Packed lunches

[onlyoranges]

Wondered if anyone has any time saving tips for packed lunches. I make sandwiches for 2 days but I bet there are others with far more organisation tips than that?

You can freeze sandwiches, so you could easily make a month's worth at a time, if you have room in the freezer, and just pop them in the lunchbox first thing. They defrost by lunchtime.

I make banana and chocolate and beetroot muffins and freeze them.

I gave DH a pizza-making course for his birthday. Sundaynight is now pizza making night and I get him to make an extra pizza for Monday's packed lunches. I'm getting him a sour dough bread making course for Christmas .

On Fridays, they have school dinners as a treat - but I realise that not all schools let you choose some days for packed lunch/school dinners.

Wonder if I could get my dh a house cleaning course for Christmas??

dd(11) does her own lunch. In primary school she had to do her own in year 6. i got a bit tired of making food that didn't get eaten, wasn't what she fancied that day etc so we decided she would do it herself. then on Fridays she had school dinners.
Now in secondary school i put money into her online account so if she wants a school dinner she can and if not she can make her own packed lunch. its only been a week but she seems to like to mix and match and making her main lunch but top it up at school if she's still hungry (they have a little coffee shop as well as the main canteen)
ds1 & dsd are still in infant school so have free school lunch and ds2 is in preschool so has lunch at home with me.

Yes, I have older ones who do a variety of take food/buy food at school. This particular dc is 5 he helps me to decide what goes in which def helps to encourage him to eat it. I have done the freeze your sandwiches mrspremise, which is proving a time saver and helps reduce my boredom levels too!

When my oldest do was in nursery (aged5) she made her own lunches no butter, just bread and cheese! I did think nursery may have thought I was a little neglectful, but seriously she wanted to do it!

Not now that she is 8 though - she wants me to make it now!

We have upped our game in the packed lunches arena this term. For the past couple of years, I was forcing letting my dd make her own packed lunch... it wasn't particularly strenuous as we were using pre-packaged everything. I would make the sandwich and she would fetch everything else from the cupboards. The food was not particularly healthy, though, and she was always coming home starving.

Now she has a "yum box" (www.yumbox-uk.co.uk/shop) and I make her lunches for her. Last week I made a batch of sausage rolls and bunged them in the freezer, and I made a batch of healthy-version flapjacks that she has a few times a week (baby steps towards not having pudding in her lunch every day). I chop up veggies and fruit for the smaller compartments, add a bit of hummus or something into the smallest compartment and chuck in a babybel. She often gets too full at lunch now and isn't ravenous at 3pm anymore.

I'm really pleased with this arrangement, as I am not buying separate crappy lunch foods for her (we've all cut back on crisp eating considerably) and the yum box doesn't leak or anything, either. It's fab. DD is 8 and normally wants to eat the same type of lunches as her friends, but is now "getting" that eating healthier bits is actually better. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Definitely use your freezer. Cheese muffins are great with a slice of ham added. Also make & freeze Calzones.