All of you wise, wise parents out there. Please enlighten me. What do you pack for lunch for your children? What sort of container(s) do you use? Do your children bring home the containers or do they throw them away by “accident?”
I remember as a child my mother would pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrap them in waxed paper. Remember that stuff? Am I dating myself here or what! And by the time lunch rolled around the jelly would have absorbed into the bread and the bread itself was stale. Whatever drink I had brought, usually milk flavored with strawberry Quik, in my Holly Hobbie thermos would be room temperature. I just shuddered involuntarily at the memory of it.
I know food storage has come a long way since the Dark Ages. So please share with me all your lunch making secrets. Give me links. My children will be infintely grateful.
Ideally, I would use plastic containers for sandwiches and snacks every day, but they get thrown out at school, or I forget to run the dishwasher, or we’re out at sports and activities after school and I don’t get to empty lunchboxes until late, so most days I use foil for their sandwiches and plastic bags for snacks. If my kids bring the plastic bags home, I reuse them if they are clean. I try hard to be green at home where I can, but with school lunches, we don’t always have a lot of time and I tend to use the disposable stuff more often. Packing lunches in our school is definitely more economical than buying school lunch though.
Comment by Sharon — August 17, 2009 @ 8:20 am
The lunch “boxes” of today are soft sided and insulated. I use plastic containers and bags, all get brought home. I make everything the night before and put everything in the lunchbox and put it all in the fridge-keeps cold all day, it seems. I have a friend who bakes cookies this time of year, puts one or two in baggies and freezes the whole lot so she has some for lunches. Puts them in the lunchbox the night before and they are defrosted in time for lunch.
Comment by Anonymous — August 17, 2009 @ 9:51 am
I only pack a lunch for one of my kids because she is an extremely picky eater and just will not eat the food at her school. I usually use snack bags and sandwich bags for her because she kept throwing the other stuff away. Though when I put ice packs in her lunch bag, those usually make it home. I would send yogurt or string cheese and some sort of fruit and some crackers for her (the child has no problem eating the same thing every day, either), but since she prefers water, I just let her get her drink at school. Even when she would drink milk, I preferred she buy that at school since it was only 35 cents and I knew it would be much colder than anything I could send. Hope that helps!
Comment by Jennifer Lanehart — August 17, 2009 @ 10:35 am
Freeze the juice box and include a spoon in the lunchbox. It keeps the rest of the lunch cool, and usually melts into slush by lunchtime. Once you drink whatever is in the box cut the top of teh box off and eat the rest of the slush with the spoon.
Comment by Scott — August 17, 2009 @ 11:39 am
Oh school lunches, my least favourite thing! Our school is peanut free due to several children with allergies, so it makes it a challenge to find pre-made items like granola bars to send. I make the night before and store in fridge, using mostly baggies and plastic containers. I send only plastic cutlery. They each also take their water bottle. Most things stay cool with an ice pack. As my kids aren’t big on sandwiches, I do a lot of snack lunches -tupperware container with veggies, dip, slices of ham, cheese and crackers. Lots of fruit. Yogurt tubes are a hit – freeze them first. Juice boxes or milk. In an insulated bag with an ice pack, the milk is usually cold enought still by lunch. One thing I tried that worked is that each child (3 in school) takes a turn at being the lunch helper for the week – that child gets to stay up a bit later than the others to help and it is a nice few minutes alone with them. They look forward to being the helper and I found having that time made the chore less onerous. Good luck!
Comment by Mindy — August 17, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
The usual sandwiches – turkey, ham, pb&j, chicken, etc… cut in half & wrapped in a paper towel (doubles as a placemat!), then into a sandwich bag (plastic, could be reusable, but I don’t. Sorry). Sometimes a hot dog (they don’t mind if it is cold).
A cheese stick, or cheese cubes usually in a snack bag unless the cheese is prewrapped, or pudding, yogurt (going for something dairy), and then some fruit. Sometimes, that is apple slices (again, ziploc), grapes, orange sections, or maybe berries of some kind – and in this case I use a small plastic bowl with a lid and send a plastic fork or spoon in the lunch box. The bowl is to be brought home, fork/spoon can be tossed. Possibly crackers, or chips, or granola, maybe cookies if I’ve made some, a brownie, etc…
I’ve also been pretty happy with the individual sized sheets of foil (you can get in bulk in a pop-up box). They’re perfectly sized for sandwiches and snacks.
This year, I have three in school that will be eating lunches that I prepare. It is much more economical. I recently purchased thermoses (Land’s End has two sizes, the smaller one comes in a pair!) and we’ll be using those for leftovers from dinner from time to time (pasta, gumbo, soups).
All this goes into an insulated lunch box with a juice box and an ice pack. The ice pack comes home. I also instruct them to bring home ANY leftover sandwich, fruit, etc… rather than dump the entire lunchbox out. This way I can see what they’re eating/not eating, and if perhaps they don’t touch the grapes/cheesestick, it can go back in the fridge.
Another hit for us is just a container of hummus, pita rounds, some veggie sticks. Maybe peanut butter with apple slices to dip? I’m perfectly happy if they’re eating fruit and cheese and some sort of grain. I would get tired of a sandwich every day, too.
