This week on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):

Cooking With Kids: School Lunches

> Personally, I can see the storm cloud of chicken nuggets gathering on the horizon, but my daughter Iris, 3, just started preschool, and her school doesn’t serve hot lunch. So I have to send sack lunch, and if it’s no good, I have no one to blame but myself.

I’m getting better at making lunch, but the real test of my mettle will come next week when I have to send snack for *the whole class.*

I’m at the Tully’s Coffee on 19th. I ordered a tea for here. At this Tully’s, for some reason, their tea-sized mugs are a random assortment like you’d see in an office lunchroom.

This time they did something that has never happened to me before in hundreds if not thousands of visits to Seattle coffeehouses. They gave me my tea in a mug *from a competing coffee chain.* (Verite, to be exact.)

I think this is the very definition of confidence.

Iris could spend a whole afternoon tasting jams at the Woodring Orchards stand at the Broadway farmers market. You can taste any of their products, using the same little plastic spoons they have at the ice cream shop.

Woodring doesn’t actually have an orchard. They buy excess product from local farms and turn it into preserves. I mean it with the utmost respect when I say that Woodring is like a fungus: they convert discarded organic matter into something delicious to eat. In addition to the jams and chocolate sauces, they sell a variety of pickles; the spicy green beans are my favorite. They also maintain a stand at Pike Place Market, open every day.

Last week at the market, we told Iris she could choose any jar she wanted. She only had to taste a couple to alight on a selection: lavender jelly. “Are you sure about that?” Laurie asked. Iris was sure.

The lavender jelly is seriously pungent. I could see it working as a glaze on a rack of lamb. But Iris likes it on toast and considers herself especially lucky if her bite of toast features a big glob of jelly.

I was also surprised by Iris’s choice, but it’s not like she took the spicy green beans.

As I wrote a couple months ago:

> There’s an odd vacuum in the local hamburger bun market. You like sesame seed buns, right? I do. What I don’t like is a bun so large that it dwarfs my patty or forces me to make a gargantuan meat disc. When I go to the supermarket, however, all I ever see is normal-sized plain buns or huge sesame buns, such as Franz BBQ buns.

Today Iris and I made a remarkable discovery: you can convert a non-sesame bun into a sesame bun!

Make a loose egg wash by beating one egg with a couple tablespoons of water. Brush this on the top of a sadly seedless bun. Sprinkle liberally with toasted sesame seeds. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in a 300°F oven for 7 minutes. (You don’t need to bake the bottom bun.) The bun will get slightly welded to the foil from the egg, but I was able to detach it without too much damage.

I let Iris eat one of these for snack. The rest are for tonight’s burgers.

Paul Levy writes in Slate today about his decision to “opt out of the macho food-writing movement.”

Great! That means there’s a spot open, so I’m opting in. No more vegetable bullshit for me. Only real man food. Here’s what I have penciled in for the few days.

**Thursday:** Leave Iris in the care of my rottweiler while I slaughter an 800-pound wild boar with my bare hands and turn it into the finest charcuterie. Feed the head cheese to Iris and the dog for snack. Use any leftovers to win the Salumi Salami Challenge.

**Friday:** Take Iris to school, fireman-carry style, with three links of blood sausage in her lunch. Then head to Metropolitan Grill to trail in the kitchen, cutting steaks. Accidentally sever thumb. Grill thumb to perfection and serve it to the chef, flipping him the (unsevered) bird as I pack my knives and go. Pick up Iris after school.

**Saturday and Sunday:** The weekend! Enjoy continuous beer and fellatio.