing to Brian. I love leftovers for lunch, but the only way I can get Brian to eat leftovers is if they are made into something completely different a la Robin Miller on the food network. So I asked for this book Lunch Lessons as a Christmas present and I read it cover to cover in the following day and a half. Even back then the idea of bento looked fabulous to me, but for another reason. Anyway I am guessing that the idea behind this present movement is to make really good for you food look incredibly appetizing for your young child, particularly if they are a picky eater. Also to make every day of opening up their lunch box an adventure to see what cool new thing mom put in your lunch box today. I also think too that if you had a totally awesome lunch (but still very healthy and good for you) and the kid next to you had a Twinkie for instance that at this point your lunch is too good to give up and trade for the heinous Twinkie. At this point Molly is a great eater, she isn't what I would consider picky and she is two and only takes a lunch box to daycare on Fridays for "fun." So you might ask, why then Nickey are you taking the time to cut out flower shapes in your cheese, and making the lunch look so nice for a two year old that could care less? Well, honestly I am thinking of it from Molly's perspective. This whole lunch box thing is totally new to her and she LOVES it! On Friday she is so stoked to take her lunch box to daycare to see her friends, and according to the fabulous Ms. Laurie at daycare they talk about all day Thursday in preparation. She carries it all by herself and refuses help because she is so attached to the "idea" of it. Now granted when we very first started doing this –taking a lunch- Molly was maybe 16 months old and the lunch box was almost as tall as her but even then she refused help and would muscle her little way from the car door to the front door caring her pink Barbie lunch box. See I was told about this lunch box adventure a little late in the game, and at the last minute rushed to Target to see if they had any lunch boxes left after the "back to school" rush only to find this one and only girly lunch box. I didn't really want my little girl's lunch box memories and photos to be of this cute blonde headed little girl dressed all in pink carrying a gigantic Transformers lunch box, that just didn't seem right. So my only choice at the time was Barbie, I went with it.
Honestly what kid wouldn't love opening up their lunch box to see their cheese cut into butterfly shapes, or their sandwich cut into shapes, and cute little toothpick forks to use etc.? It makes eating your lunch fun, why wouldn't you want to do that for your child? So I bought some bento type boxes (fairly easy ones at this point because I don't want to spend too much money on something that might not pan out) and some fun cookie cutters and toothpicks. So expect some bento picks to be coming soon. I also think it will help with my creative juices for lunches for Brian and me as well. See some of my favorite blogs (on the left hand side here) to see some really awesome ideas on what this could look like –another lunch and bentoblogy- are my favorites right now.

Lunch Lessons as a book was not what I was expecting, I wanted lots of great and colorful ideas for lunches which is kind of what the book cover suggests. Instead it is a great read on school lunches today and how some areas are fighting back. There are some recipes and suggestions at the back of the book but no pictures, for all my reading I LOVE cookbooks with full glossy pics! So I would give this probably two and half to three forks. Three forks for the content itself, not necessarily as a "cookbook."

Tonight’s Dinner / Tomorrow’s Lunch

So tonight we had southwestern meatloaf, baked potato, and the BEST salad I have had in a long time. I should probably mention that I don't do all of this stuff on my own. In the last eight months I have found the joy that is Relish a wonderful meal planning site. They provide you with options to pick from every week, and then it will create a PDF file with a categorized shopping list and all the recipes you will need for the week. Sometimes I come up with my own stuff for the night, and sometimes I borrow a recipe here or there from them as a side dish, in tonight's case however it was all Relish.

The salad was a spinach, apple, and golden raisin salad; which in and of itself isn't that unique or different but it was the dressing that made it out of this world. Now the original recipe was WAY too much dressing but it was so good we will surely use it all up in the next week. On a side note something that I am curious about recently is the idea of getting away from as much processed food as possible, I am currently reading Real Food by Nina Planck, as well as I notice it keep coming up in lots of different media (Relish, various Food Network shows). I like the idea that there are things that we have all started buying under a misguided idea of "convenience" when in reality it is really just more expensive and sometimes contain ingredients you can't even pronounce. Why do we really have to buy salad dressing? Or pancake mix, or any of the other things that are "preassembled?" Well now I am just getting off on a tangent but you get my point. I have a Nigella Lawson show on my DVR from months ago because she talks about her own personal recipe for a homemade pancake mix that she always keeps in her pantry. I am thinking, yes, totally why not do that it is way cheaper! Anyway I digress. The key to this dressing I think was it called for a tiny amount of celery salt, yes celery salt in a salad dressing. GENIOUS! Even Molly was happily munching away on her spinach!

Tangy Apple Dressing

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ olive oil

¼ teaspoon celery salt

Pour all ingredients into a little jar (I use leftover baby food containers) and shake vigorously. Use enough to lightly coat salad.

Now I have been looking at these lunches lately that are so fantastic and colorful and look so tasty, they are the bento style lunches for kids. It is Thursday, on Friday Molly takes a little lunch box to daycare. So I thought I would try my hand at a bento inspired lunch for her. Obviously I don't have all the neat little gadgets that are a "prerequisite" the little bento boxes, the seperaters, the mini-cookie cutters to cut out fun shapes and what not, the fun animal tooth picks etc. However I do believe my first attempt was quite good, and we shall see how Molly liked it tomorrow. She has a sandwich, cut with a sandwich cutter that Nana got us. Some blueberries packed with the sandwich. Cheese cut into a flower shape, with some crackers. Carrot coins (cut with ridges on my mandolin) and some Asian dipping sauce (she likes to dip) so I am hoping she will eat these raw carrots due to the dip. She does well with cooked carrots, raw ones not so much yet, and a juice box. Should be good, not that I have a hard time getting her to really eat anything but if I were a kid I would think it was cool. A little mini-adventure to see what mom packed me today. I don't know, maybe I am just a nerd like that!

Quinoa Lunch

Tried something new for lunch today, a quinoa lunch. I haven't made this grain before but have been wanting to for awhile. It will be the perfect vessel for fresh veggies from the garden. I just made this up so I will attempt to write the recipe down.

Quinoa Salad

2 tsp olive oil

1 clove of garlic minced

1 carrot diced

1 small red bell pepper diced

2 celery stalks diced

1 cup water

1 cup quinoa

2 tbsp Sesame Seeds

1 green onion

1/4 cup Slivered Almonds

Mustard Vinegrette

1 tsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

1/8 cup vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

1. In a sauce pan, heat up oil soften all veggies( carrots, red peppers, celery) then add garlic stiring and cooking for an aditional minute.

2. Add water and quinoa, and cook for about 15 minutes until the grain seperates and it is tender but not mushy.

3. In a large bowl toss the quinoa mixture with the green onions, sesame seeds, slivered almonds, and vinagrette chill in the refridgerator until cooled through to eat.