School lunch time again. Each kid likes something different in their lunch box but all kids prefer those things not to touch! bento boxes are perfect for keeping everything separate- as well as fresh and fun.
All these sites have lots of bento boxes on offer (as well as other cool japanese products) clockwise:
Book of lunch ideas and recipes
silver and white bento box
elk tee from Barley and Birch
pants by esp no 1
campshirt by busy bees
fishing rod at the kids fishing shop
....and when you get hungry you can whip up some Damper: a delicious and quick campfire bread
Method
. . . For campfire cooking place the loaf in your campfire, cover with hot ashes and coals and bake for about 20 to 30 minutes. You can use a dutch oven to bake the bread but it cooks perfectly buried directly in the ashes. Break off the hard black crust and slather the inside with butter and home made jam.
I am out of ideas and a bit tired of cooking my old standard recipes (and my family is tired of eating them!) so I have been looking around for some new recipes that both us grown-ups and kids will love. Here are some great books to pull off the shelf when you are cooking for the family and inspiration is low:
Time for Dinner strategies and inspiration for family dinner!
and some great ones for kids who are interested in cooking themselves:
Food is Fun by the legendary Anorak magazine
Silver Spoon for Children- beautifully illustrated and contains my daughters favorite pizza dough recipe!
Ingredient Magazine: a very cool magazine for kids curious about food.
It is the end of summer in the southern hemisphere and so we are picking mountains of fruit and trying out ways to use it. First up was blackberry jelly. We managed to pick 7 pounds of blackberries from the laneways near the family beach house...enough for us all to eat and still make 16 pots of jam! Blackberry jam is the most satisfying to make. It is wonderful walking the lanes searching for the brambles and challenging to reach the berries without getting caught on the thorns. You can never buy enough of this fruit commerically so it is always special when you can find enough to make jam with.
Recipe: Measure out 1 pound of fruit to 1 pound of sugar. (After a test run we we decided to use 25 percent less sugar and added half the recomended amount of 'jam setta' to make it a little less sweet but still set) Cook until a drop of jelly congeals to the right consistency on a cold saucer. Pour into jars (sterilised in the oven) while the jars are still hot. Seal with plastic, and decorate with your own lables and a fabric cover.
Food vans are the best place to eat with kids. Two of our favorites - one in Marfa, Texas and one Melbourne, Australia.
Food Shark - Check out other food vans in your area or vote for your favorite American food van on the Food network Food Truck Race.
Beatbox Kitchen- Warm summer evenings on the corner of Rathdown and Park with a Beatbox Kitchen burger- what could be better?
oh - and in case you were wondering why these are inspirational...flexibility and freedom.
Frankie magazine is an Australian bi-monthly based in Australia. Super funny, stylish, sarcastic and engaging, Frankie also occasionally puts out irresistible cookbooks. First came Afternoon Tea and now they have published Sweet Treats. Some of these sweets you will not have seen for decades but all the old favorites are collected here, beautifully photographed and laid out.
I noticed that some of the recipes call for Copha Butter which is really hard to find outside of Australia so if you need some you can stock up on it online here and store it in the freezer for years.
Pick up Sweet Treats and Afternoon Tea from the lovely Lark
One of our favorite friends, Monica Willis from Corduroy Kid, recently sent us her new favorite lunchbox recipe. Although you will find her shops in Brooklyn (and online), Monica is Australian and so grew up making the more traditional sausage roll for parties and picnics. This great vegetarian version is more healthy, delicious hot or cold, and really fun to prepare with some little helpers.
What you will need
3 eggs
1/2 cup walnuts
1 large onion chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup low fat cottage cheese
1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
1 cup rolled oats
3 sheets puff pastry
egg and sesame seeds for glazing
1. Process eggs, walnuts, onion, soy sauce, salt and cottage cheese in a blender.
2. Transfer into a bowl and mix in the breadcrumbs and oats.
3. Now cut a pastry sheet in half and spoon mixture down one edge.
4. Now roll to enclose the filling within the pastry and then repeat with the remaining pastry sheets
5. Cut each log into tasty morsels
6. Brush with egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds
7. Bake for 15-20 mins at 180C or 350F
Yummmo....a fabulous addition to everyones lunchbox. These are delicious with ketchup for kids or sweet chilli sauce for adults. Spinach and Ricotta is also a brilliant substitute.
contributed by Monica Willis of Corduroy Kid
Today is pancake day in France! It is a little bit like the American Groundhog day which is also held on February 2nd. According to french tradition- If February the 2nd is clear, the winter will end soon. If it is overcast there are forty more days of winter to come. Virginie of Ce Que Je Voeu have prepared a very special recipe of “Chandeleur” pancakes just for you!!!
Cook a crêpe on one side.
Loosen the crêpe from the pan with your spatula/pancake turner.
Hold the franc/coin in your weakest hand (for example, the left if you are right-handed), when the crêpe is ready to be turned.
Attempt single-handedly to flip the crêpe.
Enjoy good luck for the rest of the year if the crêpe lands perfectly in the pan. Suffer bad luck if the crêpe does not land well - or try again!
Sweets to eat or send send anytime of the year...
Tine Temptation's shop is stocked full of delicious handmade sweets, cupcakes. You can pick up a dozen of these delicious mini S'mores cupcakes for $8.25
Celebrity Bake Sale make handmade one of a kind gourmet treats and dessert shipped to your door. We would love some of this delectable hazelnut cookie brittle.
