Lunches & Snacks

A grown-up lunch! Turkey pastrami, spinach and mustard on an Everything Bagel Thin, tomatoes to add before eating, bottom of the bag Sun Chips, string cheese.

Kid lunches, served as a backyard picnic. Tuna salad (by request!), low fat Ritz, crinkle cut cucumbers, fresh strawberries with chocolate sprinkles. My tuna salad includes Olive Oil Mayo, chopped dill pickle, black pepper, and feta cheese.

Lunch for one, served at the table. Turkey pastrami, string cheese pre-strung because he likes that, pretzels, baby spinach leaves (aka bunny leaves), watermelon.

New suppplies to use: forks from Michaels and turtle silicon cups from HL. Triple decker PB, honey & banana (because I only had 3 slices of bread), cheese, cucumber cubes, Cara Cara orange, Scrabble Cheez-Its.

Once a week we go straight from school pick-up to library to gym and ballet before coming home, these are the days we need a healthy snack in the car.

Favorite apples, goldfish, cheerios mixed with bits of dried pineapple. They had both asked for dried pineapple recently so they were pleasantly surprised by this snack.

Apples, goldfish, and homemade "Powerballs." Powerballs are a mix of PB, honey, flax seed, oats, white chocolate chips and dried pineapple. These were a big hit! I will post the recipe in the near future.

Apples, Powerballs, graham crackers.

Fun with Lunch & Snacks

I recently blogged about my discovery of Bento and all the impressive, inspiring lunches and snacks to be found online. Well I'm the type that once I'm inspired I want to gets started right away. Here is a progression of the lunches and snacks I've come up with since discovering how much fun I could have. Forgive the not so impressive photos, my kids love to eat and I had to just snap quick iPhone pics before they gobbled these up.

First "inspired" lunch: Trader Joe's Cinnamon Schoolbook Cookies, crinkle cut baby carrots, turkey and cheese skewers on the Wilton "Add a Message Fun Pix" I found at Hobby Lobby, and a Peep with a special note for dessert. Upon presenting this lunch I was told "You are the best mom ever. This is the best lunch ever. I love you so much." And then Cali offered me full spa services in her room after lunch to include a back rub, hairstyling, hand lotion, sparkly lip gloss, pretend makeup and pretend toe polish.

First bento style snack: Half a Cara Cara orange (pre-sliced then wrapped in Cling Wrap), baby carrots, Emeralds cocoa roasted almonds, Trader Joe's Oat n Wheat Bran Swirls, and a yogurt drink. While my easylunchboxes were on order, I was happy to find these Sterlite brand locking top containers for only $2 at the big box store. This is one of the smallest sizes and it fits a surprising amount! This was for our nature center day where they play and play as long as they don't get too hungry so I packed a healthy variety.

This is the same snack as above, you can see there is plenty of room for food and even space for an ice pack on top thanks to the domed lid. I had to think hard whether I could keep the ice pack in there though and decided against it because I figured the condensation would make the crunchy snacks soggy.

Snack: Apple, half a peanut butter and honey sandwich, Trader Joe's Oat n Wheat Bran Swirls, and a salt water taffy treat. I was excited a whole apple could fit! Note these are very small apples though not just any apple would fit.

Weekend Lunch: Crinkle cut carrots, Cara Cara orange, cheese (they each have a preference), yogurt drink, and peanut butter w/ marshmallow fluff crackers.

Snack: Strawberries in baby food box, Scrabble Jr. Cheez-Its, granola bar. The picks were an Easter clearance find. I decided my boy wouldn't mind the flowers, and he didn't. They did tell me I should've written their names and a note on the back though. Had this in the car on a busy, hot day. Should've put them in an insulated bag because the berries got too warm and "yucky" and the chocolate chips in the granolas were all melted and messy.

Lunch for D, all by his request: Shelled pistachios, Cara Cara orange, Triscuits with reduced fat cream cheese, lettuce from the neighbor's garden.

Snack: Apples, crinkle cut baby carrots, fruit leather puzzle (see below) and Trader Joe's Oat n Wheat Bran Swirls.

Fruit leather puzzles. These are Trader Joe's brand, boysenberry flavor. These came about because I didn't have any cookie cutters that were small enough to fit within one strip of the fruit leather. I placed the two strips side by side, cut the boy and girl shapes then cut the strips in half to form two separate puzzles. The kids really thought this was fun!

Waste-Free Lunches aka Bento

Since elementary school I have been concerned about the environment. I was the kid who really perked up and paid attention when they talked about recycling, planting trees, etc. It pained me to throw things in the trash unless it was absolutely necessary. I was a member of Club Earth in high school and wrote my college thesis about recycling. When we lived in TX I collected all my recyclables for about a month before driving them to the bins located on post. They piled up in my pantry and garage and filled up the back of my Trailblazer. It makes me happy to know I have influenced several friends over the years to start recycling and they now enjoy it!!

Now I have curbside recycling pickup, yay! But if you remember correctly, recycling is just one third of the triangle. There's also the equally important, "reduce" and "reuse."

Here's a catchy tune to remind you...

Recently, a mom at our favorite local nature center mentioned her son's lunchbox, I forget how we even got on the subject but I was intrigued. She explained to me that her son has a Planet Box and admitted it was on the pricey side. I could only kind of picture what she was talking about so I got home and Googled it. They are really quite cool, you can check them out at www.planetbox.com

She had a thing against plastic, but I don't necessarily, so I spent the next couple hours over the next couple days researching other lunch packing options. I quickly came across the term bento. Bento is the Japanese term for a "single-portion, home-packed meal" which are typically quite carefully and artfully prepared (wikipedia). Now most of the Moms I Googled weren't packing sushi and rice balls for their Kindergarteners but the creativity in their lunch prep was definitely impressive and bento is the inspiration. I liked both the artistic, creative fun of the lunches plus the benefit of reducing waste in the lunchroom.

I especially liked easylunchboxes.com and found tons of inspiration on her fan site. My favorites so far from that list are Another Lunch and Wendolonia. If you've never given any thought to how many plastic baggies and snack wrappers are thrown into your childrens' trash cans after lunchtime, now would be the time. There are so many fun, creative, dishwasher safe(!) options out there. Oh and that's just one reason these awesome moms are packing such fun lunches! Check them out, there is a lot to learn about health, nutrition, and the special love your child will feel opening their lunch box each day.

I did purchase the easylunchboxes and probably have used them every day since they arrived, often by the kids' request. I should add that I do not even pack school lunches... yet. I have until August for that, but we do love to have outdoor picnics and pack healthy snacks for when we're out and about. Look forward to photos of my fun lunches and snacks in my next post.