“Tiffin” is an after­noon tea or light lunch that orig­i­nated in India dur­ing the days of British colo­nial­ism, and has caught on in much of the Commonwealth. The word itself comes from the English slang, ‘tiff­ing,” mean­ing tak­ing a lit­tle sip of some­thing. Nowadays the word pretty much refers to any after­noon snack con­sist­ing of a few dif­fer­ent dishes.

A tif­fin in India usu­ally con­sists of rice, dals, dosas, veg­eta­bles and cur­ries. The ques­tion is, how do you trans­port sev­eral dif­fer­ent snacks eas­ily, in a con­tainer or set of con­tain­ers that can be taken on a bike, on a busy street or sur­vive the hus­tle and bus­tle and jostling of the TTC?

Behold the inge­nious tif­fin box, or tif­fin car­rier, known also as a dabba.

This is an amaz­ing lit­tle gad­get and replaces the Knight Rider lunch­box, the need for sev­eral Tupperware con­tain­ers bounc­ing around in an awk­ward bag, or dis­pos­able con­tain­ers slosh­ing to and fro in your knap­sack. In addi­tion, the tra­di­tional dabba is made of stain­less steel or alu­minum and keeps the food hot for a cou­ple of hours! Some mod­ern tiffin­boxes are made from enamel, or plas­tic, and come in a vari­ety of designs and patterns.

The three round con­tain­ers stack on top of each other, each act­ing as a tight seal­ing cover, and the stack itself is held firmly shut with a clever and sim­ple car­ry­ing handle.

Empty, the tif­fin box weighs less than a pound; each of the round con­tain­ers holds 750 ml, so you are guar­an­teed to be able to feed a pretty hun­gry gang, no mat­ter what you put in them. If you are going on a pic­nic, a cou­ple tif­fin boxes will give you 6 easy to trans­port, space effi­cient serv­ing dishes that won’t break your back as you nav­i­gate the mean streets of our city.

Since it is stain­less steel, it can be popped in the oven or even over a grill to reheat, if nec­es­sary, but of course a metal dabba is not suit­able for the microwave. And you don’t have to be a dab­bawal­lah (“tiffin’man”) trans­port­ing an Indian feast to use one; a dabba can be used for just about any meal, hot, cold or in between. 

(Tiffin boxes can be pur­chased at Tap Phong Trading Company, 360 Spadina Ave. for $15.00)

This is the sus­tain­able seafood dabba — for an impromptu fun pic­nic lunch at the office. Pumpernickel bread, herbed cream cheese, cucum­ber pick­les, pick­led egg, caviar from Acadian Sturgeon and smoked trout from Kolapore Springs.