I have volunteered to take over lunch-making duties from my wife - let’s just say it helps even the workload.
I have a 5 1/2 yr old daughter and a 3 1/2 yr old son; they are both “decent” eaters, but not sophisticated by any means. Variety, nutrition and ease of preparation are primary concerns. They both typically bring insulated lunch bags with icepacks. Side items usually consist of yogurt, fruit, cheese sticks, cereal bars…
PB&J is out for my son (peanut allergies at school), but he makes up for it on the weekends.
On the weekly list already for main course:
Turkey Breast or other deli on wheat bread or crackers
Tuna or egg salad sandwiches (when I’m inspired to make)
Mini Bagel w/cream cheese (not a favorite choice of mine since they have same for breakfast often)
Cheese & crackers
I make lunches every day (actually the night before) for my kids, since they hate school lunches. It does get tiring and tedious at times.
Some of their favorites:
Cold pizza (when we get pizza, I order extra to have for a few days)
Baked Tostitos with a container of queso and some veggies and ranch dip
Sandwich-sized pepperoni on mini-rolls
Bacon/Swiss/Pesto sandwiches
Bacon/Ham/Cheddar sandwiches
Cold pasta with a little olive oil, parmesan and black pepper
Spaghetti salad (recipe here)
Let them make salads at the grocery salad bar
Deli meat and cheese rolled up in tortillas
Hard-boiled eggs, a cheesestick or yogurt, crackers and fruit, sometimes with a slice or two of bacon
Cold breakfast pizza Pasta salad
My kids both loathe school lunches. Today’s lunches were:
Daughter(17) – 7 peanut butter crackers, 1 oz BBQ potato chips, 1 oz salted cashews, 2 oreo cookies, and a water
Son(9) – 2 oz tuna fish (with mayo mixed in for consistency/flavour), 10 saltines, 1 oz sour cream & onion potato chips, 1oz salted peanuts, 2 oreo cookies, and a gatorade.
That’s pretty typical fare for them. Sometimes, my daughter will ask for sushi – which we buy pre-made (even comes with soy, ginger, wasabi and chopsticks) at Publix. My kids are pretty basic in their lunches, since they always get an excellent dinner.
My recommendation to you, if you know you will be making lunches always – it is cheaper to buy sandwich bags (I buy those industrial zipper pouches in two sizes where I work, so they’re dirt cheap!) and a digital scale. I buy whatever chips/cookies/healthy snack the kids want for the week in the big “family-size” bags and portion it myself. It is cheaper and they get actual portions, instead of some insane crap (like how most pre-packaged stuff says it is 1.5 servings or whatever).
Some of the other stand-bys that are asked for:
Goldfish (or generic equivalent) crackers
ham/turkey/other deli meat (with cheese for daughter, without for son)
shortbread cookies
mandarin oranges
pineapple slices
My 9YO daughter sometimes eats school lunches, if they’re serving something she likes. But sometimes I pack her lunch. My main challenge is she doesn’t like sandwiches (except grilled cheese!)
So: cubed cheese, cubed summer sausage, whole-grain Ritz crackers, fresh fruit (she’s more likely to actually eat it if it’s already prepared, like if I pre-slice the apple and such); some dinner leftovers she likes at room-temp for lunches. When we have hot dogs in baked beans for dinner, I pack her leftovers in a Ziploc container, and put a slice of buttered whole-grain bread (folded in half so the butter doesn’t stick to the baggie) in a baggie. If she gets meat/cheese/peanut butter and crackers, she gets two fruits (one fresh or a small cup of applesauce, etc) and usually one dried (yogurt-covered raisins or other dried fruit) plus a reasonably nutritious “dessert” like a Go-Gurt or low-fat pudding cup. For a drink, I’ll give her a small bottle of water or a “water pouch” (sold with the juice pouches; but watch out: one of the brands has a lot of sugar added and one doesn’t).
I don’t have kids, but I look for packed lunch suggestions for my own lunches, and Lunch In a Box has really neat suggestions for kids. Lots of example lunches and recipes.
