Anyone else totally burnt out on packed lunches?

[SouthernRev]

I’ve only just started term and I already can’t face doing another packed lunch. I try to make them healthy-ish but I’m bored of the same ideas and they often come back untouched. Anyone cracked this? Or is everyone secretly winging it?

wraps were popular, sometimes

I used to rotate things when my DD’s in school. Sandwiches/pasta salad/wraps etc.

I do a rotation of:
pizza
crackers and cheese
wrap
chicken nuggets
sandwhich
sausages and ketchup
with a side of fruit or veg

Oh and I prepare it when I do our evening meal and stick the whole lunch box in the fridge until morning

It's the only time my afrid child is easy to feed as has the same every day. 1 box of carrot sticks, one slice of seeded bread with chicken and margarine, 1 bag of crisps, 1 bottle of lime juice. I make up 5 sandwiches on Sunday and freeze, get out each night for the next day.
With my other two I'd have a rotation so they didn't get board but it was easy for me to not have to think. Just a monotonous job.

If it easier do school dinners. U can usually get a print out of what they are eating. You can do the healthy stuff at home . Primary finners are usually better than secondary I think.

This is where having an autistic child can come in handy. DS would lose his shit if I deviated from the usual menu of ham wrap, apple, raisins, wotsits and freddo bar. It’s basically prepared on autopilot these days

Currently sticking with school dinners despite the daily begging. No nuts, no seeds, no hot flasks, no crisps and no ‘sweets’ (which seems to mean anything sweet even homemade) leaves me with so few options that I can’t face it.

Dd has school dinners, I don’t have the time or energy to be making pack lunches every day. She’ll occasionally have a pack lunch if she really doesn’t like the school dinner options that day, but they get two main meal options, jacked potato with different toppings, two types of pasta and sandwiches with different fillings to choose from every day so there’s usually something she likes. They’re quite healthy and with a couple of vegetables and a salad bowl on offer each day too and chips are only once a week so I’m happy with the dinners.

You have my sympathy OP.

My DS is in year 6 so he makes his own now thankfully.

I’m afraid posh packed lunches fall into the same category of “making a rod for your own back” as Elf on the flaming Shelf.

When I was at primary school every day was a marmite sandwich on white, an apple, and a bar of some sort. That was where the only variety came in; would it be a Viscount, a Club or a United? 😀

Ours are made the night before. But my kids make their own. Y5+.

If mine has school lunches, he eats the cake they have for pudding and not a lot else. With packed lunch, he's so picky he mostly will only tolerate a jam sandwich, which most of the time he won't eat. If I send fruit in, he doesn't eat it. Yoyo bears he is sick of and has gone off. Crackers, he'll no longer eat. He WILL eat crisps but only the plainest, most basic ones. He doesn't really like cold food at all and won't eat most of the savoury food the school offer.

Most days, he comes home starving because he's barely eaten any lunch. He has his real lunch at 3.30 at home. I try really hard to load him up with breakfast because it has to last him all day.

school dinners was my solution

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.

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!!

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!!!!

@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.

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.

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.

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

Can't you make a hot flask of food?

Cookies cookies and chocolate 🤣 maybe a smidge of apple

@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!

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