Now, I whole heartedly approve of the new school lunch regulations in the US. I think is brilliant that our nation's kiddos are being fed food that is better for their little bodies and little brains. I have seen the menu at our children's school. It has improved a great deal from when I was a kid. They even have fresh, local fruits and veggies!
However, school lunches still definitely don't meet my food guidelines. Plus, I hate to push it when it comes to my kid's weird food allergies. They have something on the menu almost every day that my son is allergic to, and at five years old, sometimes he chooses what looks good without considering the potential for an anaphylactic reaction.
And now to reiterate the title of this post: enter the terrifying world of whole food lunchbox lunches. If you think trying to scrape together a nice lunch for the office without using processed food is difficult, try making one for a picky kid without the ability to heat up their lunch and about 15 minutes to actually eat it. All without being wasteful, as I hate the packaging waste involved in most lunches from home.
My first step was to invest in some more containers. Reusable baggies, little sandwich boxes, itty bitty plastic containers, thermoses, nice sturdy water bottles, BPA-free plastic silverware that I intend to reuse but won't cry if it doesn't make it home, and good quality lunch boxes were the first things I rounded up to make sure I'd be able to pack my kiddos lunches without wasting 16 plastic bags a day. Seriously, having handy places to stick all the fresh, good stuff makes for much easier lunch packing.
Next, I had to come up with some ideas that are portable and easy enough to pack for lunch every day. I knew that making their lunch prep as quick and painless as possible was going to be necessary if I was ever going to actually accomplish it. My grand plan? Fill up their lunches with fresh, raw fruits and veggies, a little protein, and a very small, but yummy dessert to keep up morale during the long school day.
And now some ideas for each of these things-
Veggies: Celery, baby carrots, broccoli, snap peas, baked sweet potato chips, bell pepper strips, cucumber slices, side salad
Fruits: grapes, apple slices misted with lemon juice so they don't brown, orange sections, fresh peaches and other stone fruit, bananas, bing cherries, pomegranate
Protein: yogurt, cheese slices, chicken or turkey salad, peanut butter for dipping, almond butter and honey sandwiches (on homemade bread, of course), mixed nuts, hummus, chicken and vegetable soup, lettuce wraps filled with shredded turkey and dilly Greek yogurt
Dessert: no bake chocolate peanut butter bars , zucchini or pumpkin bread, oatmeal pumpkin cookies , a square of dark chocolate, homemade trail mix with chocolate, or your family's favorite homemade dessert in a little bitty portion (I would feel awful for my kiddo's teachers if I pumped them full of sugar at lunch, since now that we eat a lot less of it, they get really nutty while under it's sticky influence.)
Water makes for a perfectly acceptable drink at lunch, and since my kiddos take a water bottle to school anyhow, they just grab it for lunch, too. If your school allows water bottles from home, I highly suggest taking them up on the offer. Remember how many kids put their mouth on the water fountain when you were little?? Yuck..just yuck.
