Hungry Like a Wolf (Packed Lunches)

Member Name: raehippychick

Product:	Packed Lunches
Date:	04/05/07 (728 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap and cheerful scrummy food, quick and easy to make

Disadvantages: getting up early enough to make it!

It’s a nightmare isn’t it, making packed lunches? What to put in them? You try and get your little (and larger) darlings to eat healthily, but usually back comes the Tupperware box still half full of good food and a whole pile of crusts… strangely the chocolate bar is never left!

My most successful packed lunch is stuffed pitta bread. Cheap, tasty and good for using leftovers! Pitta Breads come in a range of sizes and flavours; ordinary white, wholemeal, white with sesame, small round pockets, large… found in the bread aisle of supermarkets they are reasonably priced (around the 50p for 6 to 10 mark, or as cheap as 26p for 6 in the Tesco Value range) and they freeze well, so take advantage of any BOGOF offers!

~ Pitta bread
~ Salad – lettuce, tomato, spring onion, beetroot… let your imagination run riot…
~ Cold meat
~ Cheese
~ Mayonnaise
~ Anything interesting you find in the fridge that can be eaten cold

The first thing I do is to chop up a selection of salad and the cold meats, cheeses etc I have chosen for my filling. It is a good idea to do this before you begin to cook the pitta as they do cook very quickly and if you try to save time by chopping while grilling this usually ends in incinerated pittas being chucked in the bin!

Now take your pitta and lightly toast it under the grill until it begins to swell a little. You’ll need to watch it carefully as they burn quite quickly. Depending on the power of your grill it only takes a few minutes

With a clean tea towel (toasted pittas are surprisingly hot) hold the pitta in one hand and using a sharp knife slit open the bread along one long side so that you have a flat envelope with an opening. Don’t go too far round but do make it open enough so that when you come to stuff it, it doesn’t end up tearing

I always put the cheese in first, as the heat melts is a little giving a nice texture. Sliced Leerdammer is very good for this if you make packed lunches in the morning as it doesn’t fight back like grated cheese can

Then I add any cold meat, a squirt of mayonnaise and fill the rest of the space with salad bits

Personally I wrap my pittas in tin foil, as it is flexible enough to hold everything in place until I am ready to eat it and it is easy to rip it down and use as a holder as I munch – it minimises drips and tomato escapees

Currently favourite mode of transport for my packed lunch is a good sized Tub-It box as I can squish a large filled and foiled pitta in then top it off with a layer of seedless grapes. That way I eat a few grapes before the pitta and a few more after – makes a good 3-course lunch!

I find one large well stuffed pitta served with grapes and a little chocolate will do me for lunch. Small, round pitta pockets are an ideal size and shape for children - they have a snap-off top to them that takes a little more care at the filling stage, but works well at preventing leakages at the eating stage. Those with large appetites might need two large pittas to satisfy them, and to stave off boredom you can vary the filling of the two

Cheese and ham with salad works very well, but almost anything takes your fancy can go in a pitta. Leftover cold meat from a roast is lovely; try cold roast beef with salad and instead of mayonnaise substitute a smear of horseradish for mayonnaise

Some suggestions that have worked well with my son over the years (we all know how picky young lads can be!):

~ Cold roast pork and apple sauce
~ Lamb and mint sauce
~ Ham and cottage cheese (the one with pineapple is his favourite)
~ Bacon and avocado
~ Cheese and pickle
~ Pitta cut into strips with a small (well secured!) Tupperware filled with a dip
~ Cheese and onion
Basically any combination that you might find in a sandwich will work in a pitta

Mix all of the above with a selection of salad – it is a good way to get ankle-biters to eat some of their 5 a day! And of course there are no crusts to come back and haunt you!

As children get older let them experiment with their favourite fillings – ham and jam was fad for a short time with a friend’s child – it doesn’t matter if you think what they choose is disgusting because if they have designed their lunch themselves they are quite likely to eat it

To save time if I am feeling organised on a Sunday night (well, it happens occasionally!) I cut up the cold meats, cheese, salad etc and store them in plastic tubs in the fridge ready to build the pittas in the morning. I don’t really recommend making pittas the night before, although I know some people who say they taste fine – I find they are so quick and easy to prepare I can easily manage to get them done before I go to work in the mornings

Most workplaces have fridges so as soon as you get to work pop it in there until lunchtime. For kids and those without access to fridges pop a frozen ice-pack in with the food to prevent icky tummies!

Today I have Leerdammer, thin ham and avocado with baby tomatoes and salad… roll on lunchtime!

Summary: Easy, tasty, healthy packed lunch