If you pack your kids' lunch and you are a bit of a health nut...

[AtheneNoctua]

Please tell me what you send them with.

I need some new and exciting ideas for DD. She wants school dinners. But, until they tell me what is in them, I'm resisting the temptation to give in.

DD and nanny are both tired of lugging the big thermos around so I'm looking for cold meal ideas.

£1.55 for a school lunch is great. They are over £2 each in this area. I just can't afford £20+ a week (2 children) on school lunches. I do healthy lunches for far less- tuna pasta, sandwiches, fruit, juice decanted into plastic bottles, the odd homemade cake or flapjack, breadsticks, cheese straws, cheese, salad, all that kind of stuff. Far better than the school lunches, which as well as being over-priced, are hardly Jamie Oliver'sschool dinners.

I have recently started work in a secondary school and believe me the food is the most unhealthy junk I have ever seen. Frozen peporoni pizza, hot dogs, ketchup, sausage rolls most of it is processed crap. They have also just installed a frozen slushy machine so the kids can now purchase these throughout the day too. Apparently the boys won't eat healthy food and throw fruit away if made to take it as part of lunch?

I couldn't believe it when I saw the stuff they serve.

DS school has no canteen, so I have no cjoice but to pack a lunch. Also, no nuts or sugary treats are allowed. The latter is fine, but the former is irritating because I grew up on peanut butter sandwiches, which DS also likes.

I make:

Tamago (egg sushi: sounds poncy, but easy to make, great cold, and fun to eat...basically a lightly sweetened omelette, sliced) )

Vegetable sushi rolls

Cold meatballs in tomato sauce

Falafal and salad in pita

mini skewers (chicken in honey soy glaze, teriyaki salmon, etc)

Sandwiches (tuna sweetcorn, ham cheese, turkey cranberry brie, smoked salmon cream cheese cucumber, pesto chicken, ricotta cheese with dried fruit, cheese & marmite)

Salads (pasta with veg, pesto chicken salad with pasta, rice salad, tuna tomato bean, mini mozarella balls basil and cherry tomato)

Breadsticks and pots of humous, cream cheese, goats cheese, herbed ricotta

sandwich on brown - ham or cheese
squeezy yoghurt
fruit
toms & raw peppers
treat - cake etc
apple juice
water for break

I quite often slice a cold sauage from our meal the night before and put in a little pot and tomato sauce for dipping in another...DS1 loves that.

Blueberries and grapes in another little pot.

Buttered fruit loaf instead of a sandwich for a change sometimes. Homemade cookies. Yoghurt. He also really likes bagels....

cream cheese and pesto is good in sandwiches; variety in the bread is well received (rolls, bagels, brown, white)

DS1 gets round my healthy lunch box policy by sitting next to Tom, and eating the treats sent in by Tom's mummy . Anyone got ideas for getting around that?

DD went to school today with sandwich filled with cream cheese, grated red leicester, sauteed onions, and chopped spinach.

I'll find out tonight if it got thumbs up or down. I handed it to nanny this morning and told DD she had to eat it today. Said if she liked it she could have it again but if she didn't she didn't have to eat it again.... but no matter what she was to eat it today. She seemed okay with that deal.

I wish I lived nearer some of you! I LOVE making lunch boxes and would gladly make yours for you. Call me weird, but I just love packing up little packages of food all neatly wrapped up with different treats and colours and tastes Seriously, I really do. House is a tip, went to school with my T shirt on back to front yesterday and would qualify for the booby prize in the yummy mummy stakes etc etc but lunch boxes - YES! Love em

(was talking about offering to make MI boxes and any others who hate it, not the more recent posts lovely concoctions , answered the phone before posting and a big delay!) oops

Oh, I wish you lived near me too!

cheese/spinach/onion filling was a flop.

the school lunches in our area are horrid
i work in a school in the same authority and would not touch them - even our head is fighting with the lea to get it sorted anyway
ds1 has packed lunch

Sandwiches: try to use different bread - sometimes normal bread, other times bread buns (white/wholemeal or seeded), sometimes pitta with:
cheese (sometimes with ham, or cucumber or tomat9o)
tuna and mayo - sometimes with sweetcorn
hummus sometimes with grated carrot in pitta bread
peanut butter

he has apiece of fruit, sometimes tinned/carton of fruit
sometimes a yoghurt
homemade flapjack
sometimes breaadsticks/crackers with hummus or cream cheese
very occasionally crisps/small cake

oh often takes little pots of cucumber, tomatoes, carrot etc

carton of fruit juice or diluteed juice in a bottle

Thanks for this thread Athene! Am debating whether to let DS have packed lunch next year. The quality of food at his school (Budapest) is good generally but he doesn't like most of it. I wanted him to have school dinners to try to widen his palate but it hasn't worked. Things he likes at school I try to give him at home but they are not as good as Istvan's (school cook!) or things he likes at home are not as good at school!

Have to provide snacks next year anyway (school provides for Key Stage 1) so may do lunches too.

So lots of ideas from here but he will prob turn his nose up at most of them!

Bobby, you can send peanut butter?

no peanut butter
no crisps
no chocolate (but it's okay at the bake sale at 3:15 )

DD will not eat:
tomatoes
cucumber

And this morning she announced she doesn't like mayo so she got a sandwich with butter and sliced hardboiled eggs. weirdo. We'll see if she eats it.

Does this sound well balanced?

Mon - cheese sandwich, cucumber, biscuit.
Tues - ham sandwich, cucumber, biscuit.
Wed - cheese and ham sandwich, cucumber, biscuit
Thurs - ham sandwich, cucumber, biscuit.
Fri - cheese sandwich, cucumber, biscuit.

Because that is what I suspect I will end up doing!

No daily packed lunches here as DD has school dinners (complusary fror all at her prep school) which are actually very good, well balanced, cooked on site, good ingrediants, etc. I know as I eat there once a week and see!

However she has apcked lunches for trips, etc. Last week she went with:

pot of humous
selection of veg sticks
some pitta bread
(naughty bit - some mini sausages)
smoothie
yogurt
mixed fruit salad - pineapple, mango and melon I think I did)
apple juice

Came back all eaten

AN - the bread with hard boiled egg sounds fine to me. I am not keen on may on my egg either so have sliced hard boiled eg on bread and it is lovely.

AAARRRGH! DS has just come home from a school trip and he was given a packed lunch (by school). I have just removed the remains from his bag. He left 2 bread rolls - "they had something disgusting in them Mum" - they both had cheese and cucumber - practically the only green thing he likes is cucumber! A squashed banana - didn't want it and a cereal bar. Am SO cross with him. Apparently he ate an apple and a croissant.

He is now on warning that I am going to start giving him things he doesn't like and make him eat them. Am sick of this nonsense.

And I know I am ranting on the wrong thread really but it is here and is about lunches!

Buda, I sypathise. DD is a finicky eater. Drives me crazy. I usually threaten plain raw broccoli when she is particularly difficult.

She often moans that all the other kids get yummy treats and she only gets yogurt for dessert. (not sure her claims are true but this is what she tells me)