The Insulated Thermal Food Container

... or "Thermos," of course. My kid would starve without the ability to tote hot lunches to school.

Someone asked a few posts back how thermoses work, and it's pretty easy: while you're heating up whatever, fill the waiting thermos with REALLY hot water from the kettle and let it sit for a few minutes. Then when the food is ready, dump the water, briskly wipe the thermos with a tea towel, insert food and voila, with any luck your kid will have reasonably hot soup come lunchtime.

Here is a longish list of things that Her Royal Pickyness has seen fit to bring to school:
- hot apple cider
- hot chocolate
- a mocha, which the Wee Sophisticate made and packed herself without informing me and now I get to be known as the mother with the 11 year old who brings coffee to school, lucky me.
- Hot pasta sauce, and a container of cold pasta to mix together at lunchtime.
- 5 million thermoses of soup.
- Baked beans her grandfather made. Of course, she can't bring beans of any sort now, grade six being the way it is.
- And chili. Lots of chili. Chili is probably off the roster too now - I should probably ask.
- I nearly forgot: hot taco stuff, with the rest of the taco packed in her lunchbag. That's always a hit.
- Apple crisp!

I'm sure there are other things, but that's all I can think of right now.

I've heard from some parents that thermoses are a bit dorky at their kids school and their children won't bring them - but they seem to either be all right at the Girl's school OR she's just oblivious. Do your kids bring thermoses? What do you pack in them?

Unbalanced

My kid - the one IN school, as opposed to the other two - goes to a school that has A Balanced School Day, which means that instead of having old-fashioned "lunch" at noon, she has two "nutrition breaks" at 10:35 and 1:00. Instead of having two short recesses and a longer lunch hour, the kids now get two short recesses immediately following the "nutrition breaks." One of the big pluses for this new system is that it saves time - having fewer recesses means that the children waste less time struggling into and out of winter clothes - AND classes can now be longer. Because if there's one thing that's important, it's making children more time-effective!

Bah, I say. And also phhbbppph.

Every parent I know loathes the horrible Balanced Day, and that is because it makes packing actual school lunches next to impossible. We were sent home a cheerful handout describing a week's worth of Healthy Nutrition Break Suggestions, like this:

Nutrition Break 1#
1. A slice of homemade zucchini bread with some low-fat cream cheese.
2. A small container of steamed edamame.
3. A peeled and sectioned organic tangerine.
4. Half a tuna sandwich (although every school in town has a fish ban).

Nutrition Break 2#
1. A low-fat yogurt.
2. A homemade oatmeal cookie.
3. Carrot sticks with homemade hummus dip.
4. Cubed Edam with whole grain crackers.

Now, I AM a stay-at-home mother, and I do like baking. But that is a LOT of baking - and this being a low-income area, I seriously doubt that little kids are coming to school with their lunchboxes full of organic fruit, edamame (and REALLY, soy is such a highly allergic food. 2/5 of my house can't go anywhere NEAR it), and expensive cheeses. ALSO, most little kids have a limited palate of things they like to eat at lunchtime, and it's very hard to stretch that limited palate over 2 school day meals.

There is one kid in my kid's class who gets lunches like that (and it is NOT my kid) and the other kids just get their regular old lunches, which they can then "balance" themselves as best they can (my kid "balances" her lunch by eating all of the dessert-y things as soon as she gets to school), or they get DOUBLE the same old crap (like the kid who gets TWO Lunchables a day. Two!).

There's probably some sound nutritional principles at work, but to me, it feels more of cheeseparing with the kids - let's shave off nearly a half hour of outside time a day and tell parents that it's FOR the kids. And while we're at it, let's turn the simple PB&J, apple and cookie lunch into some impossible piece of performance art (you might want to switch to a part-time job, since this is going to take a while.).

(My mother - who was a teacher - COMPLETELY disagrees with this post. She says that there are lots of benefits to the balanced school day. Benefits I do not feel obligated to list, because this is MY post.)

I blame the Illuminati

Well, if it's not the Illuminati, then it's the Masons, and if it's not the Masons then it's some secret bovine cabal that wants to destroy humankind by implanting chemical bacteria in our guts. How else do you explain modern day yogurt? I mean, what other product, aside from air fresheners, is as over-advertised? Certainly no other dairy product is: milk? eggs? cheese? Eat GOUDA: it's gooda for me; it's gooda for you!

You can't turn on the TV without suffering a barrage of yogurt ads. And who in sam hell is coming up with these ad pitches? Eat Activia! It'll make your bowels turn green and dance! Why wasn't the ad guy laughed right out of the room? And have you seen their latest marketing tactic? Danone actually wants you to log on to their website and tell them whether you eat Activia for the taste or for the dancing bowel effect. No! Really! They want you to let them know, in writing, if you're regular.

