Welcome to week 2 at Lunch Matters.

News
Recipes
Links
Weekly shopping list
Got a favorite photo or recipe to share? Email it to us at lunchmatters@lunchmatters.com.au and we'll publish it here!

NEWS

The first week of trading has been wonderful here at Lunch Matters! Some of you have your Laptop Lunchboxes already and we've received some great feedback. One of the week's highlights was a blog entry at www.kiddley.com. If you haven't had the chance to read this blog then it's well worth a visit if you have young children. Claire Robertson posts regularly and her suggestions and web links are always inspirational. If you'd like to read the blog on Lunch Matters you can view it here: http://kiddley.com/2006/09/08/lunch-box-ideas-part-one

We spent a lazy afternoon at the Slow Food Festival in Melbourne and were amazed by the number of people attending - a strong indicator of the way people are moving today - increasingly away from the supermarket and into the realm of the Farmer's Markets and towards the idea of getting back to basics.

Finally, I’d like to say that the results from the survey are in and it seems that the idea of weekly shopping lists to supplement the photos is appealing to many, so we will pilot this for a while and then review its usefulness in a couple of week’s time.

RECIPES

I have two great recipes to include this week.

The first is from a fantastic publication recently published by a Melbourne mum, Hélène Canavan called Lunchbox. It is pictured in Monday’s photo. Delicious!

Lentilles Niçoises

Patrice Repellin

1 cup dried green lentils

¼ avocado, diced

½ mango, slightly underripe, diced

6 black olives, finely chopped

6 cherry tomatoes, halved

½ small sweet potatoe, diced, steamed and cooled

Vinaigrette

½ tsp crushed garlic

2 anchovies (optional)

½ tbsp red wine vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

Bring lentils to the boil in plenty of salted cold water, the reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave lentils in the saucepan with the lid on for a further10 minutes.

Drain and spread lentils over a large, flat dish to cool evenly and dry. (Lentils should be prepared in advance and covered with a cloth overnight.)

Blend vinaigrette ingredients with a hand-held mixer. Place the lentils with all other ingredients in a salad bowl and gently stir in the vinaigrette.

Sesame-Ginger Tofu

The second is from a blog that has a whole lot of great ideas – you’ll see the Sesame-Ginger Tofu featured in this week’s photo number 4 – we served it hot for dinner the night before and my 20mth and 4 year old loved it. Then I packed the left overs cold in my son’s lunchbox the following day and he ate the lot!

Blog: Beet & Potatoes

Post: Sesame-Ginger Tofu

Link: http://beetandpotatoes.blogspot.com/2006/06/sesame-ginger-tofu_08.html

LINKS TO OTHER SITES OF INTEREST:

As some of you may have seen, I linked to www.bentotv.com earlier in the week. If you didn’t get a chance to have a look it’s well worth your time. Some of the archives are particularly useful. Mushroom cups and spicy onigiri rice balls are great. You will also find a demo of many of the products that we have in store.

The other site of interest this week is the site where the Laptop Lunchboxes originated from www.laptoplunches.com. You’ll find a wealth of information there on both the gourmet and environmental possibilities of the Laptop Lunchbox systems.

WEEKLY SHOPPING LIST:

To make this week’s lunchboxes you’d need the following ingredients:

I will note here that all fruit and vegetables that are packed fresh are organic, we have a box delivered home each week. This sounds like a luxury but we pay $55 a week and what we get is what’s in season and that lasts a family of four a whole week – so it’s a great way of exposing your family to things that you may not ordinarily select yourself. We found that before we were doing this we’d spend a lot more money at the greengrocer’s as we’d buy all the things that looked good and didn’t think about whether or not they were in season so they came at a premium.

It is still very important to involve children in the food shopping where possible. So we make it a habit to go to the Farmer’s Markets each weekend wherever they are – lots of things to try, farmers to talk to and the opportunity to shop for food outdoors and in a relaxed atmosphere. It beats supermarket shopping for fresh fruit and veg. hands down.

So with all that out of the way – let’s get to the list:

Fruit:	Vegetables:
Apples Grapefruit Strawberries Lemons	Sugar snaps Tomatoes (cherry are the best, but this week I just chopped up big tomatoes) Avocados Broccoli Mushrooms Corn Asparagus Sweet potatoes Garlic Ginger
Meat:	From the freezer: (it is handy to have a couple of items in the freezer for various uses)
Lamb cutlets Veal	Edamame (Soy beans) Blueberries
In the pantry:	Dairy:
Dried lentils English mustard Red wine vinegar Olive oil Soy sauce Brown sugar Mirin or sake Soba noodles Eggs (quail and chicken) Wholemeal flour Sesame seeds Seaweed Organic dry biscuits	Cheese Cream cheese Organic plain yogurt Organic firm tofu