Kid's Lunches
At the end of a the day when you have finished your workday, then spent time with the kids, you've made and fed everyone dinner, cleaned up from the dinner and miscellaneous other mess, completed the extended version of a toddler bedtime, it is now time to tackle the dreaded kid's lunches.
I often wish our chosen childcare provider served lunch even knowing it would likely not be the healthiest foods and would be more costly than us doing it ourselves. Truthfully we often envy those centers late at night when we are packing lunches even though we get more control over our kid's diet this way. Sometimes it's a slam dunk and you remember there is pizza party on the schedule for the class or you have dinner leftovers you know your kid will eat and they won't be too much of a pain for the teachers to reheat. But then there are the other times you haven't been to the store in a week and are scraping the bottom of your viable options and finding your standards sliding lower and lower. We generally try to stay away from convenience foods like "easy mac" and lunchables, though our daughter has done the occasional pleading at the grocery store for what some of her peers eat daily. We have relented from time to time and it sure does make the lunch packing easier.
We attempt to send fresh fruit every day and build a thoughtful lunch but sometimes it is hard to come up with things to pack. Having leftover dinner really helps to build the base. We use a bento style re-usable container from Amazon (linked) that we have had two sets for two years now. We have lost a couple tops from cracks but they are overall still going strong considering we use them 200+ days a year. They are dishwasher safe and stack nicely to store. (Funny side note is these are running $23 for a five pack currently but when I bought them they were just under $10 for 5 containers!)
I thought I would share some ideas of what we do on the days when we don't have a plethora of leftovers or much planned out. I would love in the comments if you had any new ideas to add to the list! A couple of limitations I should note is that our daycare / preschool is a peanut free zone (including granola bars) and our almost 4 year old can be very specific about what she will and will not eat, eliminating some healthful ideas for other kids that she just will not entertain. The kid will eat broccoli, asparagus, and brussel spouts but do not try to make her eat yogurt, peanut butter, or applesauce!
I often wish our chosen childcare provider served lunch even knowing it would likely not be the healthiest foods and would be more costly than us doing it ourselves. Truthfully we often envy those centers late at night when we are packing lunches even though we get more control over our kid's diet this way. Sometimes it's a slam dunk and you remember there is pizza party on the schedule for the class or you have dinner leftovers you know your kid will eat and they won't be too much of a pain for the teachers to reheat. But then there are the other times you haven't been to the store in a week and are scraping the bottom of your viable options and finding your standards sliding lower and lower. We generally try to stay away from convenience foods like "easy mac" and lunchables, though our daughter has done the occasional pleading at the grocery store for what some of her peers eat daily. We have relented from time to time and it sure does make the lunch packing easier.
We attempt to send fresh fruit every day and build a thoughtful lunch but sometimes it is hard to come up with things to pack. Having leftover dinner really helps to build the base. We use a bento style re-usable container from Amazon (linked) that we have had two sets for two years now. We have lost a couple tops from cracks but they are overall still going strong considering we use them 200+ days a year. They are dishwasher safe and stack nicely to store. (Funny side note is these are running $23 for a five pack currently but when I bought them they were just under $10 for 5 containers!)
I thought I would share some ideas of what we do on the days when we don't have a plethora of leftovers or much planned out. I would love in the comments if you had any new ideas to add to the list! A couple of limitations I should note is that our daycare / preschool is a peanut free zone (including granola bars) and our almost 4 year old can be very specific about what she will and will not eat, eliminating some healthful ideas for other kids that she just will not entertain. The kid will eat broccoli, asparagus, and brussel spouts but do not try to make her eat yogurt, peanut butter, or applesauce!
- Noodles (veggie rotini, penne, bowtie, etc) tossed in balsamic vinegar salad dressing
- Soup of kids preference warmed and sent in a thermos container
- Rolled up lunch meat and cheese slice or stick (she will not eat a sandwich of these same ingredients)
- Scrambled Cheese Eggs
- Fried Egg cut up
- fruit cups when we have no fresh fruit on hand
- slice of bread with butter on it (she would not eat peanut butter even if we were able to send it)
- crackers with lunch meat
- triscuits and cheese
- green olives
- dried fruit like apricots
- Hard boiled egg - lightly salted (no yolk)
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