The yogurt wars, I tell you: that's our modern day Coke-Pepsi stand-off. It's the battle of Danone versus Sealtest versus Astro versus Yoplait. Soon, there will only be one standing and I've got my money on Danone. (Except that I don't but more on that later.) Yes, Danone: they're the best at marketing to the kids, you see.

My family eats a lot of yogurt which means I've made my way around the dairy aisle more times than I care to mention. What I know is this: yogurt is changing. The brands I used to buy are always being replaced by new contenders, new flavours and combinations intended to wow us all. You want banana with howaru*, whipped strawberry custard, or mocha deelight? Then there's a yogurt for you. You can get it high fat, low fat, no fat, all sweet, artificially sweet, just fruity, omega fatty acid enhanced AND/OR with any one of a number of bumhole satisfying bacterial cultures. You can buy it in individual servings sizes, as a drink, in a tube, or in a tub. Back in the day, a tub meant 750 ml but now you're lucky if you get 600 ml in a tub. The price, of course, hasn't changed, just the amount. If you find a brand you like, a brand that hasn't given in to the insanity, wait a couple of weeks. If it's still on the market, chances are the only flavour available will be strawberry.

Do me a favour: the next time you're at the grocery store count the number of ingredients in a tub of yogurt. I had a look at a Danino drinkable yogurt recently and the answer was 25. Yes, there were 25 ingredients listed most of which I couldn't pronounce. Number two on the package was sugar. How many ingredients should yogurt contain? Just two: milk solids and bacterial culture.

About a year ago I discovered a local farmer at my farmer's market who sells his own, glorious, 2.5% milk fat yogurt. I eat it plain. Hell, I'd eat it on a train, in the rain while in Spain, it is so darn good. And what's more, he sells the stuff in 2 litre jugs for $5.95. The price simply cannot be beat. And the packaging is about as minimal as you can get.

My daughter used to like this yogurt plain but she's recently gone off it's sour taste. So what do I do when it comes time to send her to school with some yogurty goodness? I haul her thermos out of the cupboard, put in some frozen fruit from the freezer, plop in some plain yogurt and drizzle a little bit of maple syrup on top. She loves it like crazy and it looks just like all those pretenders on the market.

This year, I got adventuresome. When peaches were in season, I blanched and stewed a bunch, then froze them in ice cube trays just like I did when she was a baby. Now if I want peach yogurt, I just reach for a cube and add it. I meant to do the same with plums but haven't got around to it yet. Frozen blueberries, raspberries and strawberries demand far less attention. You can also get crazy, using just maple syrup or adding nuts if you don't need to be mindful of allergies. May I suggest adding stewed prunes if your drains become plugged? Plain yogurt can also be turned into a veggie dip easy as pie. I just add a squirt of prepared mustard and a bit of dill. It's not haute cuisine but the kid loves it. Plus it thwarts the Illuminati and that can only be good, right?

_______________________________________

*fine, thank you very much

Sometimes it's all in the packaging

Just three days into packing school lunches and I think I have already worked through most of the stages of grieving. On the first day I was firmly in denial and now I think I'm somewhere between depression and acceptance.

Okay, but here is something I have learned over seven years of making school lunches: sometimes kids think they don't like something, but they do. They just don't know they like it because it has always been presented in the same way. For instance, if someone always served you wine in an old, cracked plastic cup you got one time through a promotion at a fast food joint, you might think, "I don't really get what the hype is around this wine stuff."

Then someone hands you a nice Shiraz in a glass with a stem and, suddenly, you're a freaking connoisseur.

Are you still with me? Are you wondering what plastic cups and Shiraz have to do with school lunches? Brace yourself: here comes the point.

This morning I got up and didn't know what to make for the kids' lunches. Then I spied a can of tuna. Then I admonished myself, "You know the boy doesn't like tuna!" Then I told myself to figure out a way to make the kid eat the tuna.

So instead of just making a boring old tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread, I dug around in my deep freezer for some pitas. Then I dug around in my crisper for an apple and some lettuce. Do you see where this is going? Look:

I mixed the tuna with some mayo and then threw in some chopped up apple, skin-on, for some crunch.

I layered the apple/tuna mixture in the pita with some shredded lettuce. Then I rounded out the lunch with some juice, watermelon, grapes, whole wheat crackers and a little treat.

Then I had some coffee. And maybe a little Shiraz in a plastic cup. Don't judge me, I am still grieving.

