School Lunches, or What Am I Sposed To Do Without a Fridge?!

Plastics, should we be concerned?
The problem I think is that all this info about plastcs, melamine is new and we need more. Until then it will be confusing. Earlier I was only concerned about certain numbers of recycled plastic and that is as much as I new. Now I learned about melamine from Little K and then Dr.Leonard Sax's Book. HE is searching why Boys are underachieving and are unmotivated c/f girls. Five reasons are listed based on his research. Book is called Boys adrift. Lot of info on website too (boysadrift.com). HE mentions ED's or Endocrine destructors( Interest came fro mmale fish laying eggs in Potomac river near his practice) which have afiminizing effect on males as well as females. So girls are achieving buberty and secondary sex characters earlier and boys are losing motivationn. This coming from a MD?/PHD research psychologist is hard to ignore. Until we have more I think we should be careful. I will try to read more but until then will try to use natural inert materials as much as possible.

Hmm. I'd thought that most of the problems were from heating, as in using plastic in a microwave. Definitely something to keep an eye on though.

Here are a couple more resources I've gathered since I started this thread.

This one is heavy on the propaganda (it's from Boar's Head lunch meat) but has a few useful tips + tools:

http://www.brown-bagging.com

The Food Network has this list of "creative lunchbox" recipes:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/entertaining/article/0,1972,FOOD_9824_4910787,00.html

I'm going to be making the pasta salad with lemon-pesto dressing and a couple of the wraps.

Oh and Trader Joe's has some of that TetraPak milk! I've never seen that before. No refrigeration required, just sitting there on shelves by the checkout (under packages of peanut butter-choc chip cookies... clever.)

Yeah, I love the milk in the box. Costco (and Sam's probably too) carries an organic chocolate milk in bulk and we send that most days. It's the same kind you see them selling in Starbucks. The kids love it.

I'm looking for more healthy snack ideas if anyone has them. The ducklet doesn't eat fruit and I'm having trouble finding things for snack time that aren't too loaded with sugar and that are significantly different from what she ate for lunch. So far I have cheese and pretzel sticks and crackers and the like, but it's all looking a little too bland to me.

Not eating fruit makes it harder fer sure. What about dried fruit, trail mixes, that kind of thing?

Nuts? (Some protein there too.)

String cheese?

She definitely likes nuts, so I'll put almonds (for some color variation) on the list. String cheese works. She also likes those little mini goudas in the red wax wrappings, so I've got those. There is one flavor of fruit leather that she likes -- but that only works so many times.

I'm going to check out your links above and see if I find anything inspiring.

The turkey jerky from Trader Joe's went over really well, too. It's good!

The site with fruit snacky thing with the removable ice pack that CJane linked to (I love that, might get it, it's very small though) also has this:



http://www.theconsumerlink.com/fitnfresh/detail/TCL+710FF/11

Dips sound promising. Some baby carrots or something, then some dip.

I just found that, I want it!

When it's open...



Coooool...

Whoa! That rocks. I want one too.

...sozlet loves chicken Caesar salad... that'd be perfect!

Thanks again for pointing me to that site, CJane, it's a good one.

Then there's this, too!



Geesh. I'm going to have to look at the whole site before ordering anything. (I was ready to order that cylinder thingie above and then thought I'd look around -- I promise not to come back and post every new thing I find though.)

I wish they had dimensions (like, 6" diameter, 3" deep). You have to kind of guess by fruit sizes.

So, making lunches is going OK-ish. I make a menu every night before school -- what I'm going to make for her breakfast, her snack, and her lunch. (We have about 30 minutes between when I wake her up and when we hustle out the door, organization helps.)

The first few lunches frustrated the heck out of me because she'd eat the extras and leave the main thing. (Like, if it was a sandwich, some fruit, some crackers and a cookie she'd eat the cookie and the crackers and maybe 2 bites of the sandwich.) Then I started mashing everything up into one main "entree" -- people here mentioned that too I think, maybe that was the experienced mom I talked to at the pool, maybe both -- and that's going better.

First lunch that really worked was the Rachael Ray lemon pesto pasta (GREAT! I couldn't find bronco-whatever [teeny mozzarella] OR ricotta salata, which was the suggested substitute, so I got regular ricotta and it wasn't discrete enough to work -- was supposed to stay little globs of cheese and instead it just kind of blended with the pesto. Tasted good though.) It had grape tomatoes and fresh pesto and fresh lemon and the pasta itself and basically all she had to eat was that and she was set. Also have made a few wraps, those work well (meat + veggies + sauce of some sort).

