Providing dairy-free school lunches that don't need to go in fridge?

[Weta]

We are about to move to Luxembourg (from France) and I am freaking out a bit about the school lunch situation for DS1 (age 5), who has a serious dairy allergy.

The school canteen say they can heat up meals for him, but there aren't any staff there in the morning for the food to be refrigerated. I also spoke to the secretary in the hope she might offer a fridge somewhere else but she just seemed fixed on the fact that there are no fridges freely available to students anywhere.

I am struggling to cope with the idea of sending him with sandwiches, partly because I try really hard to make sure he has a good amount of protein for both lunch and dinner to offset his restricted diet, and partly because I think when it's really cold it's important to have a hot lunch.

Any ideas for sandwiches with protein, or meals to heat up that could be left at room temperature, ideally that I can freeze in advance?! All I've got so far is chickpea soup, lentil soup (but my current incarnation has bacon and I don't know about leaving that lying around) and the supermarket also has a packet of organic tofu ravioli in sauce which I expect would be available there too. I'm assuming ham or tuna sandwiches are no good as can't be left at room temp, or is that ok?

Thanks!!

BTW, meant to say he doesn't like eggs (used to be allergic to egg white) unless they're "in" something - ie definitely not egg sandwiches!

Hi, I live in Australia and we put a frozen plastic block in our lunch boxes. I don't know what they are called so I can't do a link. But they keep the lunch cold.

I have a Thermos Funtainer here which I give her for things like spaghetti bolognese or even things like sausages. The funtainers are really good. Easy to open and you can get all different patterns. They keep food hot for five hours and cold for seven hours.

Sandwiches can be a perfectly nutritious lunch. Freeze a carton of juice and put it in an insulated lunch bag and it will keep everything cool and fresh until lunchtime.

Honestly, you don't need a hot lunch however cold the weather is! But if you're worried why not give him a flask of something hot to drink to go with a sandwich lunch?

We live in Canada where it gets seriously cold in the winter, and primary schools don't do school lunches at all (no kitchen, no lunch hall). So everyone has packed lunches. Some bring in food in thermoses, but most eat sandwiches and they are fine with it. I've never worried about the ham/cheese etc in their lunches going off (it's only a couple of hours in any case), but in summer I usually freeze their drink to keep things nice and cold.

If you really want to send him in with a proper lunch then a wide bodied thermos is what you need. Then you can send him in with pasta, risotto etc (pretty much whatever you had the night before reheated will do if you don't want to be cooking things specially, or you could make up batches of good lunch food, freeze and then get out and reheat in the morning). No need to get the staff to reheat as it will be nice and warm for lunch time.

We got one for dd as she claimed she wanted to eat ravioli for lunch (not that she has ever appeared interested in ravioli at any other time!). Haven't used it yet, but it has a spoon in the lid and is generally quite appealing.

Thank you all for your advice.

Savoycabbage - you're right, a frozen pack is an excellent idea! In fact I'd forgotten we do already have an Isotherm bag to take his lunch in already, so could pop in a frozen pack. The thermos looks great too, thanks for the link.

Seeker & Nooka - you're probably right about the sandwiches v hot lunches. I've been a bit influenced by living in France, where everyone is horrified when I tell them kids in NZ have sandwiches every day for lunch. The school also freaked me out about food going off - we had to get the Isotherm bag for the 5-10 minute walk to school plus the potential 20 minutes sitting in the secretary's office waiting for the canteen staff to collect it, and sign a disclaimer that it would be our fault if he got a streptococcal infection!

Oh I was really surprised about the lack of lunches here! When the schools were built everyone went home for lunch, so they just didn't have kitchens. However I've got into the habit as in the UK the lunches were too small to fill ds up, so we did pack lunches anyway.