The Tiffin Tin

Purple grapes, vanilla yogurt with strawberries, bread sticks and turkey. Water.

Okay. First thing I want to say is — this is not the most attractive lunch I’ve ever put together. It’s delicious, but do you really want your lunch to have a trading card in it called “Rampant Growth”? One of the Tiffin Twins chose this to give to Tiniest Tiffin. They were both quite pleased with this transaction. I kept thinking about how unappetizing it was, although it’s certainly a good description of what children do.  They grow.  Rampantly.

There’s a lesson here: children don’t have the same antenna about some things as we. Boys like trading cards. They like opening their lunch boxes and seeing them. It makes them happy. Their friends offer to give them junk food in exchange. (Tiniest Tiffin, remarkably, did not trade his card for doritos. He thought his brother might be mad if he did that. Whatever his motives, I’m glad he kept the card.)

And also this lunch makes me think about how it’s not good to have too much white food in your lunch. I put some strawberries into the vanilla yogurt. But the turkey and bread sticks were, well, white. No way around that. The grapes are purple, so it wasn’t an unmitigated white-out. Tomorrow, it’s time to put that turkey in a baguette, where it more properly belongs.

Lunch for the Tiffin Twin with the big lunchbox. (It was pizza day for the other Tiffin Twin.) Much like yesterday, except the bread’s from Semifreddi and the fruit is the most melon-y cantelope I’ve ever tasted. It’s from the Berkeley Bowl, which is a great place to buy produce, particularly if you are the determined sort and willing to cruise around for a parking spot. The sandwich features the very last of the Niman Ranch salami. Next week’s protein is going to be much leaner: turkey I think. And then more great Straus Family Creamery vanilla nonfat yogurt and the last of the organic blueberries.

This Tiffin Twin also wrote today’s lunchbox note. It went to Tiniest Tiffin, who does not always like his brothers or treat them well, but who knows that when the chips are down, his brothers will be there for him.

Cantelope, banana whole wheat mini-muffin, Niman Ranch salami, egg (and salt), Straus Family Creamery maple yogurt with raspberries, trail mix (peanuts, raisins, a few m&ms), cheddar cheese.

This lunch looks like a lot. It’s for a hungry, growing 11 year old boy. Turns out, it was enough food for him, and because I forgot to put a spoon in, he didn’t eat the yogurt.

I’ve been reading a lot of about school lunches. Next week’s tiffin tin will discuss a little bit about what I’ve been reading.

Middle school lunch for the Tiffin Twins has been a little tricky this week because we only have one lunchbox, the one they used all last year to carry their lunch in. It’s huge, and they had an elaborate system for deciding who’d carry it to school and who’d carry it out to lunch and who’d carry it home. Now, they’re going to different middle schools and so, for the first time in their lives, they won’t be eating lunch in the same room. One of the Tiffin Twins kept the massive lunchbox. The other one asked for a paper bag.

What I’ve pictured above went into the very big Tiffin Twin lunchbox, the one that’s now used by a single twin. Note: that is way, way too much salami. I knew it as I was cutting it up, but I didn’t take it out. He’d asked for that much and I was curious: would he actually eat it? (the answer? Yes. Tomorrow, not so much of that kind of thing.) On the menu: Niman Ranch salami (made without nitrates or other yucky stuff), Acme sourdough baguette, cheddar cheese, Straus Family Creamery nonfat maple yogurt, amazing green grapes that taste like nothing I’ve ever had before, more grape-y than anything, a few blueberries, a hard boiled egg (for snack) and salt in a container too large for salt, but the best i could do.

Closed, the containers look like this:

And the note? Tiniest Tiffin hasn’t been getting along with one of his older brothers all that well. I asked him to think of one nice thing his brother has done for him and write it down. His first response was, I like my brother because he taught me all the bad words. I asked him to try again. This is what he came up with. (Yesterday, his brother actually got up and made him a bagel for a snack, after one request on my part and he did it with good humor.)

I think you can get the idea. Tiniest Tiffin got a little mixed up trying to write I like you because…. but he added that dollar of his own volition. It was his way of making it count.

We shop on Fridays around here, so by this point in the week, there’s often not much in the fridge. That’s why today’s lunch pretty much resembles yesterday’s. The last Rice Krispie treat, the last couple of pieces of turkey (with a cheese stick I found in the back of the cheese drawer). Melon (we always have a lot of fruit around). Carrots. I tried to get an okay on the hummus I thought would be a good dip, but no go. Ranch it is. I’ll keep trying on hummus. Two teensy mini banana muffins. And that orange cylinder is thermos with the ice cold water.

A few comments on nutrition. That orange thermos represents a major change in the drinking habits of Tiniest Tiffin, who’s just not drinking juice anymore. Water or milk. I’m glad to see that turned around. I’d say it’s been a pretty decent week nutritionally speaking, for that reason alone. A significant change in a habit for the better totally outweighs three days of Rice Krispie treats. And the carrots are a big deal too. It’s new to have both a fruit and a veggie, but he’s learning at school that a proper lunch involves both a fruit and a veg.

