With summer coming, you are probably trying to think of quick and easy lunch ideas to keep your children full of nutritious food, but not bored with yet another variation of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. These lunch ideas will keep your children happy, and keep you from spending all morning in the kitchen!
First of all, you’ll want to efficiently use your leftovers. That doesn’t mean that if you have a huge pot of soup left, you should serve it every day until it’s gone. When you have enough leftovers to save for a lunch or two, freeze it in appropriate sized portions. Then a few weeks later, defrost one of the portions for a quick and easy lunch!
The one lunch idea that saves my sanity during the summer is to have a rotating lunch menu. A rotating lunch menu makes my shopping easier, and means I don’t have to give much thought to coming up with new lunch ideas. When you develop your rotating lunch menu, you want to make it long enough to make sure that you have a variety. For example, if your children will be in daycare a few days a week, your menu can be shorter than someone who’s children will be home all seven days. If your children will be home all seven days, I suggest a minimum of eighteen to twenty lunches. That, coupled with effective use of leftovers, will supply enough of a variety that your children will be eating the same meal approximately once every three to four weeks.
When planning your lunches, remember that the weather will be hot, and fresh fruits and vegetables will be more available as the summer progresses, as Farmer’s Markets open and grocery stores take advantage of early harvests to offer sales on produce. So you’ll want to plan for lunches that won’t heat up your kitchen too badly, and that take advantage of the fresh foods available at lower prices. My rotating lunch menu is changed quarterly. I serve more items that can cook in the oven in the winter, soups in the fall when those vegetables are in season and lower priced, and microwave meals and salads in the summer. With my children in daycare three to four days per week, my summer rotating lunch menu looks like this:
Macaroni and Tomato Sauce
Turkey, bacon and cheese wraps
Taco Salad
Hot Dogs, Mac N Cheese
Cucumber and Tomato Salad in Pita Bread
PBJ, Fruit
Ham and Cheese Wraps
Chef Salad
Quesadillas with meat
Tuna Salad Sandwiches
Spaghetti
Grilled turkey and avocado sandwiches
As you can see, with just these meals, my children are eating the same meal once every four weeks. Adding leftovers to the mix increases that to five or so weeks before we repeat a lunch, yet I’ve only actually planned twelve lunches.
I further minimize the time I spend in the kitchen by cooking spaghetti sauce and taco salad/quesadilla meat in bulk. In my largest crock pot, I spend one day making spaghetti sauce and another making taco meat. Then I freeze that in smaller portions, so that I can defrost what I need for one meal, and then quickly heat it. It’s more nutritious and less expensive than buying already prepared products at the store as well. Plus, cooking these kinds of meals myself gives me the opportunity to further bulk up the nutrition: I put spinach and grated squash into my spaghetti sauce, and cabbage and grated carrots into my taco meat.
To plan your own rotating lunch menu, sit down with your children and ask for their lunch ideas. You may be pleasantly surprised at what they come up with. If all they can suggest is chocolate and soda pop, try giving them a starting point that they enjoy, such as macaroni and cheese or bagel pizzas, and let them choose what else to have. You can also give them an ingredient and let them build a meal around one ingredient, specifying that it must have at least a few healthy components. In other words, you’ll agree to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, but they have to plan a green or fresh vegetable to go with it. Once you’ve let your kids plan a few meals, you can fill in the gap with lunch ideas of your own. If you’re stuck on peanut butter and jelly, do a search for recipes, again focusing on one ingredient per meal idea to get a variety of lunch ideas.
Planning ahead really makes the most of your lunch ideas. By simply planning a rotating lunch menu, and supplementing it with leftovers, you can feed your children a variety of meals, without hearing the dreaded “Not this again!”
