Healthy and delicious school lunches

Lunch at my children's elementary school is a sad affair. Why it is not possible to have a healthy school lunch with food that is good for learning? Domino's pizza or curly fries just doesn't cut it. Hence my children bring their own lunch. To be honest, I have been dreading the beginning of the school year partially due to the 'morning-lunch-making' experience. My mother cooked for about 85 children and 30 adults every day. She followed a kind of food schedule and certain meals appeared on certain days. I have decided to do the same this year.

Lunch needs to be nutritious, wholesome and fresh. Of course it needs to taste really yummy to actually be eaten. I also try to plan the lunch in a balance with the other meals. If the children have omelet with goat cheese for breakfast, lunch can be pasta and dinner should be focused on vegetables. When the children start with oatmeal or some other cereal, I try to get more protein into the lunch and so forth. Additionally it is important that it is ecological sane and keeps trash as minimal as possible. We are using sturdy lunch bags from Pottery Barn, Sigg bottles, Tupperware sandwich container and snack cups. We also have these great sandwich wraps that double as a surface to eat from. I also like to put a thin damp washcloth in a ziploc bag for messy lunches. Hot lunches stay nice and warm in thermos cups for soup.

This is my plan so far: Monday is sandwich day, because dinner will be soup. For bread we use multi grain, whole wheat or rye, english muffins or flat bread. On the sandwich could be turkey and cranberry sauce, roast-beef and salad, tuna salad (rarely), egg and tomato, homemade cream cheese spread, cheese and apples or anything else we come up with. Tuesdays is soup day, left over from the day before. Favorites are tomato soup with rice, butternut squash soup, chicken noodle soup, lentil soup, chili, minestrone and this list could go on forever . Wednesday is special day like panini, bagel, homemade waffles, spring rolls, salad, natural chicken strips or something special the children request. It can also be buying school lunch for the experience. Thursday is another sandwich day and Friday is Pasta Day with either penne and tomato sauce, whole wheat mac 'n cheese, ravioli or some other pasta dish.

As a side I pick something that complements the meal, usually along the lines of unsweetened apple sauce, yogurt, fruit or veggies (carrots, celery, red pepper) and dip, corn chips and salsa, pita chips and hummus, hard cooked egg or cheese and crackers. My children always have their water bottles, but sometimes they can buy milk. For snack at recess I often pack string cheese, fruit, yogurt smoothie, pop corn, pretzels, crackers, oatmeal bars or popcorn. Because of so many allergic children we stay away from nuts at school and have them at home instead. I like to get the children involved in the planning and to some part in the making. They are already very good at reading food labels and understanding them. We also have them help with the snacks like counting out pretzels or crackers or measuring the volume of a snack. This way they help and learn portion control and serving sizes.

I can control what goes into the lunch box, but of course I cannot control if the children eat it, especially since S seems to eat so slow and talk so much, that she returns home most of her lunch. Today I gave her orders to stop talking and start eating until half her lunch is gone.