School Lunch Ideas - Clearfield, UT

I use www.SavingDinner.com. Not only does this help tremendously with planning my dinner meals, saving us money by not eating out, but we get good, healthy meals. There are also lunch ideas also for the kiddos. It's a great site!

Oh, I LOVE packing lunches for my kids! My son is active with a big appetite and school lunch is neither nutritious enough nor filling enough for him. I am actually excited for school to start. We really enjoy our Laptop Lunches lunchbox--it was spendy but well worth it for being able to pack a million things besides a sandwich. Their Web site has tons of ideas, too, as does www.lunchinabox.net, which I think someone else already suggested. There's also veganlunchbox--I can't remember the Web site but you could find it if you Googled vegan lunch box, I'm sure. Tons of good ideas. Sometimes thinking vegetarian opens up new ideas you might not have considered before. Bento sites will also have great ideas, since the Japanese bento is the original yummy packed lunch--lots of people are adapting traditional bento ideas to American tastes now. I've enjoyed the books "Brown Bag Success," and "The Healthy Lunch Box," and several other fun books about ideas of how to include notes and such with lunch to send a little love with food. I think one is called "Hugs in a Lunch Box;" if you surf Amazon.com you will easily find lots of lunch book suggestions. I read the suggestion to have color-theme days of lunch (like a pasta with red sauce, strawberries or red apple slices, paprika-sprinkled slice of bread, and a pice of red fruit leather for red day). I can't wait to try it!
A good Thermos is nice, too, and opens up even more options for leftovers and stews. Chili and rice is a big hit here. Anything with dips or assembly (french toast sticks with syrup or jam, veggies and hummus, taco components to mix together or stack on chips, English muffin pizzas, sandwich fillings to stack up) are fun. Presentation is everything--cookie cutters make things fun, too. Even PBJ is jazzed up if it's in the shape of flowers or animals. If you make things appealing enough, your daughters will be excited about bringing lunch and might even get into the habit of helping you make it.
Someone else asked about packing lucnhes maybe a week or so ago, so maybe look back and read the responses that mom got. I remember there were quite a few good ideas.
Have fun--it doesn't have to be complicated to be tasty and wonderful!

Hi!

If you want the kids to have something warm ( I know you said nothing that has to be warmed up) Here is what I do and it has worked for years. I fill the thermos with boiling water before putting the hot food into it for like 5 minutes to warm the thermos. I always ask if the food was warm at lunch and they say it was warm and good. So...Spagetti, Spagettios (their favorite), soup, ramen, mac and cheese. I have seen left over, hot wings, chicken nuggets all in the thermos when eating lunch with my daughter.

Cold lunch ideas...roll ups, sandwiches cut into shapes or cut out with a cookie cutter, cheese and crackers, frozen gogurt, salad with cheese and meat, pasta salad with cheese and meat.

Hi there, I was kind of wondering the same thing, I just put a variety of things my daughter likes in her lunch box, fruit , veggies , a protein and a sweet thats healthy, example those kozysnacks they are pretty good.
Good luck
J.

here is a GREAT website! they were just featured in parenting magazine or one of those (parents, parenting, family fun). anyway, great ideas! healthy and so many choices!

http://www.laptoplunches.com/LaptopLunchPhotos.html

I send my 10 yr. daughter to school with her lunch everyday. We use a small serving size thermos container, we warm up the food in the microwave and then put it in the container. It's still quite warm by lunchtime and she can take stuff like leftovers from dinners, microwave mac-n-chesse, etc. We also like the new Breyers Yogurts with toppings/mix-ins. I am lucky to have a child who is not picky about her foods. So, just about anything goes for her. Also I stock up on plastic spoons from Wendy's (I like them because they are individually wrapped)and I send those with her when she takes hot food. We also like the Crystal Light drink packets that you put into water bottles. I think Kool-Aid makes them also.I also make lots of mini muffins and put them in individual snack size bags and put them in the freezer. We take them out whenever she feels like a muffin and they are defrosted by lunchtime or we pop in the microwave for a fast and easy breakfast or afterschool snack. I have found that when you include the kids in the decision-making process, lunches become more creative and enjoyable. Good luck!

Hi C.! I know of these amazing nutritional meal bars that my 5 year old just loves. They are much much better then any sandwich and really any meal on this planet. I've seen my daughter stay sharper and more focused on them too. I'd love to share how to get them.

B.

