School Lunchbox Lunches

Funny how easy it is to make something theoretically simple into a source of hair-ripping-out stress! Anyway - I'm in a lunchbox rut with my kindergartener. My goal is to give him healthy, interesting food; I am not that concerned with pleasing his kindergarten palate. I have a thermos that can be used for hot foods every other day (to give me time to throw it in the dishwasher.)

Here is my current rotation:

Tortilla wrap - usually ham or salami and cream cheese (today I snuck in some baba ganouj that I had on hand) carrots and fruit
Pasta with pesto sauce, piece of cheddar
PB&J, banana, string cheese
Frozen tortellini or ravioli with tomato sauce, apple
Homemade 7-layer dip with tortilla chips, carrots

Any ideas on how to shake this up? I should also mention that I'm usually fixing this while halfway through my first cup of coffee - i.e. barely conscious.

If the kid will eat baba ganouj, you've got a more adventurous 5-year-old than most.

How about hummus and little baby pitas (or pita chips)?

Hot soup (in the Thermos)

Crackers, cheese, carrots and a piece of fruit

Tuna salad or chicken salad (with fruit/veggie sides)

Chili (which you could make ahead, freeze in small batches, and then serve up over the course of a few weeks)

Breakfast for lunch...egg sandwich

Does he eat sushi? Yeah, you'd have to get the grocery store version, or leftovers from dinner the night before, but...

Chef salad

Yogurt with fruit or veggie

Turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato

chgoeditor wrote:Does he eat sushi? Yeah, you'd have to get the grocery store version, or leftovers from dinner the night before, but...

The Wife used to make our daughters nori rolls when they were in sixth grade or so, but that kind of food might be kind of tough for a five-year-old to handle...unless I underestimate the omnivorousness of this young person.

Sorry that you're in a rut, though it's nice to see the creativity at play here with the standard school lunch. Here are some other ideas though it may require a more adventurous palate that your kindergartner may possess:

Siu bao - Chinese steamed buns. They can be eaten room temp or hot and you can just get some of the takeout soy packets. I believe you can buy them in the frozen food section at most Asian markets.

Cold fried chicken. Mmmm.

Taco salad i.e. taco meat, chopped romaine lettuce, shredded cheddar chips and jar salsa - just pack the ingredients separate and have him mix at lunch.

An alternative to sushi would be kimbop (sp?), a Korean nori roll consisting of nori wrapped around rice, bulgogi, some vegetables and pickled radish. Very tasty and not so susceptible to spoilage. You can get them at Korean stores like Chicago Food Corp. or Clark Market in the hot food section.

Assorted crackers cheese and fruit with maybe some sort of meat like salami or ham.

In the warmer months you could also turn the hot thermos on its head and pack a cold soup like gazpacho.

Sandwiches - Italian subs are a nice departure from the standard wonderbread sandwiches. Also, if you have steak or roast for dinner these leftovers make for really great sandwiches too. Or you can take the pita concept on its natural permutation of pita pocket sandwich.

You have to be somewhat careful with what is sent to school in a lunch in terms of food safety ... unless you include one of those "blue ice packs".

Unfortunately, MOST schools do not have refrigerators for student lunches.

How about smoked salmon? My 3- and 1-year-old sons are really into now. They love it on crackers, but if you don't want to do all that assembling you could put it in a tortilla or make a sandwich with it. It's not a particularly cost-conscious choice, but it could be an occasional thing.

I know your boy is older, but we also dip graham crackers in yogurt, and one of my personal favorites is banana with chocolate grahams.

There's also crudites with dip or dressing or hummus.

Cheese, crackers, olives and grapes are a favorite here too.

Hmmm... this thread is good for me too--we can always use a new idea, and you can gather that some of our meals are just elaborate snacks.

My favorite leftover lunch treat: PIZZA. Wrapped in foil at room tempterature it's very edible. I loved pizza day when I was a kid.

Check out Vegan Lunchbox. It makes me feel like the world's worst mother, but it's always inspiring. (We're not vegan, or even vegetarians, but a lot of the ideas translate well.)

