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

We eat whole wheat toast and peanut butter a lot. Also scrambled egg sandwiches with whole wheat bread. They like shredded wheat too, with bananas. boiled egg and a piece of toast...it's not exciting but it does stick with them.

I was just talking to a friend about school lunches today -- sozlet's novelty fetish is definitely a complicating factor. My friend usually sends the same thing for her son's lunch, changes things up occasionally but he's fine with the same basic thing day after day. Sozlet is most emphatically NOT.

I think this has been mentioned before, but hummus with mini-pitas worked pretty well for her recently.

CJane, my kid's the same with sugar. She doesn't have that much but when she does she tends to get hyper. (Or maybe "she doesn't have that much so...")

sozobe, I had a teacher call once because they couldn't get control over
my daughter who was practically giggling non stop in class and disturbing
everyone. That was in second grade. Sure enough I found out that they had a birthday and the kid's Mom brought in those sugary cupcakes. Worked like a charm!

Regarding variety of food: I think boys like eating the same thing every
day whereas girls strive for different food every day. Friends of mine
have 2 boys and they eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every morning -
won't eat anything else. One of them will only eat Spaghetti for dinner, plain
with butter, nothing else.

Hummus & pita is a good lunch, we tried that too. My daughter also likes
the roasted red peppers in olive oil (Trader Joe's) and along with it she
takes 2 tortillas spread with creme cheese and chives, and some olives.

My boys don't mind eating the same thing at all. My deal is I can't control what they eat and what they throw away at school. So I make sure I know it is something they will eat, like yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, peanut butter sandwich, whole wheat cereal bars, etc...any combination of those things.

Otherwise at home...though they would love macaroni and cheese every night - that will not happen here. I will not eat that and I will not cook twice. They eat what we eat. They know it - they don't fuss about it anymore. I give them a minimum helping of everything. They eat it...and I will give seconds if they are still hungry. This has worked well for me. Every once in while they balk at it...for example I have one that hates salmon...he will sit and stare at it until the last possible moment...but he does eat it.

But I will say - I am thankful I don't have to worry about the lunch thing.. though I think it's great that your girls want a variety. I think it would be worth the trouble to see that they are getting a variety of different foods...I just do the best I can!

I agree with you, mismi, children should eat what the entire family eats.
We do the same here, and when kids aren't that fuzzy to begin with helps tremendously, especially when traveling.

Thanks CJ, your comments always help me. I am new at being a fulltime mom and having fun with it.

I looked for Liver sausage didn't find any particular one . I kept seeing chicken liver at the organic store I go to and couldn't find nutritional info on it.

It is not easy trying to provide good nutrition that tastes good and is not ultimately boring. LAtely I have a dry erase calendar and we make menus for a week. I try to limit meats to once a day. I think we eat a whole lot more meat than we need. So0 that would be the only issue with Liver sausage.

I analyzed Nutella Situation again. They don't eat Peanut nutter that much and I don't like using a whole lot of butter. To me comparing nutella and butter is like , you choose your hundred calories from a animal source of fat calories vs a plant source of carbs with some trace minerals. So I still think I will keep nutella around but I don't use it that often anymore. I go through phases of complete lack of creativity. One long weekend at work would do that for a week.

These days it is Egg, Cereal, repeat. My daughter does not like wheaties, rejected KIX and bought two packs of Fruity pebbles with DAD which were proudly displayed on the counter top. I have declared that it is to be used as sprinkles on a healthy cereal or as dessert at night !!!

While preparing lunch for my daughter to take to summer camp and looking for bento boxes online, I run across this. Leave it to the Japanese to perfect even school lunches. Doesn't it look great?

It does look great. My Bento boxes were purchased from Lunchboxes.com. They were great because I can pack variety of things like carrots, dry fruit , sandwiches without wasting a whole lot of packaging material. The temperature of the food is not maintained by the insulated covers as advertised. They have enough space that I was able to wrap ice sheets around foods that needed to be kept cold. For hot foods I used stainless steel Thermos lunch boxes.

