I have made a real effort to make my kids healthy lunches for school. No chips, they takes carrots or some other veggie, a fruit and usually a turkey or ham sandwich on whole wheat. But I need some other ideas for them before my girls turn into a turkey sandwich. They do take soups sometimes or other things in their thermos. But they are getting tired of all that. I'm not real good of thinking of things, it just ends up me suggesting another lunch meat. Any good ideas for a main course in a lunch box?
you could always do cold homemade pasta salad? try some of that new sunbutter (i am obsessed with that stuff right now!) little baggies of grapes, celery sticks with sunbutter or cream cheese, try doing wraps with a tortilla instead of bread?
My kids like hot dogs, taco salad, pasta salad, wraps/breakfast burritos, peanut butter between 2 mini waffles, chicken strips, bagel with peanut butter or cream cheese, trail mix. With all the hot foods, I just warm them up in the morning and send them in their lunch box, they are about room temp by lunch time and they don't mind at all. Pepperonis. Almost forgot that one. I send some crackers and cheese cubes and they eat those with the pepperoni.
The site I bought their lunchboxes from had some great recipe ideas.
www.laptoplunches.com
I think their product rocks!!!
What about peanut butter and jelly. They do make those premade ones which my kids all love and sometimes are "different" than the made ones. Sometimes we don't have a sandwich. I put cheese sticks in or how about yogurt sticks? Sometimes she takes summer sausage slices and no bread. Sometimes she does take fruit cups, pudding or jello cups. I give her pretzels sometimes which are a healthier alternative. Do they get to buy sometimes for a change of pace? Maybe try the turkey or ham cutting it up into cubes and sending with cheese cubes and toothpicks. Hope this helps.
peanut butter and jelly is great, Dr. Oz said so! (plus when i was little that was it - pb&j, or bologna! and i survived just fine lol) but i also thought you could just change things up a bit...put the sandwich fixings in a tortilla instead, or make homemade lunchables, cut up the meat and cheese and give them crackers to eat it with. another special "treat" would be maybe once or twice a month allowing them to eat school lunch. and remember, you're the mom, so if they're just whining about being bored with it, you do have the perrogative to say, "sorry! if you have any better ideas feel free to give them...otherwise you're eating on MY budget, so deal with it!" sometimes kids just whine to whine, or because they hear other kids at school...it's a good lesson to teach kids to be happy with what they have. just a thought...
Hi S.,
I am lucky my son will eat anything cold-pizza, grilled cheese, meatloaf sand.(usually from last night's dinner), quesadilla's-plain or with chicken, sloppy joes, tuna salad, sausage balls, chicken nuggets, sausage and cheese biscuits, as you can see you can send just about anything.
I try to send a veggie (most days) and a fruit everyday.
Another thing that he loves is what we call fluff salad-cottage cheese,cool whip, pineapple, mand. oranges and dry jello. Just make sure that you have plenty of ice packs so it doesn't get to warm.
Frozen yogurt tubes work well because by the time lunch comes around they are soft enough to eat.
A Thermos can be so great especially this time of year-chili mac, white chili, mac and cheese,tuna casserole,any casserole leftover from the night before.
My best investment was to by a couple of sets of Rubbermaid containers that actually twist on so whatever you put in them doesn't leak out.
Hope this helps
K. B
