Beastie Boys! They're just like us! Check out brown-bag strategies of director Tamra Davis and husband Mike D (of the Beastie Boys) in this piece for the Huffington Post.

The chicken-salad sandwich is an often overlooked and humble member of the lunch family, but when done right, its homey tastiness is undeniable. When the weather cools, I like to try and make a big pot of chicken stock each week by simmering down chicken legs and thighs. I use the broth and some of the chicken to make chicken-and-pasta soup, and I pick the chicken from the bones for chicken-salad sandwiches. There is usually still some stock left to use in other dishes later in the week. Using only legs and thighs in the stock is the key to yielding a tender chicken salad. I just mix the chicken with a little mayo and some finely chopped celery. Voila! Lunch is packed.

I don't know if this is the case where you live, but it seems like the classic Vietnamese sandwich known as a banh mi—has taken my neck of the country by storm. And I understand this. It may be the most perfect of all sandwiches, a wonderous combination of French and Vietnamese flavors and textures that leaves BLTs and turkey clubs in the dust. There are many versions and varieties of fillings, but typically a banh mi must be made on a baguette or other crusty long roll, with some sort of creamy condiment or mayonnaise, pork (in the form of grilled meat, patties, pate, or cold cuts), and pickled vegetables. (If you want to see one being made expertly in Vietnam, check out this clip from Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations, it will make you want to catch the next flight to Saigon.) I don't know when I had my very first banh mi, but I have been slightly obsessed with them for some time; and my daughter, Belle, luckily likes them too (I think this is because one of the last meals I had before I went into labor with her was a banh mi from a place in NYC's East Village called Nicky's. I snuck the sandwich into a matinee of Motorcycle Diaries and cried and ate my way through the entire movie, hoping that one day my children would eat delicious sandwiches with me and be brave enough to swim across a river to a leper colony).

I have been working on a kid-friendly lunch-box version of a banh mi ever since Belle started kindergarten, one that provides the flavors and essence of an authentic banh mi, but with minimal preparation or the need to purchase head cheese (another common ingredient). My version includes a baguette or a small hoagie roll, slices of pork loin (or boneless pork chops), a cucumber and carrot salad, and homemade miso mayonnaise (this ingredient is very, very, important). All of the ingredients can be prepared the night before. The pork is actually leftovers from dinner, I buy a few extra cuts of pork loin and cook them simply, sprinkled with salt and pepper, in a grill pan that has been coated with peanut oil. I wrap up the extra pork and slice it the next day to layer in the sandwich. For the salad, I use sliced cucumbers (if you have the time, sprinkle them with salt first and let them drain in a colander over a bowl in the fridge for about an hour, to release their excess liquid--and no need to remove the salt, either, when they're ready) and carrots that have been soaked overnight in a combination of rice-wine vinegar and a little sugar (you can add cilantro to the salad as well, if you want a more authentic flavor, but my kids don't dig it, so I skip it). The veggies become pickled and add a tangy vinegary crunch to the sandwich. Last, the miso mayonniase. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this condiment might change your life. It is so easy (I make about 2 cups' worth at a time and store it in a squirt bottle in the fridge) and so incredibly delicious, you will want to put it on everything. But it is essential to my version of a banh mi. The ingredients are a cup of good mayo, 2 tablespoons of white miso (I keep a big jar of this in the fridge--it lasts forever, and you can put it in everything from soup to sauces for extra flavor), a healthy tablespoon of mirin, one minced garlic clove, and just for this sandwich, a couple of dashes of soy sauce. In the morning, you slice your pork, slather the bread with the mayo (if the bread is stale, you can always toast it a bit so that it will still be crunchy by the time your kid unwraps it), layer the pork on one side, the veggies on the other, and maybe add a bit of extra mayo to the top of the pork. There are many ways you can play with this combination to suit your kid's taste. If she's a vegetarian, then you can do just salad, smoked tofu, and even fried egg. If you don't like pork, it's also delicious with chicken cutlets. To save time, you could even use baked-ham cold cuts. I've also made it with tiny pork meatballs.