I never did buy one of those cool containers, above, still want to.

Temperature hasn't seemed to be a problem, just using the insulated lunch box I got for her + cold but not frozen drink of some kind (juice box or bottled water). Frozen didn't thaw in time.

All kids do that: They eat dessert first and then maybe a bit of the main course. Sozobe, if you get a chance to volunteer during lunch hours, it
is a real eye opener to see what kids eat and what they leave behind i.e.
gets tossed in the trash.

I had to do away with cookies and chips, otherwise Jane wouldn't eat her main meal at all. For recess, Jane mostly ate a health bar which she could take with her while on the playground.

Individually wrapped cheese sticks are very well liked by the kids,
so are those long shaped go-yogurts. Trader Joe's has small wrapped
carrots and celery sticks with either dip or peanut butter, they're good
too.

Chilren in our primary school eat in the classroom. ie the lunch bell goes Kids get their lunches from their bags and sit in the classroom to eat under the teachers supervision.

S/he doesn't make them eat, its just that the kids get too busy in the playground and forget to eat and it resolves a major litter problem.

More recipes please!

I'm doing OK with sandwiches, and boring stuff like that. But sozlet is getting more and more bored with school lunches and I want to get more variety in to what I send with her. (I've been doing about half and half, but she's asked to stop getting school lunches at all.)

Thanks!

Also I'll be getting a good thermos and start sending in warm soups and stews and stuff, that should help.

Corn chowder.

I make this for both of us, then we have leftovers, so it should be enough for three for one night or for a few lunches.

• 1 box of corn soup (I use Imagine brand), preferably low salt
  
• About a half a bag of frozen corn, or corn cut off a couple of cobs
  
• a dash of pepper
  
• sliced mushrooms, if desired
  
• 1 can of fat-free evaporated milk. Get evaporated, not condensed, as condensed has sugar. If you don't want a can, use a cup or 2 of good old milk
  
• Additional veggies as desired; I like to use leftover mashed potatoes and anything else I have lying around, particularly an aromatic (onion, leek, shallot or scallion) or two
  
• oil
  
• a pinch of salt (preferably kosher)

• Set pot on burner and turn to medium heat. Coat the bottom with a thin layer of oil. Toss in sliced (very fine) aromatics and mushrooms. Add a small amount of salt to sweat the vegetables. If you are going to add other veggies, do so at this step.
  
• Add mashed potatoes if you're using them
  
• Let it all cook for a while. You want the veggies to soften a bit and the aromatics to cook down. If you're using onions, cook until translucent. Scallions and leeks have more leeway so you will not have to cook them down quite so much
  
• Add frozen corn, cook until corn is defrosted and warm
  
• Add condensed milk and corn soup. Turn flame to low.
  
• Cook for about 15 - 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a little pepper to taste. Pop the lid on and turn off flame once the 15 - 20 minutes is up. Serve with bread and a side salad.

Some variations:
Add cilantro and a little chipotle pepper spice.
Try adding clams (they can be from a can) and clam juice, and it'll be more like a clam-corn chowder (New England style).
Add tomatoes, either fresh or canned.
Add curry and coriander, and make it Indian. Try subbing coconut milk for the evap milk and it can be more Thai.
Add tofu cubes or cooked chicken to make it heartier.
Add noodles instead of potatoes. Ramen can work with this (flavor pack not necessary).
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I made this tonight (I've been making it for something like three Tuesdays in a row). Tonight's version has mashed potatoes, asparagus, green beans and broccoli in the mix.

I have the same problem. We send a lot of leftovers. Today Duckie has some left over chicken tikka from the Indian restaurant we ordered from last night. Ducklet has some bologna and a croissant. For whatever reason, neither of them like it in a sandwich. The fallback is always peanut butter -- one with jelly and one with honey.

The soup thermos should really help. I need to do that too as the weather is getting a bit nippy.

Just a thought, but you can find just about anything aseptically packaged these days, meats, fish, milk, even mayo. No refrigeration required, easy to open.

Look at this lunch box - quite nice isn't it?

http://www.delight.com/Fabulously-Awesome-Portable-Workplace-Dish-Set