Lunch Box Contest Winner #1

I am pleased to present you all with the First Place Winner and youngest competitor in the Vegan Lunch Box Contest!

"My name is Abraham and I am 9 years old.

"Like your son, I am homeschooled so I usually don't pack a lunch for school. My mother often shows me your pictures and told me about your contest. I decided to make one of my favorite vegan lunches and enter it.

"Like you, I have a blog. I put up a lot of pictures of the meal there: The Little Giant.

"I call this lunch 'Artist's Palate'.

"In addition to my bamboo spreader and a cloth napkin, I took rice cakes, peanut butter, raisins, dried coconut, two blackberries, a few cherry tomatoes, some sweet red pepper slices, and a few green beans.

"I also packed two tiny "donut" peaches that we found at the farmer's market. Everything was organic except the raisins and all of the vegetables are local, too."

Thank you so much, Abraham, for entering the contest and showing us the artistic side of fresh fruits and vegetables. Lunchtime at your house looks like fun!

Abraham's free autographed copy of Vegan Lunch Box is on its way. I'll introduce you all to the second place winner next week.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Just Peachy

One of my tips on finding cheap fruits and vegetables this summer was to pick your own. Shmoo and I put that into practice this morning, picking peaches and nectarines at a local U-Pick farm for 60 cents a pound. Not a bad price, especially when you consider that U-Pick combines buying fruit with an hour of enjoying a shady stroll in the orchard and watching kids having fun. Shmoo was a most enthusiastic picker, determined to search tree to tree to find me the biggest, heaviest, prettiest peaches.

Here is my car trunk filled with fresh fruit, at a total cost of $22.00. We plan to gobble up the nectarines, then I'll be peeling and slicing the peaches and freezing them in a single layer on baking sheets. When they're frozen I'll put them in a smoothie bin and enjoy peach-blueberries smoothies all autumn long.

Contest Update

Thank you so much to everyone who entered my Vegan Lunch Box Contest. The deadline for entry was yesterday. I've been enjoying looking at all the yummy lunch pics and reading your wonderful, creative descriptions. Good job, everyone!

Wow, it's going to be tough: there are over 50 fabulous entries and I'm going to have to narrow it down to 5. It makes me wish I had more books to give away!

The five lucky winners will be notified via email on September 1st (my birthday!), and their lunches will be featured here on the blog throughout the month of September. So stay tuned!

"Shmoo"...hey, I like the sound of that one!

Sorry, but you'll have to squint to read this Sunday's Sally Forth (why is Sally Forth always so darn small on Sunday?)



P.S. In case you're not sure, no, shmoo is not my son's real name. It was just a family "term of endearment" I decided to use as a web alias when I started blogging. Little did we know!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Little did I know when I planted 12 tomato vines this spring that they would eventually take over my kitchen and my life.

Saturday morning:



Saturday evening:



Ah, here's ten quarts of canned tomatoes and three quarts of Roasted Tomato Basil Soup ready for the freezer.

But look what's sitting next to them: more tomatoes! I've won the battle, but not yet the war. My next weapon of mass tomato destruction: Sneaky Momma's Tomato Sauce.

So that's what my weekend looked like. How was yours?

Apple Cozy Pattern

Sorry I'm a bit late with this one, but my medium apple cozy was at the county fair this week (blue ribbon, baby!) and I wanted to wait until it came home so I could include it in the picture.



Here is the Apple Cozy Pattern (with pear variation) to go with the Banana Cozy and Orange Cozy patterns I already posted. Knit up a whole fruit bowl!

You'll notice I wrote up this pattern in three sizes: small for those wee two-bite apples that are just right for the preschool set, medium for your average apple eater, and large for the biggest of apples or Asian Pears.

Knit on!

Orange Cozy Pattern

Hey, knitters! As promised in my recent fruit cozy post, I have been hard at work with needles and yarn and have devised an Orange Cozy Pattern for your knitting and lunch-packing pleasure.

This will go nicely in your lunch bag next to the Banana Cozy you may already have knitted up. Get busy, because next week I hope to have a new apple/pear pattern for you, too.

Go Team Yarn!

I Think I'm In Love...

...with these lunch boxes from Lunchsense. A reader pointed them out to me just last week -- I had never heard of them before.

I love the different sizes to choose from (small, medium, and large), and the various containers. Not to put down Laptop Lunch Systems, but some of us with Laptops have mused amongst ourselves that it really would be nice to have lids sometimes. These lids look great: clear snap-top lids on all the food containers, and an easy screw-on lid for the 1 oz. dressing container and the liquid bottle.

And look how it all opens out into a placemat! Pretty nifty.

What do you think? What other great lunch boxes are there out there? Have you all been shopping for lunch bags/containers in preparation for back-to-school?

Rice Burger

Here's another recipe courtesy of The Manga Cookbook:Rice Burgers! The top and bottom "bun" are made from leftover Japanese sticky rice, pressed together and cooked until firm.

I'll let the cookbook explain:

"Like the bread on a sandwich, rice patties can hold just about anything in between. For vegetarians, rice burgers are a godsend, since fast-food chains in Japan often serve them with only sautéed veggies in between."

We filled this burger with Tofurkey slices and topped it with two vegan cheese "sunshines".

Next to the rice burger are Eco-Planet Non-Dairy Organic Cheese Crackers. That's right -- VEGAN CHEESE CRACKERS, people!! Woo hoo! Now I won't have to make my own all the time.

In the top row are blueberries, carrots and Yumm sauce, and dried apple slices.

Verdict: I couldn't wait for shmoo to get home today so I could find out how his lunch was, because I must admit I was picturing the rice bun falling apart as he tried to eat it. "Did it work?" I asked him. "Were you able to pick it up and eat it just like bread?"

"YES!" he replied. "The rice held together good. Although I did eat the tofurkey first and then the buns." So there you have it, the perfect sandwich for all you gluten-freers! And the crackers are AWESOME; you would never guess you weren't eating a regular cheese cracker. 4 stars.

Well, everyone, have a great weekend! I hope you enjoyed this special summer camp week filled with new vegan lunches from the shmoo and me!

Japanese Curry

Two lunches again today, one for my son and one for my husband. This time, surprisingly, they both chose the same thing.

Japanese Curry is a dish my aunt introduced me to and I haven't been able to stop dreaming about it ever since. She cooks potatoes and carrots in water until tender (I added peas at the end) then throws in a bar of S&B Golden Curry. The warm, rich curry is served over white sticky rice, making it something of a Japanese Comfort Food.

My aunt mentioned that she usually has to add a lot more water than the package calls for, and I agree. I started with about 2 cups of water and still had to add more. This curry gets very thick very fast!

I wanted to make sure my husband had enough to eat, so I packed his rice and curry in separate containers in our 2-tier To-Go Ware. An orange in one of my fruit cozies is alongside.

I packed shmoo's curry and rice together in a smaller Thermos, and he chose an apple instead of an orange.

Verdict: From hubby: "Lunch was excellent. There was more than I could eat so I will save the leftovers for later. The curry was drier than I usually like it but the flavor was very good. The orange looked very cozy wrapped up in its little comforter. All it needed to be perfect was a piece of fresh-baked naan. Four stars." Hmm, Japanese naan?

From shmoo: "That curry was good! Is there any more?" Four stars.