02241 Portable Foods

There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. — Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Here are some issues to think about when eating out.

Eating out is expensive. My feeling is that most of us need additional resources to pay off debt and make necessary adaptations in our lifestyles, and “eating out money” is one resource that can be redirected to important household sustainability issues.

Restaurants and fast food places use few local or organic ingredients. Those that do use such ingredients are upscale and expensive.

Restaurant workers are often low paid. The minimum wage for wait staff is $2.50/hour, which is why tipping is essential and part of your bill, even if it is not figured by the restaurant. When I eat out, I tip, even if the service was bad. In the United States, a tip is not “something extra To Insure Promptness.” It is most of the wait staff’s salary.

When I do eat out, whether it be by necessity or choice. I never eat at large national chain restaurants or fast food places unless I am a guest of someone else or there is no other option. Even when on the road, I look for locally owned places to eat. Since every dollar I spend is a vote, I support the local food economy, not the globalized economy, by eating at locally owned restaurants.

When I travel, I support the local economies of the areas through which I journey by spending money at locally owned businesses. I refuse to voluntarily open my veins and bleed off my money to the support the economic aristocrats at the big fast food corporations national headquarters. National enterprises siphon resources from local areas to support large bureaucracies that contribute nothing to the local economy. National corporations limit diversity. I always encourage people to vote for their local economy to strengthen your own city and region. They are an integral aspect of the design process that centralizes wealth.

Since the modern lifestyle has us on the go all the time and few of us can go home for lunch as my grandfathers always did, portable foods become an important aspect of your lifestyle’s food systems. Nothing works as well to drive a person (literally) into a restaurant or fast food place at lunch than an insipid, boring sack lunch.

Containers are critical. As with all our other food decisions, the choices we make regarding portable food containers have impacts, for good or for ill, on down the line. I try to avoid plastic as much as possible. I use a lot of jars (which is one reason to save and repurpose glass jars, especially any that you get that have wide mouths). Asian markets have round metal lunch containers referred to as tiffin carriers or tiffin boxes or just tiffins. They come as doubles or triples, with two or three separate container layers for foods. The Japanese culinary tradition gives us bento boxes, which are small boxes with compartments for food. Many styles are made with bamboo, a very sustainable wood product.

Disposables are not on the menu. Use cloth napkins, a cloth bag or metal lunch box, and reusable serving ware. Tupperware is the traditional portable container. However, it is a plastic-based product, and all plastic products cause environmental problems. I like to use glass jars to take my lunch to work, which is often leftover food from the previous day’s dinner, or soup, for which glass jars are great. They work for sandwich meat and cheese although I have not found a glass sandwich container yet. Those round metal “Danish Butter Cookie” metal tins are great for sandwiches and other lunch foods. The tin holds two sandwiches quite nicely.

This is one of those good, better, best decision situations. Taking your lunch to work in a reusable plastic container is better than going to McDonalds. Glass and metal are preferable to plastic or McDonalds. If you need to start with a good decision, rather than better or best, that is just fine. One intriguing idea I just ran across is to use a small muffin pan and put several different foods in the muffin cups, wrap with aluminum foil, and put into the lunch box.

In any event, I think it is better to accumulate an array of containers re-purposed as portable food containers. If buying some brand new items helps boost nutrition and save money by bringing lunch or dinner to work or school, it is certainly worth the investment.

Explore new ideas for sandwiches. For years, I bought sliced bread in a plastic bag from the grocery store simply to make sandwiches to take to work. Now however, I make sandwiches using homemade buns or flat breads and wonder why I ever paid money for sliced bread in a plastic bag. I especially like the flatbread sandwiches, which are almost more like a taco, in that each ‘sandwich’ uses one piece of flatbread. I layer the ingredients, then I fold the flat bread in half when eating it. I pack them flat, and fold it when I pick it up to eat. I wrap sandwiches in cloth napkins.

Leftovers. I often plan ahead and cook extra so that I have enough for lunch the next day or two. Ditto for breads or flatbreads. When I make the breakfast flat bread in the morning, I make extras for lunch.

Simplicity. Peanut butter sandwiches and a carrot salad (made with yogurt, raisins, and pecans) is a fine, tasty, filling, and long-lasting lunch.

Variety is fun too. Notice that the variety of taste, texture, mouth feel, and aroma of the food compliments the simplicity of my peanut butter sandwich with a side of carrot salad. There’s chewiness in the bread, smoothness in the peanut butter, crunchiness in the carrot salad with its pecans, and aromas all over the place. There is sweetness in the carrots, raisins and banana, saltiness in the peanut butter, a bit of sour in the yogurt, and the solid flavors of the bread are hard to classify. My flatbreads, for example, have a hint of smokiness in them from the cast iron griddle on which they are stove-top baked. They have protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and no huge amounts of fat. The carbohydrates are complex. The foods are all nutrient dense — organic carrots, organic flour, organic banana.

If you’re making lunch for someone else, involve them in the process, not only when planning the menu, but also while putting it together.

If packing a lunch for a child or teenager, look at products in your local supermarket that appeal to children and teenagers. Then, prepare healthy and frugal alternatives to pack for the young folks. As with lunches for adults, involve your children in the development of the menu and the preparation of the food.

Pack hot foods like soups or chili in a thermos bottle. Heat the food hot before filling the thermos. Preheat the thermos by filling it with hot water and letting it sit for about five minutes before putting the hot food in it. Get a good quality metal thermos bottle. That allows you to avoid the microwave oven at work.

“Pockets” are always a popular item for lunch. They are expensive when bought at the supermarket and they feature questionable nutrition and odd chemicals as ingredients. It is easy and cheap to make your own pockets. You can freeze them and zap them at lunch in the microwave. Just about anything you cook can be wrapped in dough and made into a pocket. Make some extra when you’re cooking something savory and wrap it in dough for your pocket lunches! Bake and freeze for tasty eating later! To make a pocket — Pinch off pieces of dough about the size of a golf ball and roll them out into circles. Brush the dough with olive oil. Place two or three tablespoons of filling in the middle and spread it out. Moisten the edge of the dough all around the circle with water. Fold it in half and pinch the seam together all around the half circle you just made. Bake until the dough is golden brown.

Fermented foods are great for lunch. Pickles, pickled vegetables, Vietnamese daikon and carrot pickles, etc., all add great nutrition, interest, and taste to portable meals.

Try bean spreads for sandwiches. Mash leftover beans, add Greek yogurt (typically thicker than regular yogurt), mayonnaise, mustard, some finely chopped pickle and onion, some additional heat (crushed red pepper, powdered dried habaneros, etc.) and voila, deviled bean sandwiches. This is about as frugal as a sandwich gets, other than the traditional “Slap Sandwich” (take two pieces of bread, slap them together and eat them like a sandwich).

Portable foods often open opportunities to talk to others about food sustainability, especially if you have nice lunches attractively presented. People are curious about food. People with jaded appetites dulled by conventional food always look for something new and tasty.

Food is a great way to tempt people into taking their first tiny baby steps toward a more sustainable way of live. (How’s that for stacking functions?) Your portable foods on display at your work or school are a living testimony to the advantages of sustainable living.