Lunchboxes

T. wakes us up at 5:30 or so each morning, and I take her to camp at her school at 9. Which leaves me approximately three and a half hours to have a cup of coffee, cook her an egg for breakfast, and pack her lunch and morning snack. Not for us the rushing-around-the-kitchen-guzzling-a-smoothie-and-dashing-out-the-door-with-a-cereal-bar we're told is the typical American-family morning. (Although most days I'd prefer the extra sleep, thank you.) I've been taking pictures of some of the lunches I've packed for her, if only to keep myself thinking of fun things to include. Up top are a few of them so far. You can check out the Flickr set here for details about what's in these lunches. Nothing fancy, for the most part, and she's liked pretty much everything I've sent with her (carrots tend to come back home).

The main box is an air-tight .9-quart clip-lid box from the Container Store, which has a convenient moveable divider. It's much better than the other, cheapo bento boxes I've used: the lid is easy to open and close, but it stays sealed and secure. The two little 4-ounce rectangular boxes are also from the Container Store. The lunch bag, seen in the bottom-right corner, is a bento carrier from Laptop Lunchbox; I found out after I ordered this that the cheaper but perfectly fine insulated lunch bags at the grocery store are kept in the cocktail mixers section. I think all of these elements work very well together, and just looking at them empty each morning is often enough inspiration to start coming up with ideas for filling them.

Stay tuned for a post about making piima cultured butter, which is, along with chat, my latest mini-obsession.