Note to self: a bowl of curry is perfect this time of year. A fact that annually slips my mind. If I'm not careful March, April and May can slip right by without a single pot making an appearance at my table. Not this year. Today we enjoyed a bowl bright with peas, asparagus, and tofu swimming in a fragrant, not-overly-rich green chile broth. I humbly suggest that the key to a good springtime curry is to keep things on the light side. And by light I suppose I mean leaning (just a shade) toward the brothy end of the spectrum. I love this kind of food - a seasonal, on-the-fly, one-pot meal that leaves you invigorated and not bogged down.

In a follow-up to my earlier post asking for help locating my mentally disabled, epileptic relative, I wanted to let everyone know that he was located on Monday morning in a San Francisco hospital and should be fine.

His brother Jim Lamascus stated, “Bobby Joe Lamascus is safe in the hospital, in serious but stable condition. He’s been in the hospital since Friday afternoon, when he was brought in following an epileptic seizure in a fast food restaurant. On behalf of the whole family, we’d like to thank the media and the public for all of their help in our search. One of the hospital workers recognized Bobby Joe after seeing his picture in the news and alerted the authorities. We’re truly touched by the outpouring of concern and support from the community during this difficult time.”

I spent the day with the reunited family in the hospital; his mother Barbara was tremendously relieved. Hopefully her next Mother’s Day will be a lot less stressful!

Thank you all so much for your kind wishes and help in locating him. The SF Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News both have updated articles.

I might be getting ahead of myself (it's only May after all), but I suspect I've discovered what will become my favorite cookbook of the year. Written by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook is a collection of 140 recipes from the hugely popular UK-based Ottolenghi establishments. This is my kind of food - abundant family-style platters, big color, bold flavors, and generous use of whole grains. Today I'm featuring Ottolenghi's beautiful red rice and quinoa recipe - a substantial, color-flecked platter showcasing citrus-dressed grains punctuated by pistachios, dried apricots, and arugula. I have to say, choosing which recipe to try first was no easy task.

To get a better sense of the type of food you'll find throughout the rest of Ottolenghi: The Cookbook I'll share it's opening paragraph, which (appropriately) sets the tone from the start,

"Our feast is, literally, a feast of bold colors and generous gestures. It is driven by an unapologetic desire to celebrate food and its virtues, to display abundance in the same way that a market stallholder does: show everything you've got and shout its praise whole heartedly."

Accordingly, many of the beautiful photos featured in the book show platters overflowing with rustic, colorful, generous food - peaches grilled and shimmering with juices, a tray of muffins crowned with ripe red plums, lemon slices nestled in a hill of fava beans. You get a full range of Ottolenghi greatest hits here, both sweet and savory. Sections in the 288-page volume are broken up into beautifully photographed sections - pulses and grains, macaroons and meringues, bars, biscuits and truffles, fish and shellfish, poultry, soups, and plenty more.

Seeing a series of Ottolenghi platters lined on the cover you realize everything a contemporary deli or buffet counter could (and should) be. Open the book and the pages show you the way.

Congratulations to Yotam and Sami on a bright, beautiful, and dynamic book. I look forward to visiting one of the Ottolenghi locales in person someday - in the meantime the book should keep me quite occupied and inspired.

Related LInks:

- Ottolenghi Website
- Ottolenghi blog
Yotam Ottolenghi's 'The New Vegetarian' column on the Guardian

Sorry to interrupt the normal lunch focus of this blog, but I have a plea for San Francisco locals. I just heard that a mentally disabled relative went missing after he went to the bathroom during a group home field trip to San Francisco’s Japantown on Thursday May 8, 2008 at 1:30pm (last seen at Scott & Geary). If anyone thinks they might have seen the man in the photo below, please contact the San Bruno Police Department at 650-616-7100. He has epilepsy and needs medication to control his seizures.

Bobby Joe Lamascus is 50 years old, 6 feet tall, 150 pounds with green eyes. He has no upper teeth, and his mother believes he was wearing a brown jacket and Levi’s blue jeans. His group home is in San Bruno, so he might be trying to get back there on his own (but has likely had a seizure). Further details are at this article in the San Jose Mercury News. The police have an APB out for him and family members are canvassing the area with flyers — that’s what I’ll be doing too.

If you are able to forward this to your friends in the area, local online forums or mailing lists, I’d certainly appreciate it. We’re crossing our fingers that Bobby gets home quickly and safely. Thank you for spreading the word.

