School Lunch

School is just around the corner - actually it starts in 2 days for us - and with that comes a question. What's for lunch? I don't know what your kids like, but at our house we have one that eats school lunch everyday and one that only eats it occasionally. And at my job I only get a 1/2 hour lunch break. That's not enough time to grab something from somewhere and still have time to eat it. That means making a home lunch most days for both my daughter and me. Luckily she can make her own lunch, but that still leaves the question of what to eat. Honestly you can only eat so many sandwiches and there aren't always a lot of options. What to do. So I did what I usually do when I have a question, I went to Pinterest. Again.

I spent quite a bit of time on Pinterest today looking at home lunch ideas. There are TONS of them! Literally so many ideas. It can get overwhelming looking at so many different ideas. Because they can't just post one idea, you have to go to their blog to read all the rest. And they aren't always good ideas. Or ideas that are feasible. I don't want to spend an entire day prepping lunches for the week. I don't want to spend more money per meal than it would cost to have school lunch. (That is $2.25 for us.) I also don't want ideas that are so unique that we wouldn't want to eat them. (Make your own sushi complete with seaweed wraps. I saw that idea today. My daughter would NOT thank me for that one!) Also many of the ideas overlap. So one pin might say "40+ Lunches for School" but maybe you've already seen 30 of them. Lots of the blogs said to have bins that the kids can grab things from. I don't have room in my fridge for a bin of things for lunches and my pantry is in the basement. I don't think that anyone would run down there to search for something in the dry lunch bin that's kept there. We've learned that we need things close or else we don't use it.

So I've been searching. Trying to come up with a good plan so that we don't eat another boring lunch. Those boring lunches actually start to sound good when you eat them only every once in a while. But what to fill the other days with? Here are some of the ideas we've used in the past. Some very boring and some a little more creative.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Homemade "Lunchables" (basically Ritz crackers and lunch meat)

Salad with grilled chicken

Lunch meat on a roll

Turkey or ham tortilla wrap

Pizza Poppers with sauce

There are a few good ideas in there. However the best idea we have is leftovers. That is the way that we are able to have more variety. After dinner we usually just fill a small container with leftovers and keep it in the fridge. In the morning we throw ice packs into our lunch bags and we are ready. Then at lunch we get to eat things like -

Tacos

Chicken with rice

Roast and potatoes

Homemade soup

Pancakes

Pasta

Luckily my daughter's school has a microwave that the kids are able to heat up their food. Obviously my job has a microwave too. So we can heat up that food. That gives us some more options.

Soup

Ramen

Mac and cheese

Spaghetti O's 

Chicken nuggets

Hot Pockets

Then of course we do have other items that we can add to our lunch. Some I have to put in small bags. Some are all ready to go. Some I send with a little container of ranch or caramel.

Carrots

Apple slices or whole

Cuties

Cauliflower

Side salad

String cheese

Applesauce

Crackers

Chips 

Treats

I guess that we will just have to be on the look out for other ideas so lunch don't get so boring. It's always better if we pack most of our lunch in the evening. We'll have to make more of an effort at doing that. Here's to a new year and a better variety of lunches!