Did the boy eat his tuna-in-a-pita? Yes. Yes he did. And he even liked it. Although he seemed surprised that the crunchy red chunks were apple. "I thought that was radish!" he exclaimed.

Note to self: boy's taste buds are broken.

Yesterday's Lunch and Today

Yesterday, when I forgot to take a picture because I was SO HARRIED:
Leftover homemade macaroni and cheese in a thermos.
Cucumber slices and carrot sticks.
A homemade brownie.
And a pear.
I forgot to pack her a fork, so it was all for naught.

And today, she is home sick. I made her soup.

What have you been packing for your kid this week?

My first lunch of the school year!

When I first started packing school lunches seven years ago (seven!) I was full of enthusiasm and weird ideas. I knew from being the daughter of a teacher that teachers notice what kids pack in their lunches, and so I set out to pack Teacher Impressing Lunches. Oh, the interesting, creative lunches I packed!

What I failed to take into account was this:
1) Teachers are no longer in the room at lunchtime, which means that I should have spent more time peeling tangerines than making wee sushi rolls.
and
2) Kids are very conservative and my Creative Interesting Lunches were getting my kid the reputation as That Kid Who Has Weird Lunches.

So now I don't knock myself out. Observe:

From left to right: a bin of cherry tomatoes, red pepper strips and cauliflower with a smaller bin of poppyseed dressing, an egg salad sandwich cut with a heart-sandwich cutter, a box of raisins (our one concession to normalcy - the poor child would love to fill her lunchbox with Lunchables and Dunkaroos and Wagon Wheels and I just cannot bring myself to do it, but look! Raisins IN A LITTLE BOX! I am nothing but fun.), a honey tangerine UNPEELED, and SIX SNICKERDOODLES. She's bringing one for each of her friends. And this lunch is remarkable for two reasons:

1) It's remarkably boring aside from the tremendous amount of cookies.
and
2) My kid made most of it herself!

You'd think I was able to sit around like a lady of leisure this morning, seeing that I didn't even need to get myself dressed but nope - I still had to run around like a headless chicken. BUT SHE MADE HER OWN SANDWICH.

If I see another article on bento boxes, I will surely perish

It's not that I have anything against partitioned lunch boxes. I don't. I also have nothing against sushi. If you eat fish, eat it to the gills, I say. Heaven knows, as a vegetarian I've been known to scarf down my fair share of vegetarian California rolls--with extra wasabi and lots of pickled ginger. Tasty-day, I say. What I do have trouble with is the new heralds of style over substance who trumpet the bento box as the salvation to school lunches. Immediately their songs of praise turn sour as they try to convince me that cream cheese sandwiches are better if you take a rolling pin to the bread, slather on the cream cheese, maybe with clipped fresh herbs (it only takes a second), and then add micro-thinly sliced cucumber and carrot with, perhaps, a dollop of avocado, before wrapping it all up sushi-style, slicing it into rounds, wrapping the rounds in plastic to preserve their freshness and then gently plunking them all down into one lonely quadrant of a bento box--usually right alongside a hand-written note of maternal love and misplaced self-esteem boosting, all while the other three empty bento quadrants stare you down mockingly.

Are you kidding me? We are talking a school lunch here. The last I checked, I need to make 5 of these suckers a week, roughly 200 a year AND I have to have them ready and at the door no later than 7:45 am. It's not that I'm not earnest or eager, but a lunch is a lunch is a lunch. And school lunches are about survival not proving you're the best damn parent on the block. If you want to get all carried away with the pretty, save it for Christmas. Alternatively, if you want to extend your sense of guilt and obligation year-round, if you want to build a house of cards around tradition and expectation, be my guest: put those wittle sushi sandwiches and love notes and teddy-bear shaped pb&j's in a bento box. Knock yourself out.

That's not to say I don't believe in making an effort. I do. I believe in making healthy, diverse lunches that my daughter will eat and that won't compromise the health of her classmates, some of whom have multiple food allergies. I believe in batch cooking, my deep freezer, and making the most of the local harvest. I believe in yielding to supermarket short-cuts. I believe in creativity that doesn't become labour-intensive tripe. I believe in growing a healthy child who values nutrition and who can concentrate in class. I also believe in sleeping in as late as I possibly can as often as I possibly can.

My daughter starts school on Tuesday. My posts on this blog will communicate my triumphs, challenges and frustrations. I'll share recipes and survival strategies, and I'm sure I'll vent a whole heck of a lot too. In addition to eating many fine and some mediocre lunches, I'm certain to eat many, many of my own gamey words on the way. My name is Sue. My friends are Beck and Janet. Won't you join us?