No More PB&J

The sacred school lunch

This post is part of a series titled, The Sacred Table. In this series, I explore the importance of creating a daily habit of eating together as a family. As a lifelong restaurateur, many elements of serving guests in restaurants found their way into my home. We restaurant operators are the front line of hospitality. We are present during our guests greatest joys and heaviest sorrows. We are witness to men on their knees engagements and the occasional breakup. (By the way, the theory that one should go to a busy restaurant to facilitate a breakup is nonsense, one only increases the number of witnesses to a drink tossed into a face.) Graduations, baby showers, birthdays and anniversaries are just a few celebrations shared with others centered around a meal. When we share a meal with friends and family, we create a sacred space.

There was no other meal preparation for my children that made me more prideful (and got me shunned by more mom parenting groups) than the joy I received by making them school lunches. As previously mentioned, I was a single dad raising three children. I have explained how important the evening meal was to the cohesiveness of our family structure. Yet, like many parents, I struggled with how to provide the dreaded school lunch. The big question was, would I spin the daily roulette wheel by paying for whatever institutional fare the children's schools served, or would I make them a homemade lunch? I was that parent that wanted to know what food went in my children's bodies, so I chose "option B" and prepared my children's daily school lunches.

Each school year would start the same. In late August, I would procure the necessary items for producing "wholesome" school lunches. I purchased brown paper bags by the gross. Added to that were stacks of paper napkins and plastic silverware. Then to the weekly grocery list, I added sliced meats, cheeses, bread, condiments, baby carrots and whole apples. I also purchased mini bags of dry snacks, apple sauce cups and any other overpriced gimmicky lunch items the grocery store had in their "back to school" section. At that time, I was completely oblivious to the fact that all marketing of such items is designed solely to prey upon the guilt young busy parents feel because they simply do not have the time or knowhow to prepare proper school lunches.

Yes, dear readers, I was once such a parent. Hell-bent on the notion that every single moment of parenting meant preparing my child to attend Harvard. My little darlings graduated from "Baby Einstein" to specially curated books and videos specifically designed to broaden their little minds. So that they would not be stigmatized as poppers, they were adorned in designer clothes bought in bulk at outlet stores. Without a doubt, I was the fool that bought into the "must have" back to school supplies peddled towards unsuspecting yet well-intentioned parents. However, I reassured myself that I wasn't the wasteful fool who paid top dollar to propagate that illusion. Marketing child rearing products to young parents, I have come to realize, is based upon 10% substance and 90% guilt.

So, with every new school year, my good intentions would give way to stress, lack of time, and if I am honest with myself, lack of motivation. After the initial back to school healthy stuff was depleted, I found myself in the daily morning grind, slapping some peanut butter and jelly between two non-descript slices of bread. Like it was yesterday, I remember day after day, lining up six slices of bread, spreading peanut butter and jelly on them, forming three sandwiches and sliding them into Ziplock bags. These, plus a whole apple or a bag of baby carrots were stuffed into brown paper bags with a paper napkin, a couple of pretzels and some store-bought cookies or candy.

I was just fooling myself that those brown bag lunches were anything special or that my children got any true enjoyment out of eating them. The overall nutrition gained from my efforts was suspect, mostly because my children only ate the sandwich and whatever little sweet, I put into their brown bag. When my children returned home from school with the apple or bag of carrots uneaten, I would comment on their need to eat those "healthy" lunch items. My guess is they simply started discarding unwanted lunch bag items at school to avoid the "children starving in Africa" lecture from dad upon their return home. I seriously questioned whether the money and time of sending my little ones off to school with a bagged lunch was worth the effort.

One morning, while shaking the cobwebs out of my head with a third cup of coffee, as I was slapping together the usual three PB&J sandwiches, I snapped. I had been on this morning lunch routine for many years. The food I was making for my children was crap. I knew they weren't enjoying it, and we were playing a stupid game where I bought healthy fruits and vegetables to go in their brown paper bag with their mediocre PB&J and they simply tossed the uneaten produce into to trash at school. I thought to myself, "I am a chef, dammit. I am a successful restaurateur. Over my career, I fed, pop stars, princes and presidents. I taught culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu. I served over 2000 people a night, in 68 luxury boxes at Target Center in the span of 45 minutes before every NBA Timberwolves game. If I can’t figure out how to serve three young children healthy, quality school lunches, then nobody can."

