5 Favorite Lunchbox Recipes

Let's enjoy cooking !!






Did you hear that noise last week? The one that sounded like a giant balloon hissing empty? Well, that was the collective sign of millions of parents relieved that school has started again. (For The One and me, last week meant the packing up of white clothes for eight months. Alas, summer is fading. But that’s another post for another time.)
Now that the little Einsteins are at it again, and no doubt you miss them, how about filling their lunch boxes with some pretty amazing meals and treats that will ease their way back into the hallowed halls of pint-size academia?

1.       Personal Pan Lasagna This “lasagna” [wink, wink] is at once shameless and genius. Instead of alternating layers of homemade lasagna noodles, long-simmering tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese hand-grated by Sardinian school girls who moisture their hands with extra-virgin olive oil, this recipe cheats—brilliantly, I might add—by calling for ravioli, store-bought sauce, and plain ol’ grated cheese. (Didn’t I say it was brilliant?)

2.       Easy Tomato Soup When the doyenne of the Food Network, Ina Garten, dubbed this recipe easy, she wasn’t kidding. How easy? Well, it’s almost as quick as heating up a can of Campbell’s. And I don’t have to tell you how much the payout on that little investment is worth. To make it ultra-simple, toss in a few crackers, but think how much the kids will adore you if you make these mini-grilled cheese sandwich croutons. I like to call them Crouwiches. Hell, I think I’ll even trademark that: Crouwiches™.

3.       Mac and Cheese Bites That’s what you can call these if you have homework to do tonight. “Mac and Cheese Canapés” is appropriate if you can see yourself with these in one hand and a flute of Champagne in the other. For the full cocktail-party effect, plop these little beauties on a silver tray. For the Mini-Me Contingent, a resealable bag works beautifully. Either way, either age, you’ll find these timeless—and delicious.

4.       Homemade Concord Grape Jam (pictured at top) I can’t think of a better and more dear reason to invest an afternoon of your time into making your own grape jam than that chubby cherubic little face and those mini-sausage fingers grasping that PB&J sandwich. (And if you want to go the full monty, make your own homemade peanut butter.) And when you do, you can make my all-time favorite childhood lunch: Peabot & Blanas, otherwise known as peanut butter and bananas on toast.

5.       Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies Yup, the old gal could bake. And if you’re asking, “Who’s Katharine Hepburn?” then I suggest a.) you send me a batch of these brownies to soothe my breaking heart., and b.) you look her up, pronto. These are marvelously chewy snacks with a true but mellow chocolate flavor. The original recipe included walnuts, but author Laurie Colwin (No? Then look her up, too!) clearly wasn’t a fan, so she omitted them from this version. Although I agree with her, I won’t hold it against you if you add them back.