This may all seem obvious, but you never know, maybe something might be helpful to someone. Make sure if you buy individually packaged items, that your daughter can open them up herself or knows to ask for help. There was a little girl in my son's kindergarten class who didn't eat anything Monday or Tuesday because she couldn't open her string cheese, her fruit snacks, her pack of goldfish, or her yogurt. She was still too shy with her teacher to ask for help. :-( I let my son pick out which fruit and which vege he wants, so he's more likely to eat them. I have mini-carrots, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, and celery on hand. I try to use reusable containers whenever possible. If you pack a sandwich with mayo, be sure to put an ice pack underneath. I cut out cheese shapes with a cookie cutter and ate the scraps myself for a snack later in the day. Pasta salad with shaped pasta is fun, there are wheels, bowties, tubes (ziti). Good luck, can't wait to see what everyone else posts.

Ask your daughter what she would like. I am often surprised by what my kids think would be yummy. They like to take homemade burritos (just a tortilla with refried beans and cheese) and eat them cold at lunch (yuk to me). My son likes ramen noodles. He microwaves them in a tupperware container in the morning and drains most of the water out, then just takes them in his lunch. My kids have taken leftovers from the night before, too. By lunchtime, everything is room temperature anyway. Add some fruit, a drink and what ever else and they are good to go. Of course, we do the basic sandwich a lot too. Cut up cucumbers, bell peppers, etc. are great too.

i buy frozen squash and mix it with honey. you could keep it warm, but it is fine at room temperature.

uncrustables are good and easy to put in their sack. Wal-Mart has sliced apples in the fresh produce they are in individual sacks and they stay fresh until you open them. Also those hundred calorie packs are good for a tasty snack but teaching them portion control now. Also those Jello pudding snacks are good. good luck

Good ol' fashioned PB&J, carrot sticks, and a cookie. Buy milk at school.

The September issue of Parents magazine has tons of good ideas for taking lunches to school.

sandwiches are always good. PB and J, balogna, ham, turkey, vegi... You can also ask her what she would like to take.

You may want to look at doing bento boxes (they're not just done with Japanese foods anymore). They are meant to be eaten at room temperature. www.lunchinabox.net is a great resource - she also talks about how to preserve food until lunch, etc.

Hi- We do all sorts of things. I have 3 kids in school and they all like differnt things. I have made a snack bucket of things i dont mind them having. Some of this is things like granola bars or fruit snack- some stuff I have bough in bulk so I put them in my own snack backs (saves money this way). I also have gogerts in the fridge and cheese sticks. They can grab one snack from this stuff. Then I have a juice bucket. I usually have 3-4 kinds of juice in there. They get one juice. Out of the fruit we have around they can grab one and for main thing- they have choices, tuna sandwiches, meat sandwiches or wraps and I also have little rubbermaid containers around so they can put either cottage cheese and fruit in it or peanut butter to have sliced apples dipped in peanut butter. I have one kid that wants a wrap every day for lunch one that would likes the stuff without bread- cottage cheese. I did buy my kids cooler lunch boxes which keeps their stuff cooler- but it stays fine for the 3 hrs till lunch. also the frozen gogerts are a great ice pack until lunch time. Each kid really likes differnt things and I try to let them all pick- even my preschooler likes to pick from the buckets for his lunch then we do something for the main thing later.

veggies, fruit, main dish, dessert, drink...

carrots, celery w/ PB, apple slices, basically any fruit sliced, fruit leather- especially the yummy kind at costco, fruit snacks, tortilla chips, homemade or storebought cookies, a small water bottle filled w/ water or koolaid or 100 percent juice would be good, and a sandwich. Peanut butter, bologna, ham, tuna fish, blt, etc. Whatever your daughter likes. She can buy milk for something like 25 cents.

no candy, leftovers that other kids will think look gross and tease her about, no peanut butter on wheat with nothing to drink, etc. Good luck!

i know that at our school the kids throw away alot of food because they are more interested in playing outside. so my suggestion would be to just ask her and go shop with her letting her know what she thinks matters. but still set your limitations. hoping that her food does not go to waste. it may be as easy as a dannon smoothie and a granola bar. yogert and a banana. simple simple and easy. good luck. and god bless

We fell in love with hummus here as our school is peanut free. Hummus and apple butter, cream cheese with cucuber blended in it, about any flavor cream cheese, ham, ham spread, or just about anything you can think about. I make my own spreads in a mini food processor since one child is dairy free too. I got these dinosaur sandwhich cutter things at king Soopers and the kids love it! Also, many pastas can go cold. My dairy free son likes pumpkin butter from the rocky Mt. Pumkin Ranch on his...a little olive oil. also, Target has soup thormases that keep things warm...not hot but warm. Have't tried myself. Also a make your own Lunchable is fun...my kids like to pick out their stuff and I cut the cold cuts down to cracker size. Oh, and freeze yogurt tubes...they are perfect by lunch.

