Michelle Ellis
DCL
Bringing your lunch is such a no-brainer when you're in elementary school: get mom to pack a PB&J, an apple, and a granola bar for snack time and you're set. But if remembering your lunch when mom's not there to pack it proves impossible—as does resisting the call of all the neighborhood take-out joints near your work—give Vegan Lunch Box a permanent home on your favorites bar.
Why We Love Vegan Lunch Box
You know that brown-bagging it is cheaper and better for the environment than buying every day: you'll save on takeout materials and packaging while getting to choose exactly how local and organic your meals are. But coming up with something new and healthy five days a week—either for yourself or for kids—is a challenge.
At Vegan Lunch Box, the endlessly-creative Jennifer McCann keeps a record of the vegan meals she boxes up for her son every day; while the blog started as a way to document her son's first year of school, it's since expanded into published cookbooks and a drool-worthy archive of daily lunch ideas and inspiration. She gives herself an advantage when it comes to presentation by sending meals in the Tetris-like laptop Bento box, a colorful, compartmentalized lunch box, but these dishes are about more than the packaging (or lack thereof): they?re healthy, complete, and varied.
A random sampling: vegan salami with smoked almond rice crackers, potato salad, watermelon and grapes, and whole wheat chocolate chip cookies; roasted tomato-basil soup with barley-poppyseed crackers, salad, and pears and raspberries for dessert; and pad thai, stir-fried red curry green beans, cucumber salad, and a Thai cupcake.
Top Tips from Vegan Lunch Box
Clearly McCann is lucky to be packing meals for someone who is not a picky eater, but if your lunchee is a little more discriminating, try taking some tips from her artistry: use cookie cutters to serve vegan salami in fun shapes; make a panda-shaped peanut butter sandwich or a tofu tiger; dish out flower-shaped kiwi and delicately-decorated dumplings.
Got a tip or a post idea for us to write about on Planet Green? Email pgtips (at) treehugger (dot) com.
