Zero Waste Açaí Bowls!

Açaí bowls are addicting! Açaí, pronounced “Ah-Sigh-EE” is berry which is only found in the Amazon rainforest. Acai berry is full of omega fats, amino acids, electrolytes, antioxidants, protein and vitamins A, B1 and E. An acai bowl refers to a bowl with lots of seasonal fresh fruit, coconut, granola and a smoothie of blended acai in a bowl.  Delicious!!

When I moved here I was introduced to the Acai Bowl and now my family and I are always on a the look out for them. Most places use styrofoam cups to serve them in.  Not eco-friendly and my girls usually don't finish the whole bowl. I always keep a set of Nesting Containers in my bag. One day I asked an employee at SD Blenders to make our Acai bowl in one of my nesting containers. They were happy to oblige. Now, when we are getting acai bowls I always bring 3 medium sized OM Goods containers with me (along with spoons and cloth napkins). Guilt-free, nothing to throw out. My family and I are on a mission to try all the places that make acai bowls in San Diego. Maybe I'll do a comparison chart on which one is my fav!

Half Day = A Big Snack!

Today my 5 year old has a half day. This means no lunch. I thought I could try and increase her snack and see how she does. My friend Denise, mentioned that this is what she usually does too. 


Since my daughter decided on breakfast and lunch for her first day of school, I thought I'd let her pick what we ate for dinner. She picked pizza. Gluten-free pizza and a salad with balsamic dressing. I really love Bob's Redmill Homemade Wonderful Bread mix. I use it instead of the GF Pizza Crust mix because it tastes better in my opinion. We put onions, spinach and olives. I don't eat dairy so I made the other half without cheese. 


For her snack today, I popped in a slice of the left-over pizza, sans onions (notice the circles in the pizza?). Cut it into small bite size squares.

Added some celery sticks, a clementine and a cloth fold-over baggie filled with dried mango and trail mix. Today I used the medium container from the nesting food container set. The lid works really well as a plate so she can pour her trail mix into it and search out all the chocolate chips. :-D

Her cloth napkin is used to tie Furoshiki. I'll put it into her backpack with her Kleen Kanteen water bottle and she is ready to go! This would have worked as a lunch for her too!

*I added a little note in there to let her know how much I love her!

First Day of Kindergarten!

Today I dropped my 5 1/2 year old daughter to her first day of kindergarten. I'm excited and melancholy at the same time. Being a natural foods chef and holistic health counselor, I wanted to make something fun and different for her. Alas, she insisted on a sandwich, boring for me but exciting for her. She has gluten sensitivity so we rarely make sandwiches. Luckily there are a lot of gluten free breads on the market. We like the Trader Joe's brand multi-grain, gluten free bread but it is a little firmer/dryer than regular bread.

The school instructed us to pack a snack that is separate from her lunch and easy for her to get to. Snack time is at 10 am.

For her snack, she wanted yogurt and fruit. So I used the smallest container from the nesting food containers. The night before, I put some plain yogurt in the container and popped it in the freezer. In the morning I put chopped strawberries and  drizzled grade b maple syrup on top. I'm assuming it will be nicely chilled but thawed when she is ready to eat it. I really love these bamboo sporks!

You can see the frozen yogurt below the maple syrup:

For lunch (11:30 am) she requested 1/2 a cheese sandwich and 1/2 a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. In her cheese sandwich, I used shredded raw cheddar cheese, grapeseed veganaise and arugula on gluten-free bread. I used a two-tier tiffin. 

I packed the other half sandwiches in my 3 year old's tiffin while we are out and about today. 

On the lower container, I put white peaches, celery sticks, red grapes and half of a cheese string. Again, this was all her idea. 

I made these cloth baggies, similar to the fold over sandwich baggies in the 70's, remember them? I put some some cashews and rice crackers it it. Something a little more crunchy and savory for her. 

I froze 1/2 cup of water in her kleen kanteen overnight and filled up the rest with water so it stays cold when she's ready to drink. One of her (too small for her) pink socks work really well to absorb condensation on the water bottle.


Here is her lunch with snack before I packed it in her tiffin bag. Her nesting container fits perfectly on top of her tiffin and I'm still able to tighten the drawstrings. 

Hopefully she'll let me get more creative with her lunches as she gets used to going to school! 

*not shown is the weelife lunch note I added to her tiffin bag that says: Have a good day! I <3 U!

Our New Large Tiffin Bag!

Maybe it needs to be called an OM Goods Tiffin "Cozy". Everything fits in this bag so beautifully! Shown is the large tiffin bag for the 3-tier or 4 -tier tiffins. There is plenty of room on top for an extra food container or a couple of whole fruit.


Here is my Klean Kanteen, 4-tier tiffin and a small stainless steel food container. Not shown is the cloth napkin that all our bags come with!


For snacks turned into lunch, we had raw cheese cubes, farmer's market free-range hard boiled eggs, avocado and Trader Joe's Woven Wheat Wafers. In the small nested food container I have goji berries and raw cacao.

Sharing is caring...

sharing with friends...our favorite way to eat lunch. Here I used the 4 tier tiffin and 2 stainless steel food storage containers. The storage containers have almond crackers, almond butter sandwiches and hard boiled eggs. The 4 tier tiffin has hummus, carrots, strawberries, and alphabet cookies with chocolate raisins.

Power Packed Snacks

Clementine cuties, raw cheese, apple slices, blueberries, cashews, and tofurky roll-ups...all in a 2 tier tiffin! Some chocolate covered sunflower seeds and animal crackers for the sweet tooth afterward.

