Packed lunches for a 2 year old

[sharon44]

My little boy has just started nursery and I am required to provide him with a packed lunch on two days. He used to eat just about anything but has become quite fussy. He usually asks for pasta for every meal! He'll eat sausages, pepperami, yoghurts, some fruit, occasionally ham and he's quite partial to bacon. He won't each cheese or eggs. Any suggestions for making his lunch box interesting. I don't want to give him the same thing every time!

I'd just try a few things and see what happens - my dd is rather less fussy at nursery than she is at home!

Otherwise there are several variations you can do on pasta salad (with tomato sauce, with mayo, etc)

Also will the nursery heat things up for you? If so soup and bread go down well.

If it's just two days a week I wouldn't worry about variety at all. It's such a small part of his weekly intake. Just send in something he likes. Does he like sandwiches? A ham sandwich/cold sausages and bread and butter plus a yoghurt and fruit sounds like an excellent lunch to me.
I' SO glad my ds's nursery provides lunch!

get very thin ham and that (yukky) pre cooked bacon strips

Pitta with Philadephia is a fave
cold sausages
sausage rolls

One thing I've noticed our nursery says, is not to provide too many choices in one lunch at this age because in their experience it just confuses and means they eat less - three options such as sandwich, fruit, cheese sticks are fine. (Don't know how true that is as ds only goes afternoons at the moment, but I should imagine it was opinion formed of bitter experience!)

I wouldn't worry too much about him being fussy - we very quicly learnt that ds ate 10 times better away from mummy and in front of his peers than at home!

There was a nice site somewhere with lunchbox ideas (although aimed at older children so not all practical for a 2 year old) but it could spark some ideas. Ah here it is:

a month of lunchbox ideas

GeorginaA that is a really useful site, it looks at the whole week and suggests loads of different stuff. Thanks.

I am dreading January as my dd will be having packed lunches everyday instead of once a week, so I have no idea what I'll do. At the moment we have to cut her sandwiches into tiny squares (9 or 16ths) so she will eat them. We also give her either a piece of fruit or some veggie sticks, and a third item, yoghurt (if she has veggies) or a cooked sausage or a cheese stick (if she has fruit). I would defineately agree with no more than three items. The first couple of weeks she ate next to nothing, so I put more and more in to tempt her, which had the opposite effect.

mini scotch eggs - will they work or is that to much like egg?

cold chicken goujons

pitta pockets stuffed with his fav fillings

twiglets

cous cous

bread sticks and maybe some humous or something

........... that's it - gone blank sorry.

That's a lovely site Georgina, I feel inspired - if only for my own lunchbox!
Ds (now 5½ ) has had the same things in his lunchbox everyday since he was 2! He seems to enjoy the routine and familiarity and gets a bit narky if I try and change anything! On his birthday I put a big chocolate muffin (which he adores at home) in place of his normal kit-kat. When he came out of school that day I asked him if he liked it - "it tasted nice but it wasn't my kitkat, i like kitkat"!!
(My dad took the same things in his box every day for 30 years!! - I guess some people just like it that way!)

Tell me about it, jammamia - dh takes ham sandwiches to work every single day - how could he not get bored?!