As a side, a salad of sliced mango sprinkled with lime juice puts this over the top. I have been known to make two sandwiches ... one for Belle and one for my own brown bag.

Doesn't it seem a shame that the traditional sandwich hides all the beautiful stuff--the meats, the cheeses, the greens--under a second piece of bread? This is why I'm a fan of the Danish open-faced sandwiches, smorrebrod. These usually start with a buttered slice of dark rye bread and can lead to any array of toppings, like herring and pickled onion. The idea is to create your own decorative bit of sandwich art, and what could be more fun for a kid at lunchtime?

Despite his Danish name, my son Jasper does not favor the likes of herring and pickled onion. But no matter. We dug through the refrigerator to find an array of toppings for our dinnertime smorrebrod practice. (In fact, you can use the smorrebrod to use up leftovers.) I was careful to slice everything thinly enough that nothing would slide or roll off the open-faced sandwiches. Jasper also doesn't like dark rye bread, and that's fine, too. Just use toasted whole-wheat bread.

Now that Jasper had an idea of the choices and assembly, we packed toppings for the following day's lunch in different compartments. Will he really make a sandwich or will he eat all the parts separately? Who cares? As long as he was the one who chose the toppings, he'll probably eat them one way or another, even if his smorrebrod ends up a plain slice of buttered bread.

To read more about smorrebrod see Ask Bjoern Hansen and this New York Times article.

If your kid tires of the typical PB&J between two slices of toast, switch it up with a roll-up. Dr. Connie Guttersen, registered dietitian, mother, and author of The Sonoma Diet, suggests stuffing wraps (she likes La Tortilla Factory's) with the below ingredients to create a surprising lunch.


Combo 1:
1 banana, sliced
2 tablespoons chocolate Nutella or nut butter (such as peanut butter or almond butter)
1 teaspoon honey

Combo 2:
1 baked apple, sliced 
2 tablespoons of yogurt
A handful of nuts, chopped
A sprinkle of cinnamon

Combo 3:
1 scrambled egg
2 tablespoons bean puree
2 tablespoons salsa

Combo 4:
2 tablespoons cream cheese
3 slices deli sliced smoked turkey breast
1 slice Jack cheese
A handful of fresh spinach
1/4 cup roasted red peppers
 

Chefs share their brown-bag ideas, tricks, and struggles in this NY Mag Grub Street roundup. You're not the only one with a kid that loves goat cheese one day and hates it the next.

Today's New York Times brings us admirable lunch packer Sheri Chen: She sculpts cute creatures from rice and makes flowers out of veggies to get her picky 2-year-old daughter, Lucy, to eat her lunch. "I have to make her food look like something she recognizes," said Mrs. Chen. "If her boiled egg is shaped like a bunny and it is holding a baby carrot, she'll eat it."

Go buffet-style. Lori Slater, a mother of four and the founder of eco-apparel company In2green, puts an array of lunch fixings out on the counter and lets her kids pick and pack.

Kelsey Banfield, blogger of the popular Naptime Chef, shares her favorite tricks of the brown-bagging trade:
 

To keep things interesting, I’ve started changing up the shape of my daughter's sandwiches and fruits by cutting them with my favorite new kitchen tool, the Lunch Punch. These awesome sandwich cutters come in cool shapes, like puzzle pieces and various animals. They also can be used for shaping grilled cheeses, cookies, Jello, and practically anything else you can imagine. No matter the variety of sandwich I make (her current favorite is ham and cheese), my daughter loves assembling the puzzle I pack for her. Then she eats the pieces one by one. She also enjoys playing with the animal shapes and giving them names.

If you can’t find the Lunch Punch nearby, you can easily use a regular sturdy cookie cutter instead. Once I even used her Lunch Punch to “shape” a pile of sticky rice. She loved it and ate every last grain. While I’m not one to sneak food into her diet, I don’t mind making her meals more fun. I’ll even admit that I enjoy it, too.

The Naptime Chef’s Favorite Sandwich Combinations (always served on whole-wheat bread):

Peanut butter with apricot jelly
Grape jelly with cream cheese
Sliced ham with swiss and honey mustard
Sliced avocado with swiss
Peanut butter with nutella (for a treat!)