Friday Lunch Box

So sorry this is late, mixture of visitors and sick kids! But better late than never I guess....
I'm taking my inspiration for this box from a fantastic book that Kazumi (Taiga's mum) gave to me, on Bento boxes, looks fantastic with lots of pictures on how to make the items but unfortunately for me all in Japanese - therefore I just used my imagination and fortunately the lunch box came back empty and i got a big thumbs up.

Snack - humous dip with carrot, cucumber and apple sticks
Lunch - Japanese rice (or any other rice of your choice) cooked and cooled it the fridge, mix with nori and these fantastic little sachets of dried vegetables and herbs that you can buy in the Japanese store. Serve a normal size portion and put in the lunch box with a salad (see below) and simple egg omelet (see below).

Salad
Half a peeled carrot, quarter of a cucumber, handfull of sweetcorn and cooked mange tout - use a potato peeler make slices of the carrot and cucumber, then put in a bowl with the sweetcorn and cooked mange tout, mix together and dress with olive oil, raspberry vinegar, salt and pepper.

Omelet
1 egg, tiny splash of water, salt and pepper, olive oil for frying - in a cup whisk the egg up with a fork, add the seasoning (you could also add herbs here) and water, heat the oil in a small frying pan and cook the egg. Cool then cut into strips.

Lunch box for Thursday

In my research into lunchboxes I found 2 government/food agency guidelines on how to put together a healthy lunchbox. The first is from the UK the second which I got from a friend is from Japan. Today I will do an example of a UK one and tomorrow I will do a Japanese one.

So in the UK it is recommended to put the following into a lunchbox:

• 1 portion starchy food – bread, pasta, rice
• 1 portion milk or dairy food
• 1 portion fruit
• 1 portion vegetables
• 1 portion protein such as meat or fish

Snack - small pot of yoghurt with granola (recipe to follow), pot of fresh fruit
Lunch - brown rice salad with tuna, cucumber, red and yellow pepper, carrot, boiled egg, olive oil, lemon juice with salt and pepper. Chop all the vegetables quite small and the same size as with the egg. You could also add cubes of cheese or put them in a separate pot to add more bits, kids like opening different pots. Banana in a banana box.
Granola
350g porridge oats
50g wheatgerm
50g unsweetend shredded coconut
50g sesame seeds
75g sunflower seeds
75g hazelnuts, finely chopped
125ml sunflower oil
75ml runny honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
175g dried fruit, chopped into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Grease a large baking tin.
2. In a large bowl, mix the oats, wheatgerm, coconut, seeds and nuts.
3. In a large saucepan, combine oil, honey and vanilla. Heat gently until the honey has melted. Pour the honey mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix well. Spread the mixture out in the tin. Bake in the oven for 35-45 mins, stirring every 10 mins.
4. Cool then add the dried fruit.

Lunch box for Wednesday

So far so good, I haven't had any food rejected, fingers crossed for Wednesday, fish pate may be going too far!

Snack - Blueberry Muffin (recipe to follow) and yoghurt pot - most kids yoghurts are laden with sugar or worse sweetners more so than standard fruit yoghurts, it will save you money and be better for your kids to find a plain or fruit yoghurt in a larger tub and put some into a small tub with a lid for school.

Lunch - Smoked Mackerel Pate (recipe to follow) with Oatcakes, cubes of cheese and pot of fruit.

Blueberry Muffin
You can make these with any soft fruits, banana, strawberry, raspberry etc. They are also super easy to make so another good one to make with kids.

90g plain flour
90g wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
80g caster sugar or (40g and 40g equivalent of Agave syrup or go the whole hog and use only Agave, you will be surprised how sweet and appealing Agave is)
1 medium egg
125ml full fat milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
45g unsalted butter melted
150g blueberries, fresh or frozen

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Butter a muffin tray or line with paper cases. Makes 12
2. Sift the flour into a bowl with the baking powder. Stir in the sugar.
3.Whisk the egg, milk, vanilla and melted butter in a separate bowl.
4. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until you have a wet lumpy batter. Add the fruit.
5.Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake in the oven for 10-12 mins , until risen and golden.


Mackerel Pate
2 garlic cloves, crushed
400g/3 mackerel fillets flaked (ideally un-smoked, if you can't find this you could replace with tinned fish)
4 tbsp full fat natural yoghurt
juice of 1 lemon

1. Put all the ingredients into a bowl and puree with a hand blender, or process in a food processor until smooth.
2. Put in small tubs for taking to school. I will post a recipe for making your own oatcakes as its super easy and you can make it in your own shapes which adds to the fun. However the British Stores in Amsterdam stock good oatcakes, the best ones are Nairn's or Patterson's. This is also nice served with carrot, cucumber, celery and cauliflower sticks.