Thanks for all your great ideas - and keep 'em coming!
I'd forgotten that chili is part of my rotation, when I remember to make & freeze it. My food philosophy with Sparky is to offer lots of different foods and leave the eating to him, which has worked pretty well so far (at home, we have an ironclad one-bite rule, which helps) Not to say that I never get uneaten lunches back....

The only absolute for him is that he won't eat spicy food - but sushi and smoked salmon he likes. I'm definitely going to look for the Korean version next time I'm at H-Mart; that sounds great, and hopefully won't be a budget-buster. The steamed buns sound like a good idea, too - we keep planning a trip to Chinatown for Dim Sum, maybe after that...

One trick of mine - I've discovered that a frozen mylar juice pouch (Capri Sun, much as I hate what the brand stands for, now has 100% juice) works really well for keeping cold foods cold - a juice box works almost as well, but the cardboard can deteriorate if it's frozen, thawed, and refrozen which sometimes happens when he forgets it.

I've been meaning to get one of these lunchboxes:
Laptop Lunches

Mhays wrote:I'm definitely going to look for the Korean version next time I'm at H-Mart; that sounds great, and hopefully won't be a budget-buster. The steamed buns sound like a good idea, too - we keep planning a trip to Chinatown for Dim Sum, maybe after that...

You should be able to find the siu bao at Hmart as well. Kimbop is really pretty cheap - at Clark Market, we order party trays w/100 or so pieces for $20. Alternately, you can buy some, deconstruct them to get the ingredient list, and then make your own - it's very easy to roll them and can be a fun project for Sparky.

If you don't want to deal with the throngs at Hmart but are not wanting to go into the city to Korea town, Dong Ah, a small Korean grocery on Touhy just east of Crawford in Lincolnwood will have the kimbop. Continuing with the Asian theme they also have some pretty tasty chicken wings in a sweet/tangy glaze that are delicious at room temp with a little rice on the side. You should be able to get an order of wings and an order of kimbop (maybe 10-15 pieces of each?) for about $10.

Dong-Ah
3933 W. Touhy
847-673-3055

Btw this thread has totally got me re-evaluating my own lunch options as well so thanks for bringing it up.

John

OK, had another brainstorm, and we'll see how it goes: Falafel with tahini dip.

I fully expect to get a number of uneaten falafels back, since piping hot out of the fryer isn't the same as sat around in the fridge all day, but it's worth a shot!

Some other suggestions:

- cheese & crackers
- dried figs or prunes (very popular in my house)
- apple slices with peanut butter (can also be put on a sandwich)
- liverwurst on rye, with (separately wrapped) pickles
- sliced hard-boiled egg on a bun with lettuce and mayo

And I second all the suggestions about leftover chicken or pizza.

A friend of mine just opened The Kids Table, a kids cooking school, that's on North just east of Western. On March 27, from 1-2, there's a class called "Thinking outside the (lunch) box" addressing precisely your inquiry.

For more information, you can call there:
The Kids' Table
2337 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
Tel 773.235.2665
Web www.kids-table.com

My mom mostly sent me to school with sandwiches, but they were ones I still remember fondly. Two of them were ones she had grown up with: olive (a can of chopped black olives, a little mayo, a little onion powder, and spread it about 1/3 inch thick) and avocado (mayo on the bread, sliced avocado tossed in a bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper). Of course, both of these require white bread, but there is good white bread out there. My other favorite sandwich, one that I discovered at a friend's house, was peanut butter, lettuce, and mayonaisse.

Sometimes, I also got cold salads. We rarely had pasta salads, but rice salads were common, and I still occasionally make those. Rice can be tossed with either beans or a little cooked leftover meat (ground beef or chicken were the most common), some chopped veggies, a few interesting seasonings, and either vinaigrette or mayo, and you're good to go.

Not as exotic as sushi, but tasty and easy to make.

My favorite was peanut butter and dill pickle! (Sparky is a PB&J purist, so it won't work on him) I like the idea of the olive sandwich.

Not that I'm glued to the asian idea, but I found this website when looking for Japanese egg molds mentioned elsewhere on the forum. Similar to the vegan lunchbox I don't know that there's enough coffee in the world to help me create this kind of lunch, but it sure looks good! If you search by ingredient, there are practical ideas there...