Whimsey and Spice is one of our favorite places for a sugar fix. They are a Brooklyn husband and wife confectionery team who make sophisticated sweets and biscuits with a dash of spice. Their hand made flavored marshmallows are like nothing you have ever tasted and are barely related to the pink and white supermarket variety. Try their new maple flavored marshmallows.
Tamra Davis quite possibly might be the hippest. mom. ever. An acclaimed director, married to Beastie Boy Mike D., and an avid and passionate cook, I might have a smidge of a girl crush on her. Suffice to say, I’m addicted to her cooking show (great music, excellent recipes)…her pizza dough is especially stellar.
She also has a swell cookbook…
I’m a little bit obsessed with school lunch these days. My oldest just started kindergarten, and while I’m planning buying lunch most days (according to School Lunch Talk, one of the best ways to get better food into public school cafeterias is to become a loyal lunchroom customer), we definitely need a good lunch box on hand for the days we do pack.
Goodbyn lunchboxes are my current fave as they’re big enough for lunch and the stickers make them totally customizable… every kid’s dream
The selection of Bento boxes by Sugar Charms is amazing…my 5 year old would go nuts if I packed her lunch in one of these cuties
This week we are very excited to have our first guest blogger!!! We called on our favorite foodie, Joslyn Taylor, from Raising Foodies to write a few Small Bites posts. You can see her recipe for Blueberry Dessert in the current issue of Small.
Joselyn: I write a lot about the epic struggle to get my two young daughters to “eat outside of the box”… Let’s just say there’s a lot of pleading, cajoling and well, yes bribing going on at our dinner table most nights. But recently I discovered if I serve broccoli (or any other much maligned food) on some sort of groovy little plate, the girls are far more amenable to actually consuming it.
Some of our faves…
All the kids stuff from French Bull is great, but I’m especially smitten with the groovy monster plates
Food Face Ceramic Plate – my girlies especially dig these when I serve mashed potatoes.
Animal Friends Silverware – makes a sweet baby gift too.
Joselyn dreamed of having kids with adventurous palates but, like most of us, ended up making two dinners every night, one of them regulary featuring mac 'n' cheese or chicken nuggets. Recently Joslyn started a wonderful blog titled 'Raising Foodies' as journal of her efforts to get her kids eating and cooking adventurously. Check it out if you when ever you are in need of meal time inspiration. Today she has put together a great peach cobbler that you can make with your kids and is loved by even the pickiest eater.
Joselyn: I have this theory that growing up in the South creates in you an unexplainable, almost mystical love of peaches. My two young daughters fall into a trance of pure joy when they’re eating one… happily munching away, juice dripping slowly down their little chins.
Despite our collective fondness for peaches (due to my five-year old Audrey’s vehement aversion to warm fruit -- we’ve had some particularly ugly incidents of late involving a seemingly innocuous mixed berry crumble), we’ve never actually made peach cobbler. But excellent peaches are abundant right now, and I’ve been itching to try my hand at a batch using a recipe from a vintage women’s club cookbook on my shelf -- warm fruit be damned.
So I was pleasantly surprised when Audrey came home from school last week begging for, yep you guessed it, peach cobbler. Apparently her school cook, Ms. Ludelle, makes it weekly, and according to Audrey it’s DELICIOUS. (She thinks Ms. Ludelle is the “best cook in the world” - her exact words. I try not to be offended by this… but, it’s slightly crushing). Audrey, not trusting my culinary prowess, urged me to phone Ms. Ludelle to obtain her exact peach cobbler recipe, but I told her I thought I could handle this one on my own, and we set to work making a pretty fine batch.
Watch your back Ms. Ludelle!
Peach Cobbler (adapted from The Democratic Women’s Club of Kentucky cookbook)
For Filling
· 6 medium peaches (ideally local and organic) cut into thin wedges
· I tablespoon cornstarch
· 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
· ¼ cup turbinado sugar
For Topping
· 1 cup organic all-purpose flour
· ¼ cup turbinado sugar
· ¼ cup brown sugar
· 1 teaspoon baking soda
· ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
· 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
· ½ teaspoon salt
· ¾ stick cold unsalted European butter (diced)
· ¼ + 1 tablespoon boiling water
To Prepare
-Preheat oven to 425
-Toss peaches with sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice in a 2-quart glass casserole dish and bake on middle rack for about 10 minutes.
-Remove peaches and gently toss again with spatula so the ones on the top don’t get overly browned.
-While the peaches are baking, mix together flour, sugars, baking soda, spices and salt. Blend in the diced butter with your fingers until the mixture is crumbly. Add the boiling water, and stir until combined.
-Drop uneven spoons of topping over the peaches.
-Bake on center rack for about 20-25 minutes or until the top is golden
Enjoy, ideally with a scoop of vanilla ice cream
Peach Cobbler from Raising Foodies
I used to make this cake with my mother and now it is one I make all the time with my own children. It is a fool-proof 'single bowl' recipe. My 4.5 year old can manage to prepare almost the whole cake by herself, which she loves to do.
Method
Frosting
Mix cocoa and confectioners sugar with some softened butter. Add hot water very slowly and mix to the desired consistency. Let the cake cool a little before putting on the icing.
Last winter we did a shoot for the winter issue of Small using the chocolate cake as a prop. The photo session was over very quickly!
Crown from Cakies, scarf from The Academy of Gentle Arts, badge from Sea Pod.
