Am I sensible, or a Food Nazi?

[BananaPudding]

We have recently come to live in a new town where we are staying with my SIL and her three children for a short while. All children take packed lunches to school.

The rule of the house is a sandwich, a capri sun and 3 choices of the "pantry snacks".

Pantry snacks currently include (all prepackaged):

Rice Crispie Treats
Assorted flavored crisps in small bags
Small bags of M&Ms
Small bags of a crisp called "Funyuns", vile onion-flavored cornmeal rounds
Nutter-Butter cookies
Very sweet granola bars which should be called candy
Cheese Nips
Ritz Cheese Sandwich crackers
Chocolate wafer cookie bar things

THREE things from that list in every lunchbox! I am stunned. No fruit in a lunchbox, ever.

I make dd's lunch after she goes to bed, and it contains varients of a peanut butter or ham sandwich, a piece of fruit, some sliced vegetable, a piece of cheese and a bottle of water. Sometimes yogurt instead of cheese.

DD says I am mean and give her sad lunches. Honestly, she never complained before as it never occurred to her that those things would go in lunches. I have compromised and said that on Fridays only she may have a capri sun instead of water, and one choice of the pantry snack list.

Sensible choices, or am I a mean Food Nazi? SIL thinks I am crazy.

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I don't know how they do fried coke, but it's some sort of coke-fritter type thing.

A corndog is a hot dog with a stick up it's bum, dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried.

oh sorry for using the N word again...

Cod, I can understand that. But these kids love fruit. She doesn't buy fruit because "it just disappears"

I'm sure I am being judgemental as well as having made myself seem an ignorant idiot on this thread.

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Sounds a bit like battered sausage from the Chip shop!

ds2 has a box of raisins as his fruit as thats all he will eat (and even then we have been known to have the same box all week). however it doesnt mean i fill his box up with chocolate instead

Hey, banana, stop it. You have apologised and your apology has been accepted!! Everything is fine!

Disappears as in they eat it quickly? Sounds good to me!

not at all bananpudding

if you were an 'ignorant idiot', which you are absolutely not, you would not have apologised instatnly as soon as i pointed out my objection

please don;t give it another thought

and as regards judging, well , we all are guilty of that!

Corn dogs are nothing like battered sausages, the 'batter' on a corn dog is made of corn meal and is quite sweet - have you ever had 'Johnny Cakes'? It's that sort of stuff, you can also get cheese dogs.

Beansprout Thanks. Will stop beating myself up, it's just...well...I'd kick my own rear if I could reach!

The fruit disappears because they eat it. I bought a huge box of peaches and all the kids ate them in four days. I figure, buy boatloads of fruit and less crap.

Part of my problem is culture shock. I was raised in Seattle by what I would call crunchy hippies and you would call lentil-weavers. We made our own soymilk

Blimey. Suddenly those Kettle Chips I ate today just pale by comparison....

johnny cakes?

tell me more.......

American cornbread is more of a cake you eat with savory foods. It has plain flour, cornmeal, many eggs, and usually a ginormous amount of sugar.

I quite like it with chili, actually

They call it Johnny Cakes because in the American Revolution, the South were called "Johnny Rebs" and often carried a sturdy variation of cornbread in their pockets for meals.

I think

i like that story !

i think i may have tried a corndog in florida years ago... but i might have blanked the memory out

Hehe, quite fancy a corn dog now

You should not be sorry at all! Mine all have much the same as yours in the lunchbox. I do sometimes get complaints from them about the lack of sugary\salty snacks but they all know why they get what they get and it's not anything to do with me being mean.

I do have to say i blardy hate making them though

BananaPudding. Your SIL's lunches sound familiar. We had 2 American children at our preschool. They had some incredible stuff in their lunchboxes. We had a 'no sweets' rule in lunchboxes and one child brought in every day these brightly coloured gummi bear type things with goo in the middle. We gently asked the mum if she could find something else as all the other kids were begging for sweeties. The USA mum said: ''no, they're really good. Look they have fruit juice in them''

Peanut butter and marshmallow spread were another top favourite I seem to remember.

Mind you, I was rather taken with some little bright orange fish-shaped pretzelly-crisps

I love cornbread - but have never had it tasting sweet - more chili or herbs, I think.

DS has
a sandwich, (ham, salami, brie, sardine, avocado, cream cheese)
somthing to complement the sandwich - (cold sausage / chicken leg / chunk of cheese / hoummous and breadsticks / chunks of avocado),
fruit (he will only eat a clemantine, fresh pineapple or strawberries)
one 'pudding' item - which is either fromage frais, shortbread, flapjack or one of those ready made crepes with choc spread in them.
And a carton of 100% juice or a smoothie.

I think one 'pudding' item is fine...but personally I wouldn't make that sweets or anything highly artificial or processed. (those crepes are not as bad as you might think!!)

I actually like packing her lunch. It makes me feel all Donna Stewart-y I have little animal shaped plastic forks and spoons. I used to even cut her sandwiches into hearts etc. I haven't done that for a while, but she loved it. Her friends at her old school used to want to trade for the "pretty sandwiches".

I do allow goldfish crackers, even the rainbow ones.

You have a child who eats sardines?

oh fluffer nutter sandwiches - I remember making those in the US !

Flutternutter sarnies, mmmmmmmmmmm. Sainsburys sell that marshmallow fluff now Not for the children you understand

Bananna i have 4 to make, the novelty has well and truly worn off...years ago

mmm, I'm thinking nutella and fluff...