Revive Your Kids Packed School Lunch | Family Economics

By Cathe

How many school lunches can you pack before you run out of ideas and your children get bored with the same thing every week? All it takes is simple suggestions from other parents on what they are packing to get you out of a boring lunch-packing routine. So I’m going to share mine!

Now that my kids are in junior high and high school, they either choose to eat at school or pack their own lunches. But, when they were in elementary school, I could easily come up with side items, such as string cheese, vegetable sticks and fruit, but I often hit a wall when it came to the main dish.

Here are a few winning lunchtime main dishes my kids enjoyed aside from the standard lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches:

• Bagel and cream cheese
• Crackers and cheese they could assemble themselves
• Crackers and peanut butter (saltine crackers work best for squishing peanut butter through the holes)
• Turkey, cream cheese and cucumber wrap
• Same wrap as above sliced into sushi-sized pieces with chopsticks included
• Container of dry cereal and cold milk in a thermos or purchased at school
• Bean dip and chips
• Tomato soup in a thermos and cheesy fish crackers
• Thick slices of salami and mozzarella
• Cheese quesadillas
• Tortellini or other lightly oiled/buttered pasta served cold

Keep in mind that some may require an ice pack to keep the meal fresh until lunchtime.

What are some of your child’s home-packed lunchtime favorites?