Extravagant Pack Lunches

[Diadrie]

I am a TA in a primary school in the middle of a town, real mixed background from families who are mortgage free making well into 6 figures and families living in council homes, earning minimum wage.

As part of my job I supervise the infants half at lunchtime and I have seen the more absurd pack lunches recently from one child. It’s a bento box format, very normal fruit and veg, then greek yogurt and compote, a dip (guacamole/tzatziki/hummus). The main is really star of the show though with: salmon and cream cheese bagel, steak and onion focaccia sandwich, quiche Lorraine etc.

I’m now sat thinking what a totally over the top pack lunches recently for a 5 year old, admittedly the child does finish it, but salmon and steak in children’s pack lunches??

AIBU thinking this is totally over the top, extravagant and slightly absurd.

Looks fantastic to me. If my son would eat it I would send similar too

Instead I send a bento box with biscuits, cake, seaweed and whatever fruit he decides he can tolerate....... I call it his emotional support lunch because it's just there as something for him to hold while he's on transport to the unit

We would have given DS things like that ... with a heart and a half

Apologies for the derail, but: I'm in my mid-60s and I had never heard that expression before. It's lovely. I wonder if it's regional — can I ask where you're from?

Or like a journo that has missed the boat on a Weight Loss Jab/School Run Lesbian article...

The kid’s getting a well balanced and varied lunch by the sounds of it. You’d rather they had some ham sandwiches and cheese strings? Not enough facepalms for this one.

Not coming back op?

Given it's now 2025, quiche, focaccia, salmon are all pretty standard fare. Now, if you were taking about blinis, sour cream and a little caviar, I might see where you are coming from. But a slice of quiche? Hell no 😂

As an aside, in the 80s/early 90s, if I had to take sandwiches to school, usually on a school trip, it was always a smoked salmon beigel. Why? Because as a Jewish family, we did not have bread rolls, we had beigels. Instead of the more typical sandwich fillings as cheese, ham, sandwich spread, we had smoked salmon. It wasn't extravagant, it was what was available at our local Jewish deli, and what we ate without a second thought.

What's wrong with the child's lunchbox? Do you think other children will be upset because it's unaffordable for their parents? Because I doubt that. The child's more likely to get teased themselves if their lunchbox is very different from everybody else's.

Please get the kid's parent's number for me. I'd put in an order!

Billy bear will be spinning in his grave with these new lunches!

And not before time!

Sounds lovely.

I buy the trimmings, a fraction of the price and still taste great

Do your employers know how horribly judgemental you are?

Someone's been watching Tyler Yan

https://www.facebook.com/share/1BDuZMAZAM/?mibextid=wwXIfr

This.

nothing I hate more than reverse food snobbery.

Thanks god someone called that out, it was really irritating

That is quite normal. Where are you seeing the problem?

💯

Sounds like a good healthy lunch to me. Why be so sneery?

I doubt this is even real given that most schools have only been open again for 2 days at most, and op hasn't come back.

Bet it looks great on instagram!

If somebody enjoys putting the lunch together and the child eats it, it seems pretty harmless.

Joining for inspiration on lunches I could take to work.

How does aTA know if folks have paid their mortgage off or not. I'm thinking wow it sounds like a journo not a TA. I really hope TAs don't know personal information about Parents finances.

What a horrible criticism of a delicious lunch box! I hope with all my heart none of my children go to your school. The families can obviously never please you no matter what they do

I work in a school Nursery and some children bring packed lunches, there was one wee girl a couple of years ago who had lunches like you describe we as staff were always jealous as it looked amazing.
I had a meeting with her Mum one day and jokingly asked if she’d make my lunch too, would rather see a lunch like that than some of the processed stuff that make up most lunch packs!

You seem jealous.

It's healthy. Surely better than a ham sandwich and a pack or crisps? Also, if the family cook that at night, it makes easy leftovers. I find your attitude and poor lack of nutrition knowledge rather concerning tbh.

That sounds completely normal for a child’s lunchbox, certainly where I work.

In another school there was a Year 3 pupil who regularly had a little pot of caviar in his, and a poor girl who was given a fried egg sandwich every day that had been sweating all morning wrapped in foil, it was a soggy, smelly mess by lunchtime 🙈