PITTSBURGH _ As the chef and owner of Cafe Du Jour on the South Side, Paul Krawiec runs the show at the popular eatery where culinary adventure is the soup-du-jour, so to speak.
He can relate to Bill Fuller, not so much because they both are chefs _ Fuller is the corporate chef for the much larger Big Burrito restaurants _ but because they both are parents who are the maestros of their home kitchens.
Both have two children: Fuller's are teenagers; Krawiec's are younger. And both dads have taken the responsibility for packing their kids' school lunches _ Fuller from his Morningside kitchen and Krawiec's from his homebase in Baldwin Borough.
As we dive into September and a new school year the two have the same advice for lunch-box packing: Keep it simple and give them what they like.
"For a long time, I was putting turkey between two slices of (soft-style wheat) bread with some lettuce for my daughter with mango on the side and, for my son, it was a slice of ham on bread with mustard _ just a little bit of mustard, and some grapes. That was about it," Fuller said. Occasionally, he'd ladle into a Thermos some leftover pasta with cheese or red sauce; or assemble some cheese sticks aside crackers and fruit; every once in while, the lunch box was packed with cold leftover pizza.
Krawiec sheepishly admitted that lunch for his soon-to-be 7-year-old son is most often canned chicken soup and ravioli from a can. "He won't eat sandwiches and he doesn't like my homemade soup or spaghetti and meatballs. It drives me crazy, but he will only eat them if they come from a can," he said, noting that his 4-year-old daughter will be getting similar lunches at her all-day preschool.
He echoed Fuller's sentiments that it's most important to send children to school with a lunch they'll eat _ even if it's somewhat embarrassing for a professional chef.
"I'll never forget trying to put a cheeseburger in a Thermos, cut into pieces (last school year). It was an abject failure. I went back to the canned soup," he said, noting that every once in a while he'll put some deli turkey on a stick. "He'll eat it if it's on a stick," he said wryly.
Fuller's children _ ages 16 and 13 _ now prefer to buy their lunches. "I was sad when they said, 'No more,'" he said.
Not all parents feel that way.
An unofficial survey of friends, colleagues and family revealed that I was not alone when I celebrated the cessation of packed lunches when my younger daughter moved away to college.
For 16 years, I had packed lunches for my girls, neither of whom liked luncheon meat. I had done the peanut-butter-and-jelly entree with sides of apple and baby carrots; cold cereal in a Tupperware bowl along with milk money; soup in a Thermos that never worked very well.
After some brainstorming with Fuller and Krawiec, we concurred that the prime time for thinking about lunchtime was suppertime.
Many dinners can be deconstructed then reconstructed into a fresh take on lunch. Kids should be happy _ if they liked it at dinner, they'd like it at lunch. Parents should be happy: for just a bit of extra effort in the evening, the morning routine would be vastly simplified.
I decided to test this idea within a set of conditions:
_ Dinner would be simple and, therefore, conducive to the end of a workday/school day.
_ Dinner would be inexpensive.
_ Lunch could be served cold, at room temperature, or slightly warm.
The dinner menus I started with were:
_ Spaghetti with marinara sauce topped with Parmesan
_ Roasted chicken with maple-glazed carrots and new potatoes
_ BLT sandwiches
_ Chuck roast braised in red wine with mushrooms and onions, served with crusty rolls
_ Chili with a side of sliced cantaloupe The transformation went as such. All have been PG Tested.