I don’t have very creative food ideas (lunch for my son today - salami & lettuce on a small roll, clementine, pretzels, cheese stick, a cookie, water), but I’d like to recommend these reusable bags. My son loves them, they’re sturdy, they’re washable, and you don’t have to keep buying ziploc bags.
I’ll add rice cakes - either the small cakes or the big round ones. They come in yummy flavors, and they can replace the junk food in the lunch with something healthier. My kids love them.
During the colder weather, my daughter likes to bring a thermos with soup, chili, or leftover pasta, stew, etc. You can get small thermos bottles that fit in a lunch bag. On those days I just leave out the ice pack.
Check with mom and the kids for past favorites, and work from there. No reason to reinvent the wheel.
Offer to teach your older kid to make her own lunch. Maybe not this year, maybe next year or the year after that. When I was in second grade, I took over lunchmaking duties for myself, and I never looked back: I could pack the gross stuff my mom wouldn’t make (e.g., scrambled egg sandwiches). I teach second grade now, and when I suggest to my students that they could make their own lunches, their eyes grow wide at the possibilities. I think more parents should have kids make their own food.
No, it’s the school’s…although I’m not sure if it’s by class or the entire school. It’s a synagogue school also, so kosher rules apply (no ham/bacon, cheese and meat together, etc.)
Most of this stuff sounds pretty good to me, because for 13 years I ate:
–Peanut butter and jelly (although it got more sophisticated as I got older, wheat bread instead of white, currant jelly instead of apple, etc).
–string cheese or one of those little Laughing Cow cheese wheels if I was feeling fancy
–“crunchy stuff” ie, chips, rice noodles, etc
–some kind of a desert thing
–juice box
In high school when I had to get up at 5:30am, I could make that lunch in my sleep, which is why I always had the same thing.
I am enjoying this thread, but I must say that I pack lunches for my two kids and for Dearly Beloved since I am at it; and all three of them eat very much the same thing every day. I think bento lunches are the coolest and have thought of all kinds of nifty variations for them; but alas what they want is the same thing every day.
For dinner this is not the case; for breakfast it is not the case. But for lunch, well, at least it doesn’t take long to put together. If I make them somethign cool, they come home and say, "Thanks! But tomorrow can I please have Same Old Thing again?
My 6-year-old’s school is also peanut-free. I’ve bought different butters in the past (soy nut, sunflower, etc) with varying degrees of success.
We also got a thermos for her recently so that she can bring soup. The school cannot reheat anything for her, so we fill the thermos with boiling water and let it sit while we heat the soup up very very hot. Dump the water out and fill with hot soup really right before leaving. By lunch time, it has cooled some but is still warm enough for her tastes. You could do the same with leftover pasta or casserole-type foods.
My daughter who is normally a very picky eater will eat almost antying if I cut it into pieces, slide it onto a skewer shishkabob-style. Just makes food more interesting, I guess.
My son is one of those kids who is allergic to peanuts, and I am happy to hear your school must be a peanut free place. Ours isn’t. He has to be careful not to eat anything other kids bring, and has his own snacks for snack time if they have something peanuty. It has happened a few times already. It is really scary and sort of playing Russian roulette with the allergy kids if you ask me. But I also understand what a bummer it is for the PB and PBJ eating fans.
You don’t know how much I wish I could just whip up a quick PBJ sandwich for him sometime.
Our son is happy to eat the same thing every day, and even when I don’t pack his lunch, he will chose the bag lunch option from school, which is either PBJ(can’t have this), or Ham and Cheese sandwich. S0 he has a ham and cheese sandwich 50% of the time. And the rest of the time he takes a lunch from home, or chooses the hot lunch.
From home he just wants a jelly sandwich, or a cheese sandwich.
He loves raisins, carrot sticks, apple slices, and apple sauce, or yogurt. So he usually gets a combo of some of those things too. He also gets a milk from school to drink.
He isn’t really all that picky, but if I want him to each more than a few bites, I have to be pretty consistent.
