It’s National School Lunch Week, and many articles I’ve read in the news deserve a nod in my newly instated link-round up “Around the Lunch Table“. I’ll be posting links to stories across the web which deal with all aspects of healthy lunches – politics, how-to tips, recipes and more.

While packing a healthy lunch is an important part of keeping a balanced diet, saving money, and eating well, the national school lunch program is a vital government effort that needs an overhaul. As a nation, we are experiencing a failing education system, rising childhood obesity, and the food that our kids are being fed is pitiful, to say the least. It’s no coincidence that these are all integrally linked.

Let’s hope that making this a national issue will lead to active changes in  schools across the country.

Healthy Lunch Links:

Berkeley’s New School Food Study: A Victory for Alice Waters :: Author Sarah Henry lives in Berkeley, California, where she volunteers weekly at Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard, and writes about school food, urban eats, kids and food. Check out her blog Lettuce Eat Kale (The Atlantic).

Schools Struggle to Feed Kids Healthy Food :: (Article and Short Video) Dana Waldow is a mom and advocate for healthier school lunches, not just for nutrition, but to save the school money and help the cafeteria turn a profit. (CNN).

School lunchboxes: How to make them eco-friendly :: Several eco-friendly options for your children’s lunchboxes, including PlanetBox, Laptop Lunches, and Lunchbots Duo. (LA Times)

Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project :: Mrs. Q is an educator who writes the ever enlightening blog Fed Up With Lunch, where she documents the school lunch she eats every day with the students in her school.

Rethinking School Lunch (PDF) :: The Center for Eco-Literacy has provided an updated version of their step by step guide to improving school lunch. A useful planning framework for helping your child’s school make real changes.

What lunch topics are on your mind this week?

Technorati Tags: Around the Lunch Table, Healthy School Lunch, kids, Lunch, National School Lunch Week, School, School Lunch

I did make myself a nice colorful lunch though:

A tuna melt on a pita, some chopped carrots, and a fresh herb salad. The tuna salad had celery, a chopped soft boiled egg, some tomatillo salsa, a chopped chile, tapatio, and some chile powder, caraway, and cumin. Oh, and some lime juice!

For the salad, I just chopped up some parsley, celery leaves, and dill, and topped them with some lemon juice, good olive oil and a dash of salt. No lettuce! It’s a nice, springy, herby salad that goes great with almost anything, but I love having with any sort of fish.

Technorati Tags: Lunch

So : Candlelight Yoga round two this morning!

But not before checking in at Ritual Coffee Roasters. My stomach was just slightly uneasy, so I opted to go to yoga without breakfast (I rarely do this). But I did have a mug of earl grey tea with a tiny side of steamed soy. They got these adorable new tea contraptions at Ritual that I really enjoyed!

Normally I like a cup of their drip coffee that they make in this great copper contraption, but too much coffee before yoga is no good!

Me – post yoga! I felt really, really good! Nothing like an hour and twenty minutes to totally kickstart all of your systems. I’m always pleasantly surprised at how many people are around in the morning for yoga! Maybe one day I’ll do the 40 day practice…

After yoga, I had three hard boiled eggs. Normally this is pretty excessive, but I was starving, and craving eggs, so I went for it. These are farm fresh eggs from real chickens that have more growing space than I’ll ever have. And you can certainly taste it in the egg! They are the best eggs I’ve ever eaten.

Finally, lunch: I actually stole some of Devon’s spaghetti with turkey bolognese that he made in bulk to take to work. It was tasty and filling.

I also had a really delicious lemon bar that the most lovely Kristin made, from the recipe in the Tartine cookbook. (Tartine is one of my favorite bakeries in the city, and the cookbook is pretty spectacular.) These lemon bars burst in your mouth with flavor. I was a very happy camper!

Time for some work, and maybe some dinner planning!

Technorati Tags: Healthy Living, Lunch

Homemade popcorn is supremely easy – I put a quarter cup of popcorn kernels in a paper bag, added some chile powder, and a little bit of salt, rolled down the top, and put it in the microwave for just under 5 minutes.

(I have a thing for smoked salmon).

And then dinner: a burrito from Papalote! And some chips and half of a cheese quesadilla. This particular burrito was a chicken super burrito with pinto beans, and no sour cream or rice.

Yum!!

Their salsa is the BEST.

And fast forward to today’s brunch:

Half a sandwich from Whole Foods. It had salami, mortadella, olive tapenade, roasted red peppers and arugula. Quite tasty! I’m not sure what it is with me and sandwiches these past few weeks! I think I’ve had more sandwiches in the past few weeks than I had all of last year…

To drink, I had a little glass of coconut milk that was leftover from curry I’ve been making.

I’ve been spending the morning working on a review post and doing some more cooking. Indian beef stew and black eyed pea curry are in the works.

Technorati Tags: Lunch

The best part of the morning was calling my oldest friend Sara to wish her a happy birthday! We’ve been friends since the age of five and love being silly with each other. She’s spent the week celebrating her birthday in Chi-caaaa-go. She’s already been to the recording of this weeks “Wait Wait….Don’t tell me!” on NPR, and is planning on going to a delightfully odd performance at Redmoon Theater and a dinner at the vegetarian Chicago Diner. I wish I were there with her!

After finishing my coffee (which took several hours, and, admittedly, a midway point microwave to rewarm it) I started fretting about lunch when I realized not only was I starving, but I hadn’t actually eaten breakfast yet. Sometimes it happens…

I have a lot of salad greens in my fridge, but it seemed too cold for a salad, so I did what I do when I either a) have leftover salad greens threatening to go bad, or b) just want something warm and green, and started on putting together a warm salad.

Yes, that’s right, warm salad. Trust me on this one.

I first put the greens in a colander inside a pyrex to soak. I had some fresh farm romaine lettuce, and a whole lot of cilantro that needed to be used.

I then put a pan on the stovetop, added a splash of olive oil, and started warming a shallot and some garlic that I roughly chopped as the base of my flavor. It’s always a good idea to start things with garlic and shallot (or onions), as they really bring a lot of flavor to a dish.

I had a little less than a cup of chickpeas left, so I added those in as well. I let those go for a few minutes to heat through and get a little bit browned.

Then I …. wait for it … dumped all of the lettuce into the pan over everything. That’s right, I cooked my lettuce, just like you would any sort of leafy green.

I cooked them just until they wilted down, and then tossed in a little bit of balsamic vinaigrette, and worked it all around.

I dumped it all onto a plate, and then topped it with about an ounce of crumbled Humboldt Fog Cheese - a really delicious goat milk cheese made in Northern California by Cypress Grove Chevre. If you can ever get your hands on this stuff, it’s pretty delicious with a great tang…

The result was warm, green, and satisfying. Success!!

Success #2: The SUN is PEEPING OUT!!!! Well, on one side of the apartment at least, the other side looks ominous!!

Do you have any experiences with warm salads? Other than the poached egg, lardon, and frisee, I think there are all too few of these! I’m always looking for new ideas!

Technorati Tags: Balanced Lunch, Lunch, Lunch Recipes, Salad