We tried Siu Bao and Gim-Bahp at H-Mart the other day; both great ideas, but we ate them right away - none of them made it to the lunchbox!

One of the most thought-provoking articles I've ever read about food and culture (and national identity, and gender roles, and then some) is "Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State Apparatus," by Anne Allison, an anthropologist who specializes in Japanese culture. (The article is available in Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan.) The author, who lived with her own children in Japan for some time, details the elaborate and time-consuming obentos Japanese mothers prepare for their children. There's enormous pressure on the moms (and this is exclusively a mother's obligation) to create elegant and appealing lunches, and similar pressure on the kids to eat all that has been painstakingly created for them. There are numerous books and magazines in Japan that provide examples for mothers to show them how to create these obentos, and I found such a book at Mitsuwa Marketplace, with page after page of octupi made out of hot dogs, pigs constructed from bologna, big pears cut up to look like little pears, and so on. My kids, of course, demanded that I fashion such lunches for them, and I once did the octupus, but that's as far as I was willing to go.

HI,

Japanese Mothers do over elaborate lunchs. American Mothers do over elaborate birthday parties. Competition is everywhere with different benchmarks in different cultures.

When I was in sixth grade, there was a girl who came to school with a deli purchased boxed lunch closed with a blue satin. I was fascinated what was going to come out of the box. Unfortunately I lived close enough to school that I went home for lunch, which meant I never witnessed the unveiling.

My friend Judy who was bussed always ate her lunch at school. Occasionally Judy would come home with me. She would eat my lunch and I would eat her lunch with all the exotica: small tins of fruit cocktail, bags of chips and sandwich. Her Mom bought all the junk food my family wouldn't dream of buying. I thought she was pretty lucky.

Times change!

Regards,

Meanwhile, bleary-eyed after a trip with 60 kindergarteners to the Shedd yesterday, I packed my son a Lunchables....sigh....

Cathy2 wrote:HI,

My friend Judy who was bussed always ate her lunch at school. Occasionally Judy would come home with me. She would eat my lunch and I would eat her lunch with all the exotica: small tins of fruit cocktail, bags of chips and sandwich. Her Mom bought all the junk food my family wouldn't dream of buying. I thought she was pretty lucky.

Regards,

To the parents that spend a lot of time preparing hours preparing a special lunch, do realize that as often as not, kids trade off lunches and snacks with other kids ALL THE TIME.

In junior high, I finally went to a school with a REAL cafeteria. I put on 15# the first year as I was the expert trader. I would spend my allowance on Charms BLOW POPS which I would buy by the large container as they were the medium of exchange. One or two BLOW POPS would bring you a HOT school lunch. A BLOW POP that cost me about 0.08 in bulk could bring 0.30-0.35 most days.

Actually, because of life-threatening food allergies, most schools now have a strictly enforced no-trading policy; I believe ours does. It's worth it to check...now, as to how much they actually eat, that's another question entirely....

HI,

What Judy and I did back then without a thought, would be impossible today: impromptu lunch arrangement outside of school.

When I first moved to Highland Park, our lunch period was 1 hour 10 minutes to allow kids to go home for lunch. One of my sisters ran home because she wanted more time to eat lunch. Now it is expected you eat lunch at school.

While trading may be forbidden, it is still done. Any kid who forgets his lunch dips into the friendly pot of shared lunches.

Regards,

Update: Many of your suggestions have been put to the Sparky test. Char Sio Bao, while now a family favorite for lunch, has been dismissed when not hot from the steamer. Ditto for tamales (which I should have known) Kim Bap, another excellent suggestion, either gets eaten as soon as it hits the house, or becomes grainy when refrigerated.

I discovered that cooking rice is possible in the morning, provided I don't have to do much with it: I started out trying Onigiri, but haven't found a filling that Sparky likes, (avocado, tuna, and olives have been dismissed) and need a strategy to keep the Nori from getting soggy.

What I did find that he loves is Inari sushi; I buy the frozen tofu pockets, mix the rice with Japanese veggie mix and top with Furikake.

