Sack Lunch Ideas? - Piedmont,OK

Definitely get an ice pack or 2 with an insulated lunch box or bag. The ice pack does just fine at keeping things cold. Also as another poster suggested buy some snack size bags to pack the food in. You can be creative and do lots of things for lunch. My kids love to have yogurt, granola bars and a fruit for lunch. Or you can roll a pice of ham and cheese together (sandwich with out the bread) add some gold fish cracker or cheese & crackers, yogurt covered raisins or cranberries. Take a bologna sandwich, use a cookie cutter to cut it into a shape or just cut it into small pieces, add some pretzels or popcorn and applesauce. Try Black olives mixed with ranch dressing, animal crackers, granola bites and grapes. Fresh grapes can be frozen and eaten right out of the freezer or put into a lunch box for later, they are good both ways. A piece of leftover pizza cut into finger size pieces, carrots and dip, cut up pear or strawberries. Bologna & cheese cut into small squares and crackers, trail mix, blueberries and a nutrigrain bar. You know what he likes, use that and be creative.

Cold mac n' cheese. It will be room temp by lunchtime. Has he tried almond butter?

If you can't do peanut butter, try sunflower butter on a whole wheat hotdog bun with a bannana in it. At his age, probably half will do. This is one of my kids favorites, but we do use peanut butter.

Anything rolled up in a tortilla is good too.

My kids liked spagehtti-o's at that age, and I would buy the cheep brand and put them in a container, you can get 3-4 servings out of one can when they are little, with a peice of cheese, fruit, and a yogurt they are good to go.

I usaully buy the large containers of yougrt, but for lunches I endulege in the gogurt tubes and freeze them, they thaw and are still cold by lunch time!

One of my children really liked the little pots of chef boyardi stuff too, but I would only buy these on sale-good in the microwave and easy.

One of mine loves lunchables pizza, but I find them a little pricy and don't like all the other stuff they put in there, so I will only buy them without the drink and candy and only on sale.

I like to save money by filling a thermos with either milk or ice water. The little juice boxes are so expensive, and I would rather that mine eat the whole fruit and not the juice.

Pampered chef has a couple of things I could not live without- one is a sandwich cutter, my kids love it, it cuts a circle and binds the sides of the bread together. It is kind of wasteful, but they did not eat a whole sandwhich at that age anyway. The other item is a really good apple cutter, one that cores it and cuts into wedges. My kids eat more of the apple this way. A little lemon juice will keep them from turning brown.

Hope this all helps!
M.

One quick and easy item is yogurt...either in the cups or the tubes. Freeze them first and then place them in the lunch bag (you might want to put it in a plastic bag to prevent leakage and a broken sack. It takes until lunch time for the yogurt to thaw and it's ready to eat.
Blessings,
W. Q

I've packed a lot of lunches in my day. Get an insulated lunch bag or box and an ice pack. Everything will stay cold, even with the box sitting out during the day. Then you can pack anything you want without concern over spoiling food or contamination due to heat. My kids have to take their empty lunch boxes outside to the playground after lunch. The boxes sit in the classroom during the day, and for a bit outside. When they come home at 3:00, the ice packs are still cold. I can even pack tuna and crackers for lunch without worry.

Get a box of snack size zipper bags, they're easier for little fingers to open than rubbermaid type snack containers. That way you can pack fresh fruit and a fork instead of the prepackaged and full of sugar canned fruit cups. You can send dried fruit or raisins for something fun and sweet. Pasta salad works great, and the ice pack keeps it cold, especially if you've added ham or other types of meat to the salad.

You can also freeze tubes of Gogurt in place of an ice pack. They will thaw but still be cold at lunchtime. If you don't want to get an insulated lunch bag, freeze small bottles of water to use as a cooling agent, they too will thaw by lunch.

You can send foods to be warmed in the microwave, any left overs you have from dinner the night before, soups, cheese pizza, etc., all kinds of options there.

Have fun with your time, we love our kids more than anything else, but this is a good thing for moms!