First Day of First Grade Lunchbox

The Kid and his EpiPens are both at their first day of school. The school nurse and the staff are really very experienced at managing food allergies, but I've still got a twinge leaving him on the first day. We've been chatting with the nurse and The Kid's new teacher about making sure he doesn't get isolated at his designated end of the lunch table, since he doesn't have his friend with milk allergies to sit with him this year. I'm trying to get a "no splash zone" where the kids immediately adjacent and across from him don't have milk or peanut butter with them. The Kid is very good about staying away from other people's food, so I'm mostly concerned with the potential for accidents, as well as the evil substance's sticky properties.

Today's lunch is a little fancier than usual, since the bed of lettuce is strictly decorative. It's cradling two octodogs made from a turkey dog and some leftover ginger candied carrots with a food pick. Alongside are pretzels, seedless black grapes, a small package of gummy dinos, and an allosaurus sticker. I've switched to an 8 ounce reusable juice box for his apple juice/water mixture, since the larger bottle usually came back half full and this one packs better.

Sending a lunch to school means it's time again to head over again to Coffee & Vanilla for Margot's lovely Wholesome Lunchbox event. Don't miss all the adorable bentos and creative lunches she has on display on the 15th of each month!

Volcano Cake

Dinosaur island erupted just in time for a party! I ran into more problems than usual while baking this birthday masterpiece, but dry ice hides a multitude of sins, and The Kid was thrilled to have a functioning volcano cake.

A Tour of Enjoy Life Foods

I'm still a little stunned that I won the Cookies For Everyone Sweepstakes. The trip to Shiller Park, Illinois, packed more into one day than I thought possible. It began with an introduction to the people behind Enjoy Life, a truly dedicated bunch who are justifiably proud of what they do.

Enjoy Life's CEO, Scott Mandel, graciously gave me a tour of the bakery himself. The primary location is a one story brick building that is much larger inside than it appears. (The chocolate is manufactured in a separate dedicated facility, which busted the remaining shreds of my Willy Wonka fantasies.)

Entering the bakery, a long row of bins of allergen free ingredients lined the wall. After years of scouring grocery store shelves for safe foods, I was a little overwhelmed by the variety and abundance. The company's suppliers all sign contracts that their foods will be produced free of contamination and additional testing is done on some ingredients by Enjoy Life before they are used.

Next I was put into a state of Kitchen Aid envy by three stand mixers, all taller than me. After the ingredients are introduced to each other, they are shaped, squeezed or spread into cookies, bars or granola, distributed on trays and placed in racks that are rolled into ovens. The ovens are in the process of being upgraded to a new conveyor system, where the trays enter the oven on a belt at one end, and reemerge completely baked at the other. (More capacity means more cookies!)

The finished bakery products, as well as goodies from the super secret chocolate location (at least to me), are mechanically packaged in preprinted plastic and paper containers. I believe these cookies are Snickerdoodles bent on world domination. Since we don't have celiac problems in our household, I confess that I didn't know until this trip that gluten and egg free cookies could be as soft and chewy as these babies.

After packaging, the goodies are boxed up and kept in the warehouse until they are shipped out to meet a world full of grateful families with food allergies.

The tour ended at the Enjoy Life test kitchens, where I proceeded to spend most of the day talking and baking and talking some more with my new hero, Betsy Laakso, which will have to wait until the next post about this amazing trip!

I Didn't Believe It Either

So, guess who won the Enjoy Life Sweepstakes?



Seriously. It was me.

I'm still at a loss for words, which for me is an unnatural state of affairs. Just completely dumbfounded. Absolutely gobsmacked. (Not to mention drop through the floor mortified when I received the news not long after this whiny post. Oops.)

My whirlwind trip to Illinois takes place this week, and you can follow along with the fun on Tuesday by way of Enjoy Life's Facebook page. I'll be touring the factory, baking in the test kitchen with Betsy Laakso, one of the authors of Cookies for Everyone, and having lunch with CEO Scott Mandell.

That's right, I'm going to a chocolate factory run by the incredible people that make safe food for my son. And they're letting me play in the kitchen with a pro, which is kind of like someone from Little League getting to practice with the Majors. Did someone read my diary? I'm still not convinced that I'm not being punked!

If you have any questions or messages you'd like me to take with me to the Enjoy Life headquarters/test kitchen/bat cave, leave them in the comments. I'll pass them along if I can stop stuttering.

Alphabet Soup

We recently had a rare (for summer in the Sunshine State) long and rainy, Cat in the Hat kind of day. After a morning of coloring books, DVD's, overcast skies and unending drizzle, I broke out the Dutch oven despite the season to make a cold weather favorite for lunch.

2 Tbs olive oil
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, including leaves, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbs dried mixed Italian seasoning
kosher salt and fresh ground white pepper to taste
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
15.5 oz can kidney beans, rinsed well
3-4 C water
1 C alphabet pasta

Heat olive oil on medium in a large, heavy bottomed pot. Add onion, celery (reserving leaves), carrots, garlic and seasonings. Stirring regularly, saute vegetables until soft, about ten to fifteen minutes. Add tomatoes, kidney beans, reserved celery tops and water, then bring to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package directions. Adjust seasonings and serve. This makes a humongous pot of soup. The extra freezes nicely to save for the next rainy day.

The best part of this meal was The Kid's musical accompaniment. It went something like this:

Look, there's a Z! Z is for zebra, mm mm mm. Ooh, that's a kidney bean, mm mm mm. Look, I found a D! D is for dinosaur, mm mm mm.

I'm sending my well lettered soup both to Deb in Hawaii of Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sunday and to Psychgrad of Equal Opportunity Kitchen, who is hosting this week's Presto Pasta Nights, the long running event begun by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.