I want a Japanese mom!

So cool, CJ! (The heart's a little creepy though... is that a heart?)

Sozlet's been at camp this week, and needed packed lunches every day. She has gotten past her initial PB & J aversion and was fine with having that every day. Different sides -- fruit, etc. But it made things soo much easier.

We sent you vegemite for a reason.

Perhaps you could threaten her with vegemite sandwiches if she doesnt behave.

Hee..!

She liked vegemite for the first bite... not so much the second bite... and by the third bite she was DONE.

I like it in a sort of jump-in-a-cold-lake-after-a-sauna way. Brisk, invigorating. Gets old fast.

We are experimenting with homeschooling this year. I must say the person benefitting so far is me. No more worrying about packing the right lunch and making sure a healthy breakfast is eaten. They set up the table, 4yo prepares food with me. She is not getting boredwith cooked oatmeal which is delightful. I prepare lunch when they are in pool or doing some lesson. I am eating much healthier too. I noticed that I was missing meals , trying to get theirs to school.

Thsi is not intended to mean anything along the lines of pros and cons of homeschooling , I did want to share though that yesterday I woke up early and decided to take a morning walk. It was eightish in the morning when I returned, as I was turning into my driveway I heard a loud " GET OUT" , I assumed someone is potty training their dog. Normally we hardly see, let alone hear the neighbors in this heavily wooded neighborhood. Soon I heard another louder, " I cant find it, you are responsible for your backpack, Now get In " I realized this lady must be talking to her children in an attempt to get them to school on time .The school is on the back of our community . This became one of my observations to share for Circle time. As my daughter shared her dream where she was potty training the 8yo and he fell into the toilet , I was thinking this is pure bliss !!!!

Sorry to digress from your post I just wanted to share.

That made me so sad. I can imagine their English now.

Now...you don't UNDERSTAND vegemite.

It ought to be consumed occasionally...on vita wheat biscuits....with a lot of butter.....( a rare treat for me, I can tell you)...and then you put two of the biscuits together, and SQUEEEEEEEEEEEZE.....until little worms of vegemite and butter come through the holes......mmmmmmmmm.....

Sorry to make you sad my friend !! Maybe this will cheer you up. They are in a waldorf private school. I give them lessons but I have teacher support too. We are reading "Hans Brinken " Translated from Dutch with some astounding words which if I mention would make you feel happier. An example is "Gretel was Lithe" Lithe is something I wanted to look up. Trodged is something I did not know the meaning of and my 8yo taught me. I am learning more from them then they are from me and that is fine. The primary goal was not to improve their English but to not forget the other two they know. They are partially trilingual like me. English is their first language. Spanish we adopted. We seem to be in the melting pot ( literally melting)of South Florida and we are happy. Thanks for your concern.
I really am sorry Soz. I will not do any more defending myself in your post. I have one of my own re; homeschooling.

I rather pack my daughter's lunch and send her off to school - she
would not want to stay home from school anyways, nor would I want her to - socializing is a big part of school life, and I consider this just as important as her curriculum. I always can teach her at home the things she misses in class,
like languages and additional geography, biology, hands on science projects etc. etc. the operative words are "in addition to school" not instead of.

Dr. Mom, I am glad to hear that your children are at school again, and Waldorf
may suit you better than any other option you had considered.

I have to say, the Japanese bring new meaning to school lunches.

Here is something I found on a German site. Cubes of cheese, red peppers, avocado, pumpernickel bread with cream cheese, cucumbers etc. on a stick.
That's nutritious and very easy to eat.



This is cute too (just look at the pictures)
http://www.herzstiftung.de/pdf/Pausenbrot.pdf

Let's talk about Socialization in My Homeschooling/ Unschooling post. They are still homeschooled with a waldorf school curriculum. I wanted to quote some lierature taht I never got a chance to quote.