I also saw the statement about opening their own meal. We are going green here. I found wonderful lunch boxes at Pottery Barn Kids. they have last several years and don't stink yet. They had reusable boxes...they were expensive but have really lasted, fit well together in the lunch box, and don't leak. I am so happy. I buy big bags of pretzels, etc. and then put them n the little plastic boxes so I am not adding land fill and they can be opened easily, oh, and then they aren't pulling the food out on the dirty tables as they have a "plate" for their food.

Make different kinds of sandwhichs, BP&Jelly or honey, turkey or ham(my kids don't like mayo/mircle whip or mustard, just a dry meat sandwhich)chicken salad sandwhich. Maybe a tortilla roll-up,just like a sandwhich but items rolled up in a tort. maybe add some bbq sauce and cream cheese for the spread, a slice of meat, cheese and any other toppings. You could also spread some refried beans on a small tortilla for a cold bean burrito wrap. I always slice up some veggie like cucumbers, carrots, green/red peppers, sugar snap peas or other veggie. Some fruit- I have canned peaches that I put up that are in my food storage, an apple/orange, fruit cup. If your child likes salad, like mine, maybe some sort of salad wrap. Pasta salad is always good. Make a batch of it and randomly add that to her lunches until it's gone. Hopefully this helps.

My daughters also take home lunch and they don't really care for sandwiches. I bought them each a food thermos and I can fill it up with hot food in the morning and it stays hot. You need to fill the thermos with boiling water for a few minutes to heat the inside, then dump out the water and put the food in. They love hot soup, leftovers, pasta, or anything else they normally love to eat. Make sure you reheat the food really, really hot (soups to boiling and solid food hot enough to burn) so that the food is the perfect temperature when lunchtime rolls around. Otherwise it's lukewarm and my girls don't like it.

We also do cheese and crackers, grated cheese and tortilla chips, peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches, rolled lunch meat, carrots, string cheese, yogurt, broccoli, and fruit. My girls each have an insulated lunch bag that I put blue ice in every morning so I send them with a bottle of cold milk and other cold snacks (I save and wash the small plastic milk bottles you get from fast food restaurants or other places; you can reuse them over and over again). The ice doesn't seem to affect the food in the thermos so I can put everything in one bag. They also really like having cereal for lunch. I will send them with a container of dry cereal, a bottle of milk, and a spoon. I even sent one daughter to school with scrambled eggs and the other with a hard boiled egg a few times. If you keep hot things hot and cold things cold there should be no problem with food poisoning.

I have read such great ideas from the other moms about this! One thing I have to add is to make sure and keep the food at the proper tempreture to avoid food poisoning, try freezing go-gurt or putting in a reusable ice pack (make sure it is not leaky). Fresh fruit is alway good because it can get a little warm and still be OK, my daughter likes the little "schoolboy" size apples because they are just the right size for her. I have also tried wrapping one or two slices of turkey or ham around a cheese stick and then wrapping it again in a lettuce leaf, stick a toothpick in to hold it all together.

get a thermos. target has some w/characters (also plain) for $15. they keep food hot for 5 hours and cold for 7. then you can send soup, rice dishes, mac-n-cheese, noodles, etc. breaks up the monotony of sandwiches. also hard boiled eggs are good for protein.

My daughter loves wraps,ham and cheese, turkey and cheese with lettuce and tomato with a dab of mayo, or sandwiches. PB&J is still a fav. For mayo sandwiches keep it cool with a lunch ice pack.
Also there is cold pizza, which is a favorite in my house! :)
I will also on occassion get the lunchables as sometimes they have healthier versions and my daughter loves cheese and crackers. Pack a gogurt too with a cool pack.
Make up homeade chicken tenders or breasts and bread them and bake them or fry in canola or olive oil, pack with cool pack with ranch dip for dipping.

School lunches aren't the best for sure! But I have to say, I still think they are cheaper than buying and packing-- even though my kids this year insisted on home made.

Anyway, I invest in a lot of pre-cut fruit, like apple slices, orange slices and whole fruit like plums, apples and peaches (be sure to grab the smaller sizes for your kids). Sometimes I make simple bean and cheese burritos which aren't too bad when cold. Also, both of my kids have insulated lunch boxes and containers for hot or cold food. You can heat up whatever you've got and transfer it to the insulated container. It stays good till lunch.

My daughter loves plain green beans out of a can, so that goes in now and again. That can be done with corn and peas too. And don't forget tuna-- there's all sorts of wonderful little lunch packs that include tuna now.

We do pinwheels, a torilla and some mayo and ham and shredded cheese roll it up and cut up into pinwheels. You can do turkey and ranch is good. My sister bought a thermos and put a hot dog in it and it kept it warm and packed a bun and ketchup packet. We also cut up our sanwhiches with cookie cutter to mix it up. We also do quesidillas in chicken and cheese, cheese or add alittle pizza sause, cheese and pepperoni to make a pizza quesidilla they are good cold. Hope this helps.