About this time in my school lunch struggle, the movie, Tortilla Soup (2001) was released. For foodies, this movie was a smorgasbord! The movie portrayed a widower father and the family dynamics that played out with his three adult daughters over exquisitely prepared Sunday dinners. There is a scene in the movie where Martin (Héctor Elizondo) started swapping school lunches with young April. He traded her brown bagged, mom-made sandwich, with multi-course and, presumably deliverable, gourmet meals. I was inspired by the concept that a movie chef could prepare wholesome and delicious school lunches and set out to perfect my own school lunch cuisine. For all parents who are tired of the same, boring and most likely uneaten and subsequently discarded school lunch, this post is for you.

In the movie, the brown bags were replaced with stackable and reusable containers. In real life, I set out to find the equivalent. My internet search led me to bento-style boxes, and I settled on a four-container stackable kit that included a cloth bag to hold the bento box, flatware, and a napkin. I ordered three boxes and never bought a brown paper bag, an overpriced mini package of dry snacks or bulk peanut butter and jelly again. I set out to develop menus that filled each of the four containers with food my children would enjoy eating. The beauty of the bento box system was, I could use them to prepare either hot or cold lunches.

Pasta, because of its affordability, quick preparation and favorability, was a staple in my house. It also lent itself well to be sent to school in those boxed lunches. The same went with Asian dishes. Rice, with Teriyaki or curried chicken, was another quick, easy and fulfilling lunch I served often. Bacon and turkey club sandwiches on focaccia with hot soup was another favorite of my children. I did still send the occasional dry snacks but with my new packing system, I could send salsa and guacamole to go along with the corn chips. The top and smallest container in my bento box set was always reserved for dessert. And not the store-bought kind of a mouth-drying cookie, but a real dessert.

If you want to make your children the hub of attention at the school lunch table, place a pumpkin cheesecake with caramel sauce in their lunch box. Tiramisu is another crowd gather that found its way into my children’s lunches. I remember once, in the brown paper lunch bag days, I needed to drop off something for one elementary-aged child at their school. It was around noon, and I found the child in the lunchroom sitting alone at a table eating his PB&J sandwich. It broke my heart. Once I started loading their school lunches with sharable quantities of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, brownies, or flourless chocolate tortes with fresh berries, none of my children ever ate alone again. In fact, when I polled my now adult children about what they remember the most about their school lunches, they all mentioned the desserts and how their friends would all gather around to see whet treat was packed for them to sample that day.

You must be shaking your head at how or why I would go to such lengths to prepare these daily school lunches for my children. Maybe you are thinking, “yeah, you could pull that off because you are a chef and know how to prepare these meals. I don’t have the time or knowledge to make those crazy school lunches.” But remember, even though I have extensive food experience, I, like you, started with the brown paper bag fiasco. Through this series, I will teach you how to think, shop and prepare your family meals like a restaurant.

Do you think, for instance, when you show up to your favorite Italian eatery and order a Wild Mushroom & Chicken Pappardelle, that the chef starts a pot of water on the stove to cook the dried pasta? Does the chef go to the cooler to get the mushrooms, wash and slice them? Does the chef start another pan on the stove to make the cream sauce? Of course not. It would be impossible to make each menu item in a restaurant starting from raw unprepped ingredients when ordered. In a restaurant, the final prep and serving of this dish would take less than 5 minutes. All the ingredients for the Wild Mushroom & Chicken Pappardelle are prepared ahead of time and ready to finish.

Think about it, is that not why you bail on making homemade meals? Let’s say you, the non-restaurant thinking person, decided to make Wild Mushroom & Chicken Pappardelle for dinner tonight for your family. Here is how you would most likely approach this task:

· While at work, search internet for recipe – 10 minutes

· Write a shopping list of items to pick up at store on the way home – 5 minutes

· Grocery shop – 30 minutes

· Put groceries away – 5 minutes.

· Start pan of water on stove for pasta and prep chicken and mushrooms – 30 Minutes

· Set the table – 5 minutes

· Sauté Chicken and make the cream sauce - 15 minutes

· Finish the dish and serve – 5 minutes

Overall time invested into making one meal for you family – 1 hour and 45 minutes.

One could spend an hour and forty-five minutes in the above scenario or five minutes on DoorDash and have the meal delivered. The amount of time most people put into making meals at home is what drives them to order take-out. I prepared this meal and packed it into bento boxes for my children’s school lunches in less than 20 minutes. In fact, my goal was to spend no more time on their lunches than it took to cook a pot of rice which is about 20 minutes.

To pull that off, you need to think like a restaurant. There is hidden power in creating hospitality in your home and in your children’s school lunch. My next post will expand on that concept.

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