Lunch box for Tuesday

I'm Using a recipe posted earlier on here for the lunch, so a shorter post today - however I'm also posting the recipe for Scotch Broth for our friend Greg who is a big fan!

Snack - Banana (in a banana box, nothing worse than squidgy banana, although this may be a personal thing) plus brown rice cakes or mixed grain cakes with nut butter - try almond, cashew or pecan for a change from peanut (available at all the naturwinkels here in the dam). White rice cakes have a medium/high GI causing peaks and troughs in blood glucose levels - not nice whilst at school.

Lunch - Mini Quiches with cherry tomatoes and sticks of red and yellow pepper, small pot of broken down sushi nori (the japanese store in the gelderlanplein store small snack packs of Korean Nori which my kids love and is really tasty) pot of chopped apple/pear.

Lunch box for Monday

So here we go with the first lunch box idea of the week. I apologise in advance for the time consuming nature of some of the ideas but in reality it is perhaps nice to make these every now and again and perhaps store or freeze some of the items so you can pull them out as and when.

Snack - Apricot and Sultana Flapjacks (recipe to follow) and fresh fruit pot - mixture of seasonal fruits (mandarines, apples, pears, bananas, kiwis)

Lunch - Onigiri, Sushi rice balls (recipe to follow), carrot and cucumber sticks, edamame beans still in their pods and a pot of red grapes.

Apricot and Sultana Flapjacks
75g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
75g golden sugar (or replace with Agave syrup, I will talk about this stuff in a later post)
2tbsp honey
6 apricots chopped and a small handful of sultanas
175g rolled oats (normal porridge oats)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, butter a 20cm tin.
2. Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a large pan over a gentle heat. Stir well and then mix in the oats along with the apricots and sultanas.
3. Tip into the tin and level off. Bake for 15mins, until pale golden.
4. Cool slightly in the tin and mark into fingers or squares. Cool completely and remove from the tin.

Sushi Rice Balls
This is the link to the recipe I used to cook my sushi rice correctly. I did this today and although time consuming it worked a treat. The quantities made enough rice to make sushi for our dinner (3 adults, 2 kids) and enough rice balls for Sonny and Mia for lunch tomorrow.

http://japanesefood.about.com/od/sushiforbeginner/r/sushirice.htm

Once you have cooked the rice, crush up some sushi nori into small pieces and mix this into the rice along with black and white sesame seeds. Wet your hands and roll the rice into balls.

Carrot Cake

This has to be the recipe I have been asked for the most. I have been making this since Sonny's first birthday party, he is coming up for 6 now! Perhaps all my friends will have it but for those of you who asked and i never got round to sending it to you, here it is. Its truly delicious and there's quite a few "healthy" ingredients in there so it has a feel good factor too.

275g organic plain flour - i usually use a 50:50 mix of white and wholemeal, 100% wholemeal makes it too heavy
1 level spoonful bicarbonate of soda
2 level teaspoonfuls baking powder
1 level teaspoon salt
175g soft, light, brown sugar
3 free range, organic eggs
2 ripe bananas, peeled
175g finely, grated carrots
handful of sultanas (optional)
6 fl oz organic sunflower oil

1. Forewarm your oven to 180 degrees.
2. Sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl with the bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt.
3. Add the eggs and brown sugar and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl mash the bananas with a fork, then add to the cake mixture along with the carrots and oil (sultanas too if your using them).
5. Mix well with a wooden spoon, then pour into a 9 inch cake tin.
6. Place in the oven for an hour, test with a metal skewer to ensure the cake is cooked all the way through. Leave for 5 mins once out of the oven, then remove from tin and allow to cool on a wire cake rest.

I use a Jamie Oliver recipe for the icing if I'm making this for adults and its just devine, the kids often prefer a plain butter icing - butter, philidelphia cheese and icing sugar or none at all! Jamie's version is as follows:
115g mascarpone cheese
225g full fat cream cheese
85g icing sugar, sifted
zest and juice of two limes

Mix all the ingredients together and spread over the top of the cake.

Gingery Salmon

This is a really tasty way to do Salmon for kids - great if you sense a cold is on its way as the garlic and ginger will help fight this.

450g salmon filets
lemon or lime wedges

for the marinade:
5cm ginger peeled, grated
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 tbsp light soy sauce
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp sesame oil
a little olive oil

1. Cut the salmon into 10cm cubes. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over the salmon in a non metalic bowl. Cover and chill in the fridge for 30-60 mins (also overnight is good).
2. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. You can also choose to fry the salmon if you don't want to put the oven on just for the fish, however it will be slightly drier and you will loose some of the nice juices. You could serve with some oven baked rice to use up the heat from the oven.
3. Take the salmon out of the fridge and place on a roasting tin, pour over the juices and roast for about 15 mins.
Serve with the citrus wedges, rice and some steamed green vegetables.