Now that we’re back from vacation and settling into our Fall routine, we have to take a few minutes and share with your our new favorite go-to lunch – we call it our take on the “whole bowl” (inspired by an eatery of the same name), and it’s refreshingly simple and delicious.
You can mix up your own ingredients (see our recipe page), but the basics are:
Next tax season, pair your tax prep time with a delicious serving of Black Bean Dip
Well, two out of three isn’t bad. We’re writing about taxes and eating right. We came across an NPR story this morning about some findings of the IFIC 2012 Food & Health Survey, and had an interesting conversation about it within our family. We thought we’d share some highlights:
The NPR posting summarizes, “only one in seven Americans can correctly estimate the number of calories they need — a tricky business, we know.” It doesn’t have to be tricky! There are a number of calculators online to help you do this, including our own (estimate the calories you need, along with protein, fiber, calcium and fat). However, once you have those numbers, you need to become a nutrition label-reading ninja. If you’re making your own foods at home, this is where having a recipe with calorie information is useful. All Lunchtaker recipes have a corresponding nutrition fact card – quite helpful if you’re watching your calories and fat intake. Do you have a recipe you’re curious about? Add it to Lunchtaker and enter the ingredients: it’ll tell you what the nutrition is. Better yet, sign up and use our “Quick Submit” option and we’ll do the calculations for you. Easy.
Read more…
We were out of town for our kids’ ski racing several weeks ago, and went out for a nice dinner with a group of families after the first day of racing. The kids settled in at one table, while the adults enjoyed time together at another table. Elizabeth, our 11 year-old daughter, perused the adult menu instead of the children’s fare, deciding to order Chicken Parmesan. Elizabeth split an adult portion with her friend Jessica, knowing that it would be big enough for the two of them to share. Later that evening when we talked about our meals, Elizabeth said she wasn’t really impressed with her meal. She said it was basically a fried piece of chicken with sauce and cheese thrown on. She enjoyed the salad, but didn’t enjoy the heavy taste of the fried meat.
We’re always thinking of new fun things to send the kids to school with, and Elizabeth’s meal experience was great inspiration. My son isn’t a fan of typical Mexican quesadillas, but he does love chicken, tomato sauce and basil. What if we did a spin on chicken parmesan without breading and frying the meat? Voila! … our Chicken Parmesan Quesadilla was born. Elizabeth, now in Middle School, has access to a microwave at lunch and enjoyed heating hers. Her younger brother Xander enjoyed his cold. Both came home and said they loved the combination! Read more…
No-bake cookies have been one of my favorites since I first learned how to prepare them in 7th grade Home Economics class. Most recipes call for up to 1 cup of sugar, a half cup of butter or margarine and a full third cup of peanut butter. This makes them delicious, but hardly good for you or your kids. Our Healthy No-Bake Cookie recipe, slightly adapted from the Forks Over Knives cookbook, is vegan, low in fat and full of flavor.
First, combine brown rice syrup, cocoa, PB2 and almond milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Wait, I forgot to tell you about PB2! This powdered peanut butter is great for baking, and works in sandwiches, too! Each serving has only 1.5 grams of fat (it also has half the protein of regular peanut butter) yet is packed full of peanut butter flavor (read more about PB2). Stir these ingredients together until they are nicely combined and they reach a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes.
Ready for the big game? We are! We compiled a short list of some of our favorites for serving while the game is on, or for your next big party!
Buffalo Chicken Wrap
Tortilla Chips with Guacamole
Shrimp, Fruit and Cheese Skewers
Sausage with Peppers & Onions
Salted Roasted Cashews
Peanuts (Butter Toffee)
Mini Cheeseburgers
M&M Oatmeal Raisin Bars
Kale “Chips”
Kiwi Apple Fruit Salad
Ham & Provolone on Wheat
Green Peppers
Cucumbers with Veggie Dip
Chocolate Mint Cookies
Chex Mix
Buffalo Chicken Salad
Black Bean Dip
Blue Chips
We knew we had to post our Vegetable Spring Roll recipe after taking them on a ski trip this past weekend. As we unwrapped them and dipped them in delicious peanut sauce, the other parents at our table were asking all kinds of questions:
We have done this recipe on our own enough time to be comfortable, and enough times to say that, while the process looks involved, it’s really not that much work. The recipe has the full technique, but read on for the cook’s notes:
If you’re not going to eat them right away, moisten paper towels and wrap the rolls before sealing in a plastic bag. We made these 4 days before eating them on our ski trip (we doubled the recipe and ate half the evening we made them), and they were still fabulous!
Good luck! If you make and take these Vegetable Spring Rolls for lunch, do comment and let us know how your experience was!
Reubens are a classic sandwich available in many sandwich shops. However, their high fat content (many versions contain up to 40 grams of fat) inspired us to find an alternative that we would enjoy just as much. For complete details and a shopping list, view the Seitan Reuben Sandwich recipe.
We replaced the meat with seitan. Seitan has 27 grams of protein per 3 oz serving, compared with 15 grams for corned beef. Seitan is also cholesterol-free. We also omitted cheese, to see if we missed it. I’m happy to report that we enjoyed the sandwich just as much! You may certainly add cheese: just choose a low-fat cheese, or go with your favorite and understand you are adding more cholesterol, fat and sodium to the sandwich. The key to this sandwich is the sauerkraut … make sure to add enough! We heaped on 3 tablespoons. This keeps the sandwich moist and flavorful. Purchase Russian dressing for the sandwich, OR if you want to make it vegan, whip up some of your own vegan Russian dressing.
Halloween is fast approaching: orange food is needed! Fun lunch ideas are sometimes no farther away than the local grocery store and a local farm. Strolling through the supermarket aisle, I happened upon a great new pasta: Barilla Piccolini with Carrots and Squash. I picked some up thinking that I could surely do something fun with this orange pasta. The next day at my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) pick-up, orange cauliflower was part of my share. Thrilled, I ran home to make a delicious, nutritious and orange macaroni and cheese dish.
If it passed the “Xander Test” (our 7 year-old has very high standards for his lunch fare) we’d be in the clear for a great lunch dish! With a total prep time of about 15 minutes, this is a quick dish that can even be made in the morning. We made it for dinner and will use the leftovers for lunch. Read more…
Wandering through the grocery store the other day, I realized that the days of needing to make your own trail mix are long gone. Every type of mix imaginable is available in bulk foods or the pre-packaged areas of the grocery store. Given that, why would you be interested in making your own?
We’re in week 3 of school, and we’re all still getting used to the routine! Fortunately, lunches have become easier over the years and we are able to focus instead on piano practice, dance lessons and getting reading and homework done. Our biggest challenge these days is making sure that our little darlings get enough sleep: something that is getting harder and harder for some reason!
I have spent enough time volunteering in the kids’ lunchroom to know this: a lot of food gets tossed, or put on the “give away” table, not ending up in our children’s stomachs. A strategy we’ve used to combat that is talking with the kids each day about how lunch went. Questions like “Who did you sit with?” and “What did [insert friend name here] bring to eat?” help jumpstart the conversation, culminating with “So, did you like your lunch?” Read more…