Mhays,
Thanks much for the update - I've enjoyed revisiting this thread both for a trip down school lunch memory lane and also to glean some ideas as my son will be starting kindergarten this fall. My current challenge is summer camp - the camp he is attending is kosher, so we are struggling to figure out the theoretical and logistical details of a brownbag nut free, dairy lunch. I forsee a lot of Boca burgers in my son's very near future, though I am also checking out the link to the vegan lunch box website. Wheat meat mmmm.

The kimbap does get hard if you put it in the fridge, though you can get away with leaving it at room temp overnight and then ice packing it - it won't be hard then. In re the hot stuff, can he bring a small lunch sized cooler to school? If so and if time permits, you could steam the siu bao and/or tamales in the morning and stick them in the cooler quickly - they should stay warm until lunch. Although I am not entirely sure about the food safety aspects of this, when I was a kid my mother did this once for me and my father and the siu bao was still quite warm several hours later. A twist on the soup and chili would be to include a bread bowl to pour the hot liquid into - fun and entertaining as well as tasty. I think Dominicks carries the small boules for pretty cheap.

Other thoughts:

Pan fried tofu with soy sauce to dip it into. Pretty easy. Just buy the really firm tofu, slice and pan fry in oil. Serve with soy sauce with a touch of rice wine vinegar and chopped green onion.

If you can figure out the logistics of a cooler to keep the hot foods warm, mandoo or pot stickers would be a tasty treat as well.

Focaccia - I think it tastes pretty good at room temp or even cold. Pair it up with some minestrone.

Muffaletta - a different take on the sandwich route but quite tasty nonetheless.

John

Good luck with summer camp! Inari will probably work for you there...We do have a little thermos, but steamed items like buns and tamales were deemed "too sticky" at school. We use it a lot for hot foods - pesto, chili, raviolis, etc. but it spends one day working and the next night in the dishwasher, so it's hit or miss. I'll definitely try the Kim Bap again, though I doubt I'll be able to keep my hands off it if it's out where I can see it

I forgot - a successful cold item has been empanadas (I cheated and put leftover chili in a premade Goya empanada shell, baked a few off & froze) I wonder how well a Jibarito would pack....

PS. Word to the wise - although they have staff to assist with opening things, the more separate items that go into my son's lunch, the less he seems to eat. They only have 20 minutes, and at our school the kindergarteners all eat together (60 kids.)

The Chicago Tribune just ran an article on Green Bag Lunches, now available for delivery to your child at school. A bit pricey, but certainly a great alternative to the "hot" school lunch of waffle sticks, applesauce and cookies. I haven't tried it yet as it's a bit out of my budget, but I'm definitely curious...

A blog that is interesting to read about this topic is Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento.

http://lunchinabox.net/

It's written by woman/mom who was a former expat in Japan and whose husband was once diagnosed with celiac disease and now has a goal to make "tasty, attractive lunches with a minimum of morning prep." She also has a preschooler and she takes photos of the lunches she prepares for herself and for the kid, including approximate time to prepare the lunches.

At the very least, the photos are lovely to look at. And her choices are very healthy and delicious (looking). And she provides a lot of tips on preparing convenient, healthy, and quick lunches.

annieping wrote:A blog that is interesting to read about this topic is Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento.

http://lunchinabox.net/

I just stumbled across that site. Man, it makes me feel like I had a deprived childhood!

This thread has been so much fun to go back and read! I'm happy to have so many ideas to spice up my own lunches. We just moved offices at work and now I'm 27 floors above the lunchroom and I hardly ever have time to make it down there to gather up a lunch, I need things I can just keep in my office and eat on the go. Today is a clean-out-the-fridge salad of the last bits of every veggie I had to use up before I go shopping tonight.

When I was young I remember being jealous of some of my friends who had sandwiches made on STORE BOUGHT WHITE BREAD, since I usually had "boring" homemade bread, baked in bulk with my grandma every other month or so and frozen. I traded sandwiches with friends a lot. (Thankfully, I've moved past that wonder bread obsession, and still make grandma-bread from time to time, it makes the best toast ever in the history of the world.)