I consider myself a good mom, but lunch boxes have always been a chore. My son has reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), so we have to make sure he eats healthy meals: making fast, nutritious lunches every morning became quite the challenge! The answer was to purchase a Bento Box and design a series of meals that a ten-year-old can make by himself in under ten minutes. The only gadgetry necessary: a lunch box, a vegetable chopper (we own a Vidalia onion chopper which is safe for kids to use) and a few assorted cookie cutters.
Try making different sandwich shapes with cookie cutters to add variety to lunch. You can make pinwheel sandwiches by spreading cream cheese or peanut butter on a slice of bread, cutting off the crusts and rolling it up, jelly roll style. Slice into 4 pinwheels.
Don’t be tempted to send your child to school with the same boring lunches, even if they are “healthy.” Your child will swap their food in the cafeteria with a friend: that apple you send in every day will be swapped for a chocolate chip cookie, and that nutritious fruit drink will be swapped for a soda (and they’ll never admit it).
Try these nutritionally balanced lunch ideas:
- Mixed salad (try spinach, carrots, lettuce, clover sprouts, tomato), frozen berry medley or cherries (will melt by lunchtime but still be cold!), cream cheese topped with chives, Triscuits and a serving of nuts. Provides 11g protein.
- Fruit kabobs on cocktail sticks. Pretzel crackers, cheese slices, nuts and a whole grain bun with Tofurky, clover sprouts, lettuce and tomato.
- “Make Your Own Sushi” box with cucumber & carrot sticks, sprouted brown rice, nori (seaweed), a piece of fruit (i.e. a Clementine) and a frozen 100% fruit popsicle-thawed by lunch but a nice cold treat. You can make your own shrimp sauce by adding 1 Tbs Vegenaise with 1/8 tsp Asian hot chili sauce.
- Mini peanut butter and jelly (100% fruit) sandwiches on Carb Light wholegrain bread, baked Tortilla chips, fresh salsa, and a bagged garden salad topped with chopped tomato.
- Fruit medley (i.e. grapes, peaches), Stretch Island 100% fruit leather, medley of popcorn, cashews, Spanish peanuts and Annies’ Wholewheat Bunnies, dill pickle, and Tofurky sandwich.
- Bagged garden salad topped with crackers (such as Annie’s wholewheat bunnies), peanuts, strawberry yogurt (fruit juice sweetened) topped with mini chocolate chips, and egg salad on wholegrain bread . Egg salad is so simple to make for a ten-year-old: boil one egg for 10 minutes. Cool under running water. Peel and mash with a fork. Add a teaspoon of Vegenaise and a teaspoon of unsweetened pickle relish.
- Cucumber and carrot sticks on a bed of lettuce (don’t forget the salad dressing!); Barbara’s Bakery blueberry fig bars (I like these because they are sweetened with fruit juice, not sugar and are made from whole grains), Horizon organic yogurt and a sprouted wheat pita (which provides a complete protein).
Reference:
Steph Kenrose. The Ten Minute Bento Box. Leoslunchbox.wordpress.com
