Ok, confession time – I’ve never enjoyed the process of creating lunches to send to school. Been at it for nine years now.   Always love the weekends or holiday times when we can just grab lunch when we need it and eat what we feel like in that moment.  However, the children’s cries of, “Mom…I’m a little tired of tuna sandwiches” or “Mom…. I’ve actually never liked tuna sandwiches…” coupled with my conscience over ensuring the kids have good nutrition for learning are motivating enough to try to shake it up every so often for them.   And for me!  I do really enjoy the creative aspects of cooking and like to try different things to keep the monotony of this daily task interesting 🙂  So you can imagine, living in a hotel, that options for interesting lunches might be limited… and that WAS our reality initially, mainly because I was freaked out about finding foods I recognized and could sort of read the packaging on.  For a couple of weeks it was turkey sandwiches everyday.  When this familiar refrain, “Mom… I’m a little tired of turkey sandwiches…”began to play, I figured it was time to shake things up, and having a couple of weeks of grocery shopping under my belt, was feeling a little more familiar and braver to try some different products.  At Aaron’s suggestion, I googled “Meals to make in Hotel Room” and discovered a lot of cool ideas!   My favourite one was Quesadillas, not only because the kids love them, but because it is THE  best use for an IRON I’ve discovered to date!  I actually ironed their lunch!!  (photo journal follows):

METHOD:

The biggest challenge in cooking in a hotel room has been cooking vessels and utensils.  One becomes good at scavenging at meal times; a utensil or two in the pocket re-routed up to one’s room is useful to get the job done.  Don’t worry, they always end up back in the kitchen, they just run a bit of a detour getting there!   First, lay out a towel on a table or flat surface – I suppose this would be a much better use for an ironing board as well:) but I had a table to work with, so didn’t even have to fight with opening up the silly board!  Then add a piece of foil and place the tortilla on top.  When bowls are in short supply, mugs work really well – in the Hilton mug I mashed chickpeas with some salsa and a bit of sour cream to make a yummy base for the Quesadilla and to add a little fiber.

Next, place your favourite meat and cheese on top (our guys like ham and mozzarella cheese). Be sure to ensure there is cheese strategically placed under and on top of the meat to melt the whole thing together.  Add your tortilla on top, place another piece of foil on top and IRON!!  (HOT setting like Cotton is best).

Was so amazing to see that the Quesadilla was ACTUALLY browned and crispy!!  The cheese melted beautifully and held the whole thing together.  Be sure to iron one side, then flip the whole foil packet to crisp up the other side and melt the cheese.  Also, be sure to peel back the foil and let the whole thing cool before wrapping back up to refrigerate for later use or cutting up to put in lunch containers right away, to avoid sogginess. I made them the day before as it was my first attempt and wasn’t sure how long it would take me. I’m pleased to announce that no fire alarms were triggered in the creation of these yummy lunchtime morsels!

To prepare some more interesting sandwich fillings and to ensure lots of protein for learning minds, kettles are great for boiling eggs.  Had to boil several times to ensure that they were cooked.  Wanting to conserve water, I had a bit of a time extracting the boiled eggs from the kettle to save the water for the next batch, but eventually used two tiny spoons to pull out one at a time.  A couple cracked and kind of boiled on the outside of the shell, so had to pick up some vinegar to clean out the kettle so could be used again to boil water for tea and coffee.

The morning I walked into the bathroom, er, kitchen with the coffee press full of noodles in hot water, Aaron seemed really impressed and said “you’re really using your noodle:)” (one sink is for bathroom jobs, one sink for kitchen ones!).  The kids have always loved pasta salad in their lunches, so when I decided to try to make that happen with our limited hotel room supplies, I had to think of a noodle that could either be microwaved or simply reconstituted with hot water.  Raymen noodles usually require a pot of boiling water, but I thought if they were left to sit in boiled water for a bit, they might get soft enough to eat.  And for pasta salad, you really don’t want your noodles to be too soft or it becomes pasta salad mush.  The meal portions at dinner time in the dining room are usually very large, so we end up taking some of our food to go, which is great for after school snacks or for adding to lunches.  The chicken from our Sunday supper last week went into this salad, and I just chopped up a rainbow of peppers, cooled the noodles by draining the hot water and adding a couple of fill-ups of cold water and letting them sit for a bit.   Add the chicken pepper mixture to the drained noodles, pour favourite dressing on top (kids like ranch) and mix up.  I did invest in a large plastic container with a lid to allow for mixing and storage.

Shortly after creating the Quesadilla lunches, we were at one of many “one-stop-shop” grocery stores collecting the weeks lunch groceries, but also continuing to price out the large appliances that we need to buy for our house.  We walked by a few aisles of small appliances and when we came to a very full row of multi coloured and multi-featured irons, I pointed out, “Hey guys!  Look at all the Quesadilla makers!!”:)  I am failing dismally at creating “ironers”, but might have a little team of cooks someday!:)

Share your lunch time ideas!  Haven’t figured out how to bake in this room yet, but I’m trying:) Hey! Just read about using the iron to make grilled cheese!:)