Make freezer work for you when it comes time to pack kids’ lunches

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This article was published 22/08/2011 (5454 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – For many parents, packing kids’ lunches for school means scouring the kitchen to see what can be thrown together. But often overlooked is the freezer, which, with a little thought and organization, can make the daily digs yield good, healthy food.

“The freezer is great for giving you variety,” says Crystal Asher, who owns Detour Roasters Cafe with her husband in Dundas, Ont., and is a mother of three girls. “Think of it as a closet full of outfits. Think of your freezer, fridge and pantry the same way. You have to look at your food and think, ‘What else can I do with this?'”

For Asher, this means employing the right tools to help you. Ice cube trays repurposed during the baby years to freeze homemade fruit or vegetable purees can be reused once kids grow older. Asher makes sweet potato or roasted pepper purees, freezes them in ice cube trays, and defrosts them when she needs a sandwich spread for lunch.

“It’s a good way of ramping up the nutritional value,” she says.

She also makes larger-than-needed portions of soup and freezes the leftovers in ice cube trays. When needed, she’ll pop out four cubes in the morning. Once heated up, this amount is enough to fill an insulated food container.

Asher also takes advantage of fresh local fruits and vegetables in the summer, preserving them, cooking them and freezing them.

“The season in Ontario is brief but bountiful,” says Asher. “Otherwise, you’re eating apples and pears for eight months of the year.”

While the ice cube tray is a useful tool, Lulu Cohen-Farnell, founder and president of Real Food for Real Kids, which caters fresh food using local ingredients to schools, camps and daycares in and around Toronto, prefers using freezer bags in her home kitchen.

“You can get more into them, they can lie flat, and you can stack them so you have more room in your freezer,” says Cohen-Farnell, a mother to two kids.

She regularly cleans, chops and freezes fresh herbs, vegetables and fruits, and carves out sections of her freezer for each.

“At home, I’ll buy fresh herbs and ingredients like scallions, ginger, parsley, cilantro or mint to enhance the taste of my food,” says Cohen-Farnell. “I’ll use them fresh, but I’ll buy double and freeze them for when I don’t have time or to have just as a resource.”

There’s no need to defrost the frozen herbs, and this allows her to sprinkle portions of the herbs into sauces or soups.

When it comes to fruit, she peels and chops just about anything for freezing: bananas, blueberries, peaches and pineapples, for example. On any given morning, this gives her the versatility to throw one or two fruits into the blender, along with some rice milk, and the frozen fruit eliminates the need to add ice.

She does the same for leafy vegetables such as kale and collard greens, which can be added to soups, stews and smoothies.

“Not everyone knows what to do with some of these greens, which might be a bit bitter, but by freezing them chopped, they are more adaptable,” she says. “You can add frozen kale and frozen ginger to a soup. And it’s a way to work greens into your smoothies.”

Parents who work in the food industry are divided over which grains should or shouldn’t go in the freezer. Asher says wraps freeze better than bread, brown or multi-grain rice holds up better than white rice, and she cautions against freezing pasta, though she says freezing the accompanying pasta sauce is fine.

Others, like Paul Hickey, who offers prepared meals at his Toronto company Today’s Menu and is the father of two teenagers, believes in freezing cooked pasta, as long as it is done properly.

“If you freeze (cooked) pasta on its own, it’ll dry up,” he says. To freeze it, he advises cooking the pasta until al dente, coating it with sauce and sealing it in a container that is airtight. The lid should be in contact with the food.

Hickey makes the freezer work for him after school too: his kids love eating grapes or cut-up mangoes straight out of the freezer, a sweet, healthy alternative to freezies or Popsicles. (Hickey warns this might not work for young kids, who can choke easily.) Asher, meanwhile, bakes double batches of muffins, saving some to freeze for later use for lunch boxes or after school.

Fresh food is always best, of course, but the freezer can play a useful role in meal preparations, for kids’ lunches and parents’ lunches alike.

“You need to have inspiration when you make a meal,” says Cohen-Farnell. “And your ingredients are what will inspire you.”