Well the lovely ScatteredMom is talking lunches over at her little corner of the interwebs. I wish I had been paying attention earlier when she said we should be taking pictures... d'oh.
I find lunches hard both for Abby and myself. Our school is on a balanced day program. For those of you who don't know, a balanced day is set up in five parts. A morning teaching session followed by a 40 minute eating/outdoor time break (20 minutes for each), another teaching session, another 40 minute eating/outdoor time break and then the final afternoon teaching session and then home time.
Twenty minutes isn't that long of a break to eat, especially when you're a kid because there's just so much other stuff to concentrate on. I rely on sandwiches and easy to eat snack type things rather than a full meal. Typically I'll pack a sandwich, Abby likes four kinds of sandwiches - one thin slice of ham with mustard, peanut butter and jam, grilled cheese or an egg white omelet on an english muffin. All on whole wheat bread. The peanut butter is not allowed at school, so she usually takes the first option, although, occasionally she'll ask for a grilled cheese. The egg white omelet is relatively new to the line up and hasn't made an appearance at school yet. Every once in a very long while she'll ask for pasta in her thermos, but not very often.
I round out the main course with an combination of the following:
a muffin - oatmeal chocolate chip seems to be the house favourite
a cheese string - these have lost their appeal, so they'll be out of rotation for a while. Abby is not a milk or cheese fan, but she liked those.
whole wheat crackers and some turkey - This is great as an added extra when it's pizza day (once a week) or sub day (once a month)
pudding or a yougurt - only lemon pie will do.
popcorn - another favourite snack 'round here.
cookies - only home made around here. Usually chocolate or buttersctoch chip
high fibre granola bar - these have lost their lustre too. Time to go back to homemade.
dry cereal - another item that has run it's course for a while.
Recently we found out that she was eating most of her lunch for first break and then had nothing for her second break. As a result she was coming home from school starving. So now we talk about what's in her lunch and what items she'll eat first and what she'll leave for the afternoon. That seems to be working out better.
You may have noticed that there's no mention of a drink. My kids don't drink pop or very much juice. Grandma Sandi will occasionally bring over some fruit and veggie juice and Grandma Linda has koolaid jammers at her place for them. My girls, by and large, drink water. As I mentioned Abby is not a milk fan, but will have the occasional chocolate milk with her pizza lunch. It varies month to month whether or not she wants it. We order lunch for a month in advance. Maya loves milk, chocolate milk specifically, but we buy syrup and make our own and the amount that goes in isn't much. Abby takes refillable water bottles to school and keeps them refilled from the fountain.
It's far from perfect at this point, but it's evolving and getting better and nobody said mounting a revolution was going to be quick or easy.
What do you pack for your kids lunch?
As always, thanks to the fantastic Scattered Mom for hosting food revolution fridays.
3 comments:
I love hearing what goes into other people's school lunches. I'm constantly in need of ideas.
Right now I only have to pack a snack for Gal Smiley, as she just goes half days, and it's always the same -- banana chocolate chip muffin. If for some reason I'm out of muffins (HORRORS), then she will take a rice cake or rice crackers.
The Captain is so hard to pack for, as he can't have peanuts, nuts, milk, or eggs. He is also not a fan of meat or legumes or anything else resembling any kind of protein. Almost every day he gets bacon (the only meat he will eat), crackers or homemade bread or pumpkin muffins (the only kind he will eat), a dried fruit bar, and either carrots, cucumber, or red peppers. He gets a cookie or some animal crackers every day, too. It sounds very sparse but although it isn't much food, usually at least half of it comes home uneaten, anyway.
And then we have a total meltdown on the walk home because he is STARVING, and JESUS, EAT YOUR LUNCH ALREADY, KID.
we have the balanced lunch day here as well. I find the same as you-generally smaller "snack" type things seem to work best. I pack cold meat in a container (jumbo summer sausage sliced thin is the fav here), crackers, cheese, mini carrot sticks, celery(with or without cream cheese), mini pitas with tzaziki in a tupperware for dipping, or hummus, green apples/applesauce/grapes/strawberries, bagels with cream cheese, mini croissants, yogurts, pickles, cold hard boiled eggs, bread and butter, bananas, salads in a tupperware.....Some weeks they just want the same thing day in and day out. Others, they need something completely different each day. My kids would rather talk (nonstop) than eat though. Sigh.
Don't worry about a picture! It's no big deal. I just thought it would be fun.
Jake never used to drink juice, and we always pushed milk until we figured out that he was lactose intolerant and it was making him sick (ummm..OOPS)
These days he's tall and a beanpole, so I figure some juice can't kill 'em. (grin)
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