Not all dishes fare well cool or at room temperature. Just imagine Sloppy Joe filling eaten cold — congealed and nasty. Because there are no microwave ovens at my son’s preschool or at the park, I like to have a thermal food jar or thermal lunch jar on hand to expand lunch options to include warm food.

Amazon carries thermal bento sets with a thermal food jar and an insulated carrying case for packing cool side dishes. You can achieve the same the effect on the cheap by using a regular thermal food jar that you can find at stores like Target or Walmart, plus a small side dish container for the room temperature or cool foods. (Read more about hot vs. cold lunch packing considerations.) When I use this set for my own lunches, I also like to pack fresh rice in the thermal lunch jar, keeping it warm and soft until I’m ready to eat. (Note to San Francisco locals: Kamei has the two Zojirushi-brand sets behind the counter for $33. Store info at the SF local shopping guide.)

Later this week I’ll be traveling out to Philadelphia to visit my ailing grandmother, so I won’t be as responsive as usual on the comment front. I’ll still be updating the blog from the road, but just a quick heads up. It’ll be interesting to see how my husband fares packing our three-year-old’s lunches on his own for two days; I promised to help by planning out simple menus that require only quick assembly. Maybe he should read my Mommy’s Lunch Manifesto — Need for Speed… I hear that works for dads too.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Homemade ma po tofu (with tofu, ground pork, enoki mushrooms and salted black beans), rice, edamame and apple bunnies made with miniature Red Delicious apples that Bug and I found at Safeway (see the apple rabbit tutorial). I thought apple bunnies were out of the picture because Bug doesn’t like apple skin anymore, but something about these tiny apples made him ask for apple bunnies.

Morning prep time: 10 minutes, using leftover mapo tofu. In the morning I made the apple rabbits first and got them soaking in acidulated ice water to curl the ears and prevent the fruit from browning, then moved on to warming the frozen rice and ma po tofu in the microwave and pre-warming the thermal food jar with hot tap water while the apples soaked. (Read on for packing details, Sloppy Joe lunch and recipe, and review of Bush’s Grillin’ Beans.)

(more…)

Serve me this soup daily for lunch and you'll hear no complaints. Tender, translucent pasta pillows, pale green from their pea-stuffed bellies, are buoyed by yellow lentils in a simple clear broth. Golden puddles of olive oil are suspended across the surface, pooling in various cracks and crevices. Your lips will glisten after a few slurpy bites.

Remember the pea dumplings I posted not too long ago? I've been using them twenty different ways ever since. This soup was a quick thing I threw together for lunch the other day while trying to use the last of them. There was a bowl of cooked yellow split peas over-staying its welcome on shelf two of my refrigerator and all it took was a good broth to bring the two together.

Don't feel like you need to make dumplings from scratch to enjoy this soup, although that would make the soup extra special. Your favorite stuffed, fresh pasta will substitute nicely for homemade dumplings - ravioli, tortellini, tortelloni, etc.

Don’t be alarmed! I’m not changing the focus of this site to time-consuming food art! But May 5 was Cinco de Mayo as well as Children’s Day (Kodomo no Hi, historically a boy’s day holiday celebrated in Japan), one of the few occasions I’ll actually go all out to make a themed lunch for my three-year-old son. Do you get the theme? The sandwich is decorated to look like a carp streamer, which is traditionally flown on Children’s Day. A big fish streamer on top represents the father, and smaller ones underneath stand for the mother and either the boys or all children in the household, depending on who you talk to. I’ve translated the classic Japanese Children’s Day song at the end of the post and linked to a song video if you’re interested in learning more.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread (scales: sliced ham, eye: sliced cheese and nori seaweed, fins: cucumber peel, all affixed to the bread with cream cheese to keep the design intact in transit). The side dish container holds a cherry tomato, steamed broccoli and yellow bell pepper strips flavored with Korean barbecue sauce, and a cheese cube.

Morning prep time: 30+ minutes, WAY too long for a speed bento, but fine for the occasional decorative lunch (see my page on Decorative Food). Food art lunches benefit from advanced planning, so I looked through some of my Japanese children’s bento cookbooks to find ideas the day before. I settled on a simple sandwich (instead of an elaborate fish-shaped sushi roll), and went to the store to pick up what I was missing (ham and cucumber). (Read on for equipment notes, decoration technique, and the Koinobori Song…)

(more…)

Reader “K” gave me a heads up that Target now stocks cheap lunch containers in their seasonal section in the front of the store, so I popped by and picked up a couple to try out over the weekend.

