To not be looking forward to doing lunch boxes again from the 8th

[HaroldandGeorge]

I hate doing school lunch boxes. Once the kids are back to school, I’ll be doing 3 lots of packed lunches every day again. My DH is pretty easy to cater for as he will have a soup flask or porridge pot (add hot water) most days. But it’s my 2 Dc I struggle with. I want to have a variety of go-to quick lunches, especially ones you can prepare the day before. Would premade cold toasties work? They love cheese toasties...

I find the monotony of buttering sandwiches grinds me down. So, hit me with your quick and easy alternatives to ham/cheese sandwiches.

A lot of our children now do food flasks with either hot or cold stuff in. Noodles are popular and pasta salad with just about anything put on the top. One child today had noodles with prawns that had been microwaved to warm them up and some of his 'special sauce' which I am pretty sure was ketchup or some other tomato sauce. It actually looked really nice and he even had his own chopsticks. Another child had pasta with hot dog chunks.Another child had plain tomato soup with two slices of bread!

I get to open the often very tight lids so get to see what they have. There are more and more lunches coming in like this.

Theres a vlogger who does all her packed lunch prep one weekend morning.

Per child -Wraps/sarnies prepped cut and bagged (x5), hard boiled eggs x5, portions of cheese cubes, all in the fridge, then she has two big baskets, one with "add one" and it has crisps/bagged crackers/pretzels/malt loaves etc and one with "add one" and it has whole fruit.

When her DC wake they grab their packed lunch bag and add one of each item plus refill their water bottles.

I hate doing packed lunches. I’m not even sure why, they literally take me 2 minutes, but it feels like half an hour!
I make sandwiches/rolls on a Sunday evening ready for Mondays and Tuesdays.
Wednesdays - she will have a hot cross bun or brioche.
Thursday - a couple of crackers and a block of cheese with a couple of mini scotch eggs/chicken bites.
Friday - sausage roll.
For me, it’s the making the sandwiches that I roll my eyes at, as everything else I can just grab from the cupboard/fridge and pop it into her lunch box, so whilst the other choices aren’t the healthiest, it helps with the mundaneness and fills her up!

[quote HalfShrunkMoreToGo]@Exhausted4ever yep in strawberry, chocolate or butterscotch. They're in with the custard and jelly pots in the supermarket, Usually 50p each or some kind of buy X for £X deal.

You pretty much always win the lunchbox game if you put a pot of angel delight or jelly in as far as kids are concerned.[/quote]
Omg this is a game changer, can't believe I didn't know these existed!!

I understand now OP. We prep everything (fruit, veg, yoghurt decanted into a little pot) the night before except the sandwich which takes 1 min to make. Not so painful that way.

I'm a bit late to the thread but wanted to point out that you can buy nut free pesto so good for pesto pasta for schools that are nut-free.

If you are a “house wife”, surely you have plenty of time to do a couple of lunches? I wouldn’t be doing my dh’s lunch though. It would make me feel like I was his mum too!