Starting in three months I have to pack a lunch for a three year old! I’m at my wits end! I have no clue how to make a quick and healthy meal for my child that won’t take a lot of time every night before we go to bed. I want to be able to prepare a week’s worth of lunches in about an hour on Sunday afternoon. I then want to be able to grab them out of the fridge and toss them in her super fancy kid lunch bag that makes her look like she’s carrying very nutritous food.
At her current Spanish immersion daycare they provide her with warm organic lunches every day. She’s currently eating better than I am with meals like rice and oranic veggies, taco roles, veggie soup. Her lunches look a little like this:
I need the help of all the seasoned momma and dadda lunch packers out there otherwise my little girl’s lunches may well end up looking like this, where the tator tot serves as the veggie:
Please post a reply with your best quick and easy school lunch menus and tips. What lunches have you found to be good? I’m particularly interested in menu ideas for lunches that can be prepared in bulk and then just thrown in the lunch bag.
I’ve never had to do this so I’m soliciting ideas from all of you out there. I tried looking for a good blog on kids’ lunches but all I found was mother’s complaining about how much they hated making lunches.
The one ideas I’ve had so far is:
Lentil soup: heat a bowl up in the am and throw it in the thermos. Toss in a piece of whole wheat bread and butter and some apple slices. I think I can handle that. Now what about the other 364 days?
After I get a number of suggestions I will create a new post with a list of the ideas.
The only restrictions are that they cannot include making cute, tiny faces out of food objects; 
and they cannot involve writing love notes on pieces of fruit.
No offense http://www.thekitchn.com/lunch-surprise-write-a-secret-154283 It’s cute but as a single working mom, I just don’t have the time for that!
I’ll be looking forward to all of your great ideas….yum, yum!
single mom on the run 
I highly recommend taking a look at the website, 100 days of real food. I could list all sorts of ideas here, but many of them are summed up there: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/category/children-adapting/school-lunches/
Does your kid eat lentil soup? Mine doesn’t.
Hint — little kids like the same food. Every day. If they will eat it and it’s healthy, let them have it. Mine gets a PB sandwich on wheat. Thermos of milk. (I buy the no sugar added, natural PB.)
Side dishes get rotated — bite size fruit is always a hit (grapes, cut up for very small kids, berries, apple slices — soak in lemon juice for a few minutes so they don’t turn brown, then rinse so they aren’t sour), or a fruit roll-up/bar, trail mix, applesauce, fruit cocktail cups in juice, yogurt tubes, cheese sticks. Afternoon snack is something similar as well (do you have to pack those?) 😀
Mini piece of candy for dessert. They love that.
Too many things or too much food is overwhelming for small kids. I stick to a 1/2 sandwich, the milk, two small sides and some days, a treat.
Some schools are nut-free due to allergies; it may depend on if your child’s classroom has a kid with nut allergies. If that is an issue, you can sub another kind of sandwich they like obviously, and the trail mix will be a no.
Hope that helps. 🙂