School Lunches

Ahh, school lunches. The dreaded nighttime chore of many parents! What to pack? As for me, I get burned out like the rest of you, but have done my best this year to get creative and avoid sending the same thing every day. I do not send the good old American standard, ham sandwich on white bread, chips, and something sweet, because it contains absolutely no nutrients for her growing body, and instead I have been working to come up with healthy and interesting alternatives. I generally do not let her purchase the school lunches which are mostly loaded with fat, sugar, sodium and empty refined carbohydrates and offer little nutrition. Also, we don’t usually purchase lunch meat in this house because we try to avoid industrial meats that have been injected with growth hormones and antibiotics (read In Defense of Food, the Omnivores Dilemma or watch Food, Inc. if you’re not sure what I am talking about here!). On top of all that, her school is tree nut free! UGH. So we are really forced to get creative with lunches here. When you take the two easy American standards of PB&J and ham and cheese out of play, you’ve got to think outside the box.

I know lots of parents get burnt out with packing lunches every night and also run out of healthy ideas for their kids, so I will try to post a few times on this topic to share some ideas.  I have had several teachers tell me what interesting and creative lunches Sydney brings, so I am guessing that most parents are not sending in what I am sending in. But I have no idea what the other kids are eating, so who knows!

1. Japanese-inspired lunch

Ok, if you are Japanese, avert your eyes. This is not a real Japanese lunch box, just an American version inspired by the Japanese bento box. I have a sweet Japanese neighbor, Keiko, who allowed me to come to her house one afternoon to have a Japanese lunch making lesson. She showed me how to assemble an incredibly cute and incredibly small lunch to send to school with Sydney and gave me lots of great supplies to make it more authentic! Her lunches are seriously cute and could be on a magazine cover. I am not yet so skilled, but I have used our little lesson as inspiration to think outside the sandwich box!

What she taught me more than anything was that it’s ok to send what I would consider “dinner” food to school as a lunch. Many items are just fine eaten cold. (Put an ice pack in with the lunch box of course).

So, I try to send Sydney a Japanese-inspired lunch once every week or two to add some variety to her lunches. Some of my Japanese-inspired lunches look something like this:

- White short grain sushi rice (you could use brown for more nutrients, of course) rolled into a circle (using saran wrap so your hands don’t stick to the rice) and decorated with seaweed paper. I personally prefer the Korean seaweed paper because it is wonderfully salty in flavor without having much sodium at all. You can buy it at Trader Joes or at any Asian market – it’s a tasty snack!

- An egg omlette (just an egg with a little salt or soy added for flavor). This one was done in the Japanese omlette pan Keiko gave me, but any shape will do. A real Japanese woman would have formed the omlette into a heart or some other cute shape, but mine was too loose to work with. Novice!

- Edamame with a little salt. Very nutritious and packed with protein. Easy to eat with your fingers if you like.

- Pineapple chunks. Any fruit is fine, but we had sliced a pineapple this week, so that’s what I sent.

- The little container has soy sauce in it (maybe ½ tsp) for the rice ball.

(Hint: I generally only make this lunch for her following a night where I made Japanese rice for our dinner. I don’t want to cook up a batch of rice just for one rice ball. I make a little extra for dinner and use it for lunch).

2. Try pita instead of bread

Today I sent:

- A whole wheat pita cut into triangles with hummus for dipping.

- Slices of gruyere cheese. Sydney loves gruyere, but it’s expensive so we rarely buy it. You can use cheese sticks, or just cube, slice or make sticks out of any block of cheese your kids like. Between the hummus and cheese she’ll get plenty of protein and calcium.

- Cucumber slices.

- Blueberries and clementine slices.

Other tips:

One thing that has helped me get a variety of nutritious items into her lunch (that don’t include nuts or deli meat and can be eaten cold!) is to have a running list of ideas written somewhere in case you just don’t know where to start one night.

To simplify my weeks, I also try to do some prep work on Sunday afternoon while Pierce is napping. Cut or cube cheese, slice carrots, hard-boil eggs, etc.

I try to get at least one fruit, one veggie and one form of protein along with a whole grain in there each day.

I rarely include chips because they are empty calories – with the exception of sweet potato chips which we buy occasionally from Trader Joes. They are an excellent source of Vitamins A and I just overlook the fact that they are fried!
Ok, hope those ideas helped get your creative juices flowing. I’ll post more pictures and ideas another time. If you have ideas to share, please leave a comment! I get lots of my ideas online and from other people!

PS – the lunch container I use is just a Ziploc brand container. It comes in a two-pack for about $2. Each compartment is sealed, so no leaking. I like that there is only one lid to open since Sydney’s lunch is short and time is of the essence! Plus, no waste.