I’ve enjoyed this week of lunches. Weekends are for posting about general lunch topics. Saturday Tiffin will feature a compilation of sites I’ve found for buying tiffin tins online in the United States. See you then.

I have three sons, only one of whom starts school today. Poor thing — he didn’t see this as a matter of getting there first, but as a sign that being the third child will always be a drag. But at least we let him put a Rice Krispie treat in his lunch.

(I’m going to have to work on my picture taking and presentation, I see. Those turkey rollups are looking awfully lonely. It’s just like the first day of school — we’re a bit wobbly in our new school shoes.)

Now, before you condemn me as a mother with no nutritional sense, I’d like to say in my defense, that the occasional Rice Krispie treat is not going to kill your child. In fact, that is Principle Number One of Tiffin Tinning — there will be no nutritional purity on this site. We try for whole grains, fruits and veggies, a de-emphasis on sugar, protein that’s not terribly high in fat and a bit of calcium. But on the first day of school, and on other special days, out come the Rice Krispie Treats.

Now, here’s Principle 2 of Tiffin Tinning. It is a good thing if you involve your child in making lunch. They’re more likely to eat it, for one thing. And after a while, you will have more time to laze around in your bathrobe, drinking tea before rushing off to work and school. And that, to my mind, is an important goal for a parent to have: the children should help. The parent should occasionally demonstrate how adults can relax for a few moments in the morning.

Here’s what the youngest TiffinTin boy (age 7, grade 2) made for his lunch today.

1. Protein and calcium: We didn’t have any decent whole grain bread in the house for a sandwich (which is what he wanted) and besides, I was trying to balance out the Rice Krispie Treat. So, we made turkey and havarti roll-ups. This is not hard. You lay out one slice of turkey. You use a little round cookie cutter (or a jar top) and cut the Havarti into a circle. You don’t have to do this, but it’s fun and children like to cut things into shapes. It’s easy to roll them up. We made three because that’s how many he wanted.
2. Fruit: He carefully plucked individual grapes off the bunch of grapes that were in the fridge. They went in a little container he’s had since he was small.  Again, he decided how many he wanted.
3. Drink: Not shown in the picture. Ice cold water from a pitcher of water in the fridge. The school year is just beginning. It’s time to break the habit of juice in the lunch. He’s been drinking cold water all summer, so I went with it today.  The water goes in a cool thermos that attaches to his lunch box. I had him practice opening the thermos. (Another Tiffin Tin Principle: food should be independently accessible by the child.)
4. Containers: I try to stay away from stuff he has to throw away. I put a cloth napkin in the bottom of his lunchbox. You can buy an expensive lunchbox container with a lot of little modular containers, which are very cool, or you can go to ebay and buy some tupperware. I love tupperware and I am very fond of ebay. So that’s the way I’ve gone today.  I have other containers I love, especially insulated ones, and I’ll be showing those to you soon.  They tend to be used by the middle school boys, who start school next week.
5. Cooling system. An ice pack goes in the slot in the lunchbox that’s designed for that sort of thing.  It’s hot here these first few weeks of school.  I don’t want the cheese and grapes to get icky.
6. Portion sizes: You can see there’s not a ton of food in here. School is just beginning. The best way to gauge how much to pack is by seeing how much comes home with your child. Adjust accordingly.

Time expended on making lunch: About ten minutes. A lot less than writing this post.

Oh, and then, of course, a lunchbox note. Sticker on piece of paper. A loving thought for a day he’s not sure will be happy:

Tomorrow: Another lunch, possibly an easier day.   Beginnings can be hard. And whole wheat banana muffins. Maybe not a rice crispie treat, but good nevertheless.

A few months ago, when I was in the cafeteria with my youngest son, I noticed a post-it note stuck to the side of a juice box in someone’s lunch. It said, “You’re sweet. Love, Mom.” My mother never did this, but it seems like a lovely thing to do, a nice way to remind your child, especially a young child, that you are still present, even when you’re not physically with them.

And so, as it often happens, an entire industry has sprung up around this simple idea. In this case, an industry dedicated to relieving parents of the burden of actually thinking of what to write on these notes. I checked them out on the web. Here’s a sample. And another.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of these notes-for-sale (and even for free) aren’t anywhere nearly as good as ones you can write yourself.

So, Ms. Smarty Pants, you ask, what would you like to find in your lunch?

When I was a kid, and even now, i like my mom’s handwriting. I’d take pretty much anything she wanted to say, as long as it wasn’t insulting. As for my own children, beyond something yummy, I’m betting what they’d most like is a joke. The dumber the better. Find a joke on the web, print it out or write it down, sign it or add a word or two of your own and stick it in the lunchbox. Same with cartoons. Or use a post-it note, like the one I saw. That seemed to be working just fine. There are other ideas on this Tiffin Tin page, which is updated regularly with examples from the lunches packed for my children.

In a pinch (actually — an emergency so dire you probably wouldn’t be packing lunch anyway), you could try one of these.