Well here we are again. An insulated bag, a thermos, a scratched water bottle with several dents, water wounds, each with a great story to tell about the playground equipment they fought or bus wheel they fell under to give them the weathered look they wear proudly each and every day to school. Now what to fill them all with?
Once again, there is no shortage of smiley faced sandwich recipes with raisins for eyes, green, coloured cream cheese to make whimsical, textured, monster-skin, shaved carrot noses and sprouts for hair. Argh. I don’t want to make a frowny faced sandwich out of a flat wrap and a jam smear to retaliate but no one and I mean NO ONE has time to make these sandwiches!
For starters, the raisins are completely off limits as they stick to my daughter’s braces. Any Dentist worth their salt will tell you raisins, or dried fruit of any kind are a major catalyst toward creating cavities so might I suggest using something a little less cruel and potentially extremely expensive long term for the eyes.
Secondly, adding dye to foods is both time consuming and potentially dangerous, injecting your foods with unnecessary additives. We have a friend who can directly link his hyperactivity to red food dye and have on occasion allowed him a taste to watch him bounce off the walls. This is not appropriate for the classroom.
Carrots, okay, I’ll give you carrots but sprouts? What kid likes sprouts? None.
So I’m back to the cream cheese wrap, a container of boring fruit, a container of boring vegetables, (containers because if I use plastic wrap or foil my kid automatically fails the current school year) a yogurt or apple sauce and a piece of cheese. Protein will have to wait until dinner as my kids simply won’t eat a meat sandwich and nuts are, of course for good reason, banned for life.
When we were kids, there were no insulated lunch bags and cute ice packs to keep things cool. There were no sushi bento boxes filled with turnip twists and fried green tomatoes. We brought our summer sausage sandwich with mustard and lettuce in a brown paper bag where it sat in our lockers until the smell of hot sewage would emanate from the back of the room signalling it was time for a food break. The sandwich would have been smushed by an orange, sometimes surrounded by fruit flies, (a whole orange, not one carved using three small surgical and/or scrapbooking tools to resemble a bouquet of tulips) and a large carrot with the skin and leaf prominently displayed for roughage. This is before those cute, already peeled carrots which I have to say, I am guilty of buying myself but have no interest in building a pyramid using toothpicks and pineapple spears and sending in a bubble wrapped shoe box to keep from toppling over before first snack.
I am interested in variety, practicality, palatability and above all a healthy, well-balanced diet for my kids.
If there are resources with simple solutions to the lunch packing blues, I’m all cucumber ears.
