Anyone else totally burnt out on packed lunches?

Flask with cheesy pasta or noddles..turkey wraps..berries
Pom bears. Small chocolate or cake.

You are lucky to have school dinners as an option. In Australia we just have a tuckshop when you can buy outrageously overpriced hot food. It cost me $20 sometimes for one child for morning tea and lunch.

thankfully now, when I want a break from packing lunches and they are abit older I just drop them to the supermarket and they can spend $10 there and then walk to school.

Special pastry?! Shop pastry. As in I'm not making my own! Because it's quick. And wow. A herb is controversial now??! 🤣🤣

Oh please 🤣. Some people do care about the crap in their food. Me included.

You eat your quavers and scroll on past my post. I can choose to eat food without crap in them. my kids don't like sandwiches. They like pizza so I was pleased to find one that tastes lovely and has no added crap.

We are lucky in that school dinners are currently free up to year 6 and also they can choose on the day if they have packed lunch or school dinners. So mine usually choose 3 school lunches they want for that week and then I make 2 packed lunches with something from each of the following:

1. Wrap/sandwich/pittas.
2. Cucumber/carrots/peppers/tomatoes
3. Berries/tinned pineapple/frozen mango
4. Cake/biscuit
5. Cheese straw or biscuit/plain crisps/hard boiled egg/baby bel.

Mine have this one, which is more the proportions of a bowl when opened: https://amzn.eu/d/3dKWl9F . It’s not huge but holds more than enough for my 8 year old.

As a full time working mum, school dinners are absolutely essential. I’d like to say if I was a SAHM this would be different. But it definitely wouldn’t. So regardless of your work circumstances, if you can afford it, pay for school dinners.

Like this. The op naming normal foods that we all eat, but feeling like she has to name certain pizza brands without certain chemicals, or sausage rolls but clearly homemade with special pastry and herbs. I grew up on a jam sandwich, packet of quavers and a wagon wheel. Guess whose generation is healthier now?

We’re not allowed to admit that on mn though. If you started a thread saying that was what you packed for your child, we’d already be on page 26 of how your child should be removed by ss. Realistically mine get a ham sandwich, babybel, sausage roll, yogurt, crisps and an Apple or tangerine. Most get ate, maybe not the fruit. But at least they get fed. But it’s ‘processed shit’ and child abuse according to mn, but better than the pizza, chips and chocolate pudding they get from the school. And before the people bleating in that ‘BUT THE SCHOOLS MAKE THEM HEALTHY, ITS NOT EVEN CHOCOLATE IN THE PUDDING, ITS BEETROOT AND NO SUGAR’!! Sorry but dh worked for chartwells for many years, he made your child’s school dinners, and they’re full of crap 😂😂

Cold pizza? Crosta mollica are a good brand with no upf if that's a worry.
Soup in a thermos?
One of mine likes tuna pasta in thermos.
Sausage rolls? My husband makes them with shop bought pastry and mince meat and sage stuffing. All three of mine like them.
Scotch eggs?

I feel this. I have a son with ASD who isn’t keen on sandwiches or wraps which is tricky. He will have crackers with hummus, he also likes pizza pinwheels I make from puff pastry which I count as a ‘main item’ other than that it’s mainly UPF foods that he will eat 😭

I made 3 ham and lettuce sandwiches on Monday night and that does ds1(14) for 3 days with a school meal on Friday. I very it to chicken or cheese or different bread but very samey. Takes a squeezy protein yoghurt as well. Mine are happy having the same thing and seem to think my made ahead sandwiches are fine.

He has borderline arfid. There isn't a hot food I could put in a flask he would eat.

He does like a jacket potato but only if it has lots of butter on it, and the school only have margarine. He won't eat cheese or any of the other toppings.

He will eat apple, but only if it's cut up. Or a peeled carrot, but he has to be encouraged while he's eating it. He won't even eat most junk foods. Most biscuits he wouldn't eat. He's not a fan of chocolate.

It's really really hard.

I do the flask thing too and it's no bother. I often double up on dinners or make a pot of soup and then freeze a few portions in smaller tupperwares then do as @FancyBiscuitsLevel described with heating the flask in the morning. Grab something from the freezer, a few minutes in the microwave while we have breakfast and that's lunch sorted. I keep a selection of yoghurt, mini cheese and fruit to add. Padded out with anything from home made cheese scones also from the freezer to a packet of crisps or Jaffa cakes for variety. That all sounds like peak Mumsnet but it really is very easy.

Hopefully they'll make a short but wide one. There's a market for it.

@Mrsdyna I'm always surprised by just how much food can be packed into those seemingly little flasks, but yeah, the neck width does constrain the type of thing that can go in a bit. It's not a solution for steak and chips!

Cookies cookies and chocolate 🤣 maybe a smidge of apple

Can't you make a hot flask of food?

I love this idea, just wish the flasks were wider!

No, the food flasks are really wide and short, so just put a folk in lunch box and she’ll eat it from the pot. I assumed it would just all mush up together but about 6 months ago she asked for left over cottage pie in the flask and it worked so this is what we do now. But this does only work if you don’t make your shepherds/cottage pie with too much gravy.

But then soup, pasta and sauce, stews/hotpot etc work really well in those pots.

It's amazing, isn't it, that so many of us are conscious when it comes to UPFs and healthy food, but when it gets to something as simple as school lunches, it all goes out of the window in the name of time and effort.

There are many amazing options you can go for that don't take hours to make.

Mine have sushi, pasta salad, sandwiches, wraps or crackers for carbs. Mixed salad, vegetable sticks and fruit to keep them full. Some form of pudding - biscuits, chocolates, cakes.
Sushi and pasta salad or mixed salad are made in half an hour and most of that cooking time, I can ignore the food on the hob and get on with other things. It takes less than 5min to chop the vegetables, roll and chop the sushi or mix the other ingredients. Hell, you can even make a healthier version of lunchables in less than 5min. The fillings for sandwiches are easily made. Most things can be done the day before if you get stressed in the mornings. To claim you don't have time to make a packed lunch is a poor excuse.

It gets eaten - not always all of it (school lunch breaks are far too short if they also want to run around), but certainly enough to keep them going until dinner time. Many school dinners are awful, both in quality and quantity.

And I will end this post with the usual disclaimer that yes, I am aware of AFRID and neurodiversity, but as always, this post is still about the vast majority of kids who are neither.

@Shmee1988 Definitely not nuts; I wouldn't bother with the plate - my marginally fussier eater also takes leftovers in a thermos food flask and just eats them from the flask with the folding spoon which sits inside the lid. Casserole and mash, dal, curry and rice, fish pie and peas, pasta bake... it's a great option if you often have leftovers they like lying around. And of course, also good for soups.

Totally get this! My 4 and 8 yo have packed lunches and are such bland eaters!

My eldest always likes a sandwhich, crisps or cake, yogurt or raisins and fruit or veg sticks

My youngest gets will have sauce roll and scotch eggs or sandwhich, yogurt, fruit and fruit or veg sticks

No pint even trying anything else as they won't eat it!

The dinner ladies must think I'm the most boring pack lunches ever!!!!

Shepherds pie in a flask? And she just tips it out onto a plate? I dont know if this is utterly nuts or complete genius!!

For DS2 I stopped going for variety and what he "should" be eating as it just came back home every day and I'd have to chuck it. And he'd still be really hungry! He doesn't like any raw fruit or veg except cucumber but that's a very new development and he doesn't want it most days. So now it's marmite sandwich, a cheese string, a salami stick, a handful of crisps or pretzels, a few pistachios, a small jogurt or pudding, and a biscuit-type thing. Apple juice and water to drink.