I have always prepared lunches in the morning, with one kid instructed to be the helper while the other two set the table for breakfast or feed the pets, or whatever other nonsense must be done. But I love Mindy’s suggestion of having a kid help make them the night before.
Comment by Missy — August 17, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
Here’s a pretty good link:
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/kids/feature/famf98lunchtogo/famf98lunchtogo.html
Comment by Missy — August 17, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
I too stressed about a week before my son’s first day of Kinder. Gotta love the internet for solutions. Here are the three sites that took my stress away.
Lunchbox solutions at kraftfoods dot com
then, itsachievable dot com forwardslash sack-lunches-for-picky-eaters
and finally, stretcher dot com forward slash stories forward slash 980723a dot cfm
My favorite ideas were wraps, make-it-yourself lunchables, and for the drink, I freeze an inch of water in his water (i never send juice – he doesn’t need it) bottle and fill it up in the morning. I give him three reusable containers: we’ve numbered them 1,2 & 3, that is the order he should eat b/c he’d be more likely to skip the entree. Also a freezer pack. So far, so good. He has also brought everything home each day – even partially or uneaten foods. It can be a mess but at least I know what he ate. Usually, I send a fruit, a dairy: gogurt or cheese stick, and a wrap w/ some filler….. Good filler ideas are refried beans w/ bell pepper sticks, cream cheese, ham and sweet pickle, shreded cabbage, dressing and cheese and salmon or tuna salad w/ relish. I keep it together in foil then put it in the number 1 container.
Hope that helps.
Comment by cyannsi — August 17, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
You’ve probably already figured this out but just put a little peanut butter on both pieces of bread and jam in the middle. That way it won’t soak the bread.
We homeschool but when we need to take a lunch my kids pack their own. They like veggie pitas. They pack the pita, lettuce and whatever veggies and salad dressing they want.
Comment by The Lazy Organizer — August 17, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
I always pack for any trips and also found the frozen juice bags are great to double as ice packs.
Alternative lunches like fruit and yogurt, cold chicken, lunch meat and cheese slice rolls (pinwheels), or cheese and crackers are a hit.
I use snack bags for goldfish or dried fruit, instead of prepacked to save money.
on field trips, bottle water and mix sticks are great.
I always pack a “treat” whether it is a Hersey kiss or fruit leather. This way they are not tempted to gorge on ice cream or cookies being sold.
Tuna and egg salad sandwiches or deviled eggs are NOT good lunch meals. They smell when you open them and my kids have been picked on because of it. Sushi also sticks the room, but my daughter doesn’t seem to mind the teasing those days.
Good luck and just experiment. You can’t go wrong as long as you have fun with it.
Comment by Claire — August 18, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
Mine often get leftovers, packed in a thermos. keeps warm til lunchtime. I also freeze juice pouches or let them get milk from the cafeteria.
String cheese, applesauce in half-cup plastic containers (I like Lock-Lock types, they do not leak), rolled-up slices of ham or turkey, leftover pizza in a plastic container…and for those days when I just can’t get it together, I am not ashamed to say I toss in one of those pre-made frozen pb&j round things. We all do what we need to do to get them out of the house and on the bus.
Also, I wrote our last name and DO NOT THROW OUT on all the containers, so the lunch ladies don’t dump them if they are forgotten on the table.
Comment by Ani — August 18, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
I use the sandwich bags and then the other snacks have their own containers. I have used plastic containers and, yes, my daughter (7yrs old) will sometimes accidentally thrown them away. The disposal ones are good for this, but it is hard to find the right size. I got her a thermos (when did lunch boxes start NOT coming with a thermos?), but she only ever brings water. On occasion we will give her a juice box. To keep things cold I put in one of those ice packs. I found some at Target for a $1 with different characters on them. I guess that is better than the ones I got from the hospital to keep breastmilk cold.
As for lunches, my daughter got into a groove of PB&J and a variety of snacks. I would try my best to be creative, but all she wanted was PB&J. I think it was because she could make it herself. I finally just gave in, because, hey, it is not my lunch. However, I am always looking for ideas and found this website: http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/YourKids/LunchboxSolutions/BackToSchoolHelper.aspx I, also, have a long list of different ideas, but it is too large to post here.
Comment by SoMo — August 19, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
my son is a very very picky eater we are trying very hard to break him of this but i don’t try anything new at lunch he gets just what he wont’s which is 2 sandwich’s meat and bread only which i back in 2 sandwich container they always make it home some how a baggie with chips in it (he brings me the baggie back) a plastic container with juice in it (which makes it home as well) a apple, banana, or orange and a jello in a small container. my son goes in the summer and normal school year just a bit shorter days, at the beginning of the year i told him if you throw these away it is bad for the environment we can recycle them by using them every day i haven’t had a problem yet
Comment by ncgibson — August 25, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Does anyone freeze regular yogurt and then put them in lunches??? I am wondering if you can do this with any yogurt???
Comment by momma19 — September 9, 2009 @ 9:48 am