Fruit and Cheese Plates: Not Just for Parties

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Often at parties and wine tastings the host offers a fruit and cheese tray for guests to snack on, with a combination of foods that complement each other and tantalize your taste buds. But why wait for a party to enjoy such a tasty dish? You can make a lunch from the very same ingredients with just a bit of prep time. Other reasons to try a mini version of the snack tray:

• It's the perfect lunch for the dog days of summer (cold, and no oven time required).
• It's easy to snack on if your lunch is less than an hour.
• You'll get in servings of produce, protein, and calcium.
• Bite-sized foods make some of the best lunches for kids. Just cut down on the portion size you serve yourself and you can quickly pack lunches for the whole family.

Ready to start? Let's get packing!

Lunch Inspiration: Fruit and Cheese Plate 101

Restaurant owner Donna Hager of Real Restaurant Recipes offers the following advice for creating fruit and cheese plates, which has been adapted for packing a make ahead lunch.

To begin, you select your cheeses. Here's what to do:

• Choose at least three cheeses, and no more than five.
• For a lunch, allow 6 to 7 ounces of cheese for one adult.
• Choose a variety of cheeses. Different textures and colors add interest to the plate. For example, you might combine a soft brie with a hard cheese and an aged cheddar.
• Cut ripened cheeses into wedges, semi-soft into cubes, and hard cheeses into slices.

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• Select three to five types of fruit, preferably in-season.
• Pick fruits that can be sliced up easily or eaten whole, such as apples, pears, melons, kiwi, berries, and grapes.
• Don't forget that you can include dried fruit, as well, such as prunes, dates, apricots, and pineapple rings. Dried fruits add another texture to your lunch.

Finally, add in the extras, such as the following:

• Sliced artisan breads or baguettes
• Crackers with interesting flavors and textures
• Nuts
• Pitted olives

While fruit and cheese plates are often served with wine, it's unlikely that you can have wine with your lunch. Instead, pack a bottle (or box) of grape juice.

How to Pack Your Plate

This type of lunch deserves a nice presentation, but how does one accomplish that when the fruit and cheese is in a lunch box, and not carefully plated on a tray?

You could pack it in a shallow, reusable container, using silicone baking cups to separate foods. Another option is to consider using a bento box. A bento is a Japanese box lunch packed in reusable containers that separate the foods. With bento box lunches, each of your cheeses, fruits, and extras get their own little space, protected from mushing together into a one big fruit-cheese blob.

You might even like bento box lunches so much that they become your regular method of packing lunches. Lunch in a Box writer "Biggie" explains why she packs lunches in bentos: "I want to feed my family nutritious food, but spending a lot of time on every meal isn't feasible...For me, it's got to be sustainable over the long run, which is why I make speed bentos."

Finally, be sure to pack a small butter knife if you're including spreadable cheeses, and if you want to be extra fancy (or just eco-friendly), don't forget a cloth napkin.

A lunch like this will surely make you the envy of the office breakroom. If that's the case, why not include your coworkers in a "tasting" lunch, with each person assigned to bring a different fruit and cheese? You'll save money, and everyone can join in on the fun!