What About School Lunches For My Kids?

Ah, every parents dilemma. You want to make a healthy lunch for your kid but somehow you always get stuck on sandwiches. It seems so easy to plan out lunch for yourself but if you have a picky eater like I do, well it's even more of a challenge. Here's an easy way of making your life easier and ensuring that your child has a healthy lunch.

With your child you want to plan out ten main lunch items, ten fruits, and ten veggies that he or she likes to eat. Have your child create a chart for ten week days Monday-Friday. That will give you a total of two school weeks. Next, place each main lunch item in one of the Monday-Friday slots. Add a fruit to each item and a veggie from your list until you have created your two weeks worth of meals. Once you've done that check and see what items are missing a protein. If there aren't any your good, if you are missing protein in a meal then add nuts or a veggie like broccoli. Now you have one main item, one fruit, and one veggie, for each meal complete with protein! Here is a list my daughter and I planned out for the next two weeks, as you can see it's nothing fancy but it does the job. You can also add a snack item to the list. I usually just put whatever stood out that week at the grocery store so we don't add that to our list. Snacks can include granola bars, trail mix, crackers, fruit roll ups, etc.

Most of her items are vegan or vegetarian options, this includes the ribs. Skye still enjoys eating meat but I have noticed that as time passes she is choosing more of the vegan or vegetarian options on her own. The only meat items on the list are chicken noodle soup, turkey sandwich, and pasta salad with celery and tuna. Three out of ten ain't bad! Also, if you're going to include meat make sure it is labeled free range (if it's chicken), no hormones, no nitrates, no antibiotics, and of course organic.

A picture of the vegan ribs:

These vegan ribs can be purchased at Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joes, and probably anywhere else. Morning Star is a popular mainstream brand.

You will have food left over. I like to freeze it and start over again after the two weeks are done. You can also pack it for your own lunch or save it for a dinner later in the week. If you have any fruits or  veggies you can either juice them right away or freeze them for a breakfast smoothie later. Leftover nuts can be stored for a long period of time. Nuts are best kept in the refrigerator.

This chart should be updated as you see fit and kept somewhere visible like on the refrigerator. It's an easy way to plan out meals and most of the items can be packed the night before.

If it is a warm food I always pack it in a thermos. Also remember to pack an ice pack to keep food at a safe temperature if needed. The rest of the items I store in reusable Bento containers made by a company called laptop lunches. You can find their products at your local Whole Foods or online at http://www.laptoplunches.com/. I like using these containers because they are not only nice to look at, but they contain no BPA, lead, or phthalates that can leech into your child's food causing all sorts of other issues that you don't want. Plus they're reusable, which means eco friendly!

Try it and let me know what you think!

Melissa
Our Daily Veg