Part of the Whim by Cynthia Rowley collection made by the Israeli Bramli Company, these plastic US$2.99 containers are definitely the right price, and come in colorful pink and blue. I picked up two versions that I thought bento-packers might be interested in: the Divided Lunch Set (in blue) and the Personal Salad Set (in pink). They do have pros and cons, though… (Read on for the full product review.)

(more…)

This stunning berry-studded breakfast quinoa is from Dr. John La Puma's recent release - Chef MD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine. I've written about just a handful of books this year (more to come, I promise!), but I wanted to highlight this one for a few reasons. It's a fantastic healthy-cooking (and eating) primer written by a someone who is both a doctor and chef. The book is text heavy and photo-free, but for those of you who want to dive into some of the ways food can work for you, this is a good overview. A chapter in his book opens with the following passage,

"...I have begun to think of a home kitchen in much the same way I think of a health spa - a place where people can come to be restored, feel better, experience pleasure, and become healthier. And this is how I'd like you to start thinking about your kitchen. Your kitchen is at the heart of your health.

In your home, you probably keep your medicine chest in the bathroom. I'm offering a second medicine chest, one that helps prevent diseases and symptoms and that you keep right in your kitchen cupboards, fridge, freezer, and pantry."

There's a lot going on here (in a good way). One chapter outlines the fifty foods that should be part of your pantry - those of you already cooking from a natural foods pantry have a big head start. To make the cut each contender had to demonstrate "that if eaten regularly it could prevent, and in some cases, actually treat - specific conditions and symptoms." The good news is, many of the fifty foods are flat-out delicious in their own right, and for those of you who are regular readers here, you'll find a cast of familiar characters - oats, quinoa, lentils, beans, greens, and agave nectar, avocado, and berries. Another chapter tells you which foods to eat (or avoid) based on forty common conditions.

The quinoa berry bowl is typical of what you'll find in the recipe section. Broadly speaking, the recipes are concise and approachable, with every ingredient working for you on both the flavor and nutrition fronts. You'll find recipes that are both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, and many that are easily adaptable either way. A few other recipes that caught my attention; Butternut Barley Risotto, Cinnamon Orange Dreamsicles, and Walnut Scented Dessert Pancakes. Now I know many of you will only buy cookbooks that have cover-to-cover photography, but I hope the shot at the top with give you a little glimpse of what you might be missing.

My diet is far from perfect, but I've learned over the years that if you surround yourself with delicious, healthy, real ingredients you'll discover and create amazing ways to use them. This book is full of ideas, helpful information, and ingredient-based inspiration. At the very least flip through it the next time you pop into a bookstore, and in the meantime enjoy the quinoa berry breakfast bowl you see up above.

Kids love corn on the cob, but a whole ear is simply too big to fit inside of a bento box. One way you can include it in a bento lunch is to simply cut it into manageable segments like I did below, or even split it down the middle of the cob so that the pretty rows of corn kernels are all facing up if you have a shallow box.

My three-year-old is happy to eat corn on the cob as is, but I must confess to a little bit of bento accessory lust over flat corn holders designed especially for bento lunches. Maybe one of these days I’ll splurge out on those, cute football- or animal-shaped corn holders, or other unusual corn holders on Amazon, but not quite yet. I’m a little concerned that Bug would remove them and wind up stabbing someone at preschool, which is why some schools have rules against sending along pointy food picks in the children’s lunches.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Spinach & mozzarella ravioli in roasted garlic and tomato sauce, corn on the cob segment, steamed broccoli with vinaigrette, and homemade juice jello jiggler cup (from 100% blueberry and raspberry juice). I made these jello cups with Knox gelatin, but you can make a vegan version that stays solid at room temperature using agar agar seaweed (kanten in Japanese) as a thickener instead.

Morning prep time: 12 minutes, using leftover corn on the cob and a juice jello cup I’d made previously with my three-year-old. In the morning I multi-boiled the frozen ravioli and broccoli together in a very small pot for speed and energy efficiency. I’ve written about reading a study finding that microwave-cooked broccoli loses a lot of its antioxidants, so right or wrong, I felt a little better about boiling the broccoli rather than steaming it in the microwave as usual. (more…)