Victoria's Garden

If you are ever in the San Diego area, you must make a trip to Victoria's Garden. We had went with some good friends for some strawberry picking and petting farm animals. The kids loved it! My girlfriend, Marla, used the strawberries her kids picked to make a vegan strawberry pie with a graham cracker crust and soy whipped cream!

We packed a lunch using OM Goods stainless steel food storage containers. PB&J sandwiches hummus, carrots, pasta salad, steamed broccoli and cauliflower and clementines.

caprese salad alternative...

Fresh mozzarella, organic tomatoes and chopped up greek olives...drizzle some olive oil with some sea salt..yum yum!
we had went to the coffeehouse for breakfast and I used the 3 tier tiffin. Organic strawberries, half and avocado and mozzarella salad. I caved in and had to buy a blueberry scone at Rebecca's.

Papaya, Scones and more...

The large stainless steel food storage container is perfect for toting along your favorite cut-up fruit...we had some juicy papaya for breakfast at the coffee shop...Of course our breakfast wouldn't be complete w/ a scone and some yogurt!

Farmer's Market Fruit

I did a 10 day raw food cleanse the beginning of the new year. I made me realize how much energy and better I feel when I eat raw foods. I have been encouraging my family to eat more raw meals. I packed seasonal fruit from the farmer's market and some soaked almonds. I used different sizes of the stainless steel nested food containers.

Zero Waste Feast!

A couple of Mama's and I decided to take our kiddos to Pepper Grove Park for fun in the sun and lunch. We all are very passionate about eco, healthy, waste-free meals. I had to share this picture of all of our tiffins and non-disposable lunch ware. Silverware, cloth napkins, klean kanteens, enamelware bowls, stainless steel containers...we had it all. I'm proud to say zero plastic too! It was nice to enjoy a hot cup of chai (Indian tea) while the kids played...A feast to remember.

Vegan Banana Mini Muffins

I took a traditional recipe for banana bread and added agave nectar instead of sugar, grapeseed oil instead of butter and 1 extra banana instead of eggs. They came out delicious! We shared them at the Hillcrest Farmer's Market with people that came by the OM Goods booth. As my mom used to say when we were kids, "Sharing is Caring".


I used a stainless steel food storage container.

Round bento!

I like this breakfast that I made, it's packed nicely. Almost like a round bento box. It reminds me of the center of a veggie sushi roll.


I used a stainless steel food storage container. It's nice and convenient when you don't want to use a tiffin. Shown is, organic baby carrots, organic blueberries and strawberries and cut up cheese strings. Not shown are Stonyfield organic yogurt cups to go with this breakfast.

Spud Puppies

We have dear friends visiting us from Beacon, NY. We planned to meet at the park after breakfast. I quickly made some Spud Puppies (Yes, a fancy name for tater tots!) for all to share. Here I used a stainless steel food storage container. They actually stayed warm until we were ready to eat them!

Dessert to-go!

I promised the girls that I would give them a treat if they finished their dinner at a dinner party we had to go to. Not a huge fan of sugar, but I don't mind the occasional chocolate raisins and wafer cookies...These wafer cookies from Italy are delicious and all natural from Loacker...Reminds me of traveling abroad before children. Believe it or not I got them at an Asian Grocery store.


Here I used a stainless steel food storage container.

You Can't Catch Me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!!

In the car, my 3 year old enjoys to listening to audiobooks, her current favorite is The Gingerbread Man. She has been insisting that we make gingerbread men ever since she heard it. Yes, me being the freak that I am, I used all natural (organic) ingredients and left out the eggs from the recipe to make vegetarian cookies (not vegan). We had much difficulty making happy faces on them! I kept them in an OM Goods stainless steel food storage container....Of course they were all eaten within 2 days. Next she wants to make homemade bread like The Little Red Hen does!

Outstanding for Oatmeal!

Off to storytime. The girls ate a little bit before storytime, but I know if I can pack some food, they will enjoy listening to storytime a little more. So I packed 1 instant oatmeal packet using one of the nested stainless steel food storage containers and put some organic raspberries on top. Add a spork and cloth napkin and we are set! I like the snug fit of the lid to be able to pack things like oatmeal with out leaking.
Don't know how to pack it all together? Use your cloth napkin and tie a Furoshiki wrap.
My 3 year old likes carrying it like a clutch purse....Furoshiki, what a genius idea.

I sell the stainless steel food storage containers as a set of 3, small, medium and large. This is the small size shown. They are perfect for packing leftovers or round bento boxes too! Please check out www.om-goods.com for more information on the nested stainless steel food storage containers.

El Salvadorian Take-out

I have challenged a few people to pledge zero-waste lunches on Facebook: Zero-Waste Lunch Pledge. One of the challenges I listed was to bring your own containers to take-out restaurants instead of using their throw-away containers. I have just started doing this myself with Mexican restaurants and I want to try other cuisines.

Living in San Diego, we have discovered El Salvadorian food. El Salvador's national dish are Pupusas. Pupusas are stuffed (cheese, meat, zucchini) corn flatbreads served with a pickled cabbage (Curtido). Delicious! I brought my stainless steel containers to El Salvadoreno. They were all too happy to pack my food in the stainless steel storage containers. I brought them home and enjoyed them with my family. I can honestly say there was zero-waste involved in that meal, we ate it all. I loved that there was no styrofoam to toss in the garbage!

Kala Chana Salad to share with friends

Sharing lunch at my 3 year olds preschool, I brought a traditional Indian salad called Kala Chana Chaat, or black chick pea salad. Ingredients are black chick peas, red onion, potatoes, cliantro, lime and salt to taste. Here I used a steel storage container.

Halloween Party snacks

We had a Halloween party to go to and I quickly whipped up some snacks to share. Roasted pepitas, cranberries and sea salt, YUM!!