Something Smells. Therefore, I Clean.

You must have about as many thermoses, insulated bottles, commuter cups, baby bottles, water bottles, and other vessels used to keep and consume some sort of food or beverage hot or cold as we do. Like these:

I CAN'T STAND CLEANING THEM!! 

Everyday, in our household we use:

1 insulated thermos for Christopher's milk

1 insulated thermos container for Christopher's lunch. (It has to match the milk thermos.)

3 baby bottles for Cory's milk

2 commuter cup for coffee on the go for the adults

1 Klean Kanteen for my water

That's 8 containers that need to be cleaned every night! Whew. Do I need to say again....

I CAN'T STAND CLEANING THEM!! 

I know these two can't help it...

...Someone has to clean their daily lunch time containers....and it's better to reuse them than to throw out plastic containers or buy a cup of coffee every day. 

At the end of the day, I just can't let them sit dirty. Otherwise, the food sticks to the container, they start to smell really bad -- especially the thermos that hold milk.  Have you ever forgotten to wash a thermos that had milk in it -- just to open it up and find a yogurt-like substance?

So, now, i got it down....I've gotten into this routine now of dumping all the remaining food/liquid out of the containers, washing them out and filling them with water with just a little bit of dish soap to soak overnight. I pop all the little straws and baby bottle nipples in the thermoses to let them soak too.

By morning time, they are clean! They don't smell and they're ready to to be used again that day. 

Any one else have tips on keeping these lunch containers clean?

 

Grilled Bagel, Cinnamon Bread for Breakfast

I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy a good bagel. It's the best quick breakfast. While most of the people I know toast them and spread cream cheese, I enjoy grilling them up in butter and serving them up -- just the bagel!

When I was in college, I worked at the school student center where we cooked most things on the grill...burgers, hot dogs, chicken breast sandwiches, eggs, bacon, cooked pasta, etc. When it came to breakfast, we even popped the bagels on the grill, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, even grilled muffins and croissants.  It's become "my" thing now at home.

Below is a slice of Semifreddi's Cinnamon Twist Bread grilled in butter I made for Christopher (and Cory).

If you get a chance to visit Semifreddi's website, the description states that this is a great bread for French toast. True true true. (I love the way Semifreddi's web page uses a cinnamon role to scroll up and down to see their products.) Add a little flour to the french toast egg mixture and the batter becomes more flaky!

I would love to pack a grilled cheese sandwich in the kids' lunch but, it's just not the same packing something for lunch that I know will be soggy by lunch time.  It's got to be served warm and crunchy right off the pan! That's why these options will always remain a breakfast food in our household.

Anyone have ideas how to serve hot food for lunch that stays hot by lunchtime?
Please share...

Variation On A Leftover Theme

Monday mornings are the hardest, you know what I mean. The weekend is over and if I didn't go grocery shopping (which I didn't) to prepare for this week's lunches, I'm just crying the Monday morning blues.

That's when some sort of Variation On A Leftover comes in to play.

In our household, this is tricky as some leftovers don't heat up so well. Luckily, we hit Pasta Pomodoro so often for dinner, even Aja, the General Manager of the Noe Valley location know us by name... and by our order.  Christopher and I share the Penne Portobello, under the House Specials Section. Then, I order a Kids Meal that I think would be a good Variation On A Leftover for later that week.

Today, it was spaghetti in a cream sauce, side of broccoli and an extra side parmesan cheese! For our kid- it's all about the extra cheese.

Christopher approves.

Then, there's all the other lunches that need packing. I've now gotten into the habit of packing the lunch bags, sliding the lunch bags down the floor towards the door and everyone grabs theirs on the way out! Whoever is dropping off Cory picks up his cooler of milk and food too.

PS - Pasta Pomodoro is a favorite of ours. Some locations, like the Noe Valley one, offer some great deals right now:

     Monday nights: 30% off all take out orders

     Tuesday nights: kids eat for free (I think this means kids meals are free)

     Wednesday nights: half off a bottle of wine. (they'll even wrap up the bottle so you can take the rest home)

Another clean-plater & granola bar recipe

Hi friends. Kristin Thomas here - a college friend of Esther's. We've been sharing bento-esque ideas, and we thought you'd like to see the kinds of lunches we've got going out here in Mass. I just started packing my kids lunches in a box this school year. I highly recommend it - they eat better, and the teachers even like me a little more. Without bento, I'm always the mom who forgets the field trip money, or the permission slip, or the brownie patches.... but I digress.

Currently need to do a "big shop" but posted today because I thought the granola bar recipe was worth passing along. I bought this book - Family Feasts for $75 a Week, and I really have not been too impressed. No new ideas about saving $$ for me - sadly, so now I just need to save $13 using the book's ideas in order not to be annoyed! Cannot be a bigger fan of making kids snacks myself so I know what's in there.

The granola bar recipe is adapted from Family Feasts:

Honey Granola Bars

1 1/2 cups granola cereal (I used Quaker Oats)

1 1/2 cups oats

1 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 stick unsalted butter

1/2 - 3/4 cup honey

1 cup packed brown sugar

3 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup raisins, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, cranberries, cherries, almonds - whatever you prefer

1) Preheat oven to 350; grease 9x13 pan

2) combine granola, oats, flour & cinnamon in bowl; in 2nd bowl beat together everything else, except last ingredient - then fold butter mixture into flour mixture until combined, stir in chips/raisins

3) bake until browned & relatively firm. I had to bake mine about 40 mins.

4) when pretty much cooled, slice into bars - once they are in the fridge they get pretty firm.

I'll make these again, but I am going to try another recipe next time, just to be my usual neurotic self.