Successful School Lunches in 5 Minutes or Less
Does anyone else want to run and hide when you think of going back to the daily grind of school lunches, and trying to figure out what to pack? There’s the dueling battle of figuring out what your kids actually eat, and you can feel good about. Surely, I’m not alone in this struggle!
I love food, and have a passion for cooking, but school lunches leave me feeling stuck and defeated. Today I’ll share two approaches to school lunches that will flip this script, giving you a sense of ease, flexibility and success for both you and your kiddos!
I take a slightly unconventional take on meal planning in our house. As opposed to traditional meal planning based upon recipes, I prefer to plan for meal types. For example, instead of choosing a specific recipe for stir fry, I would plan that I want to make stir fry one night that week and know the general type of ingredients I’d include. For instance, I typically include a starch, protein and couple different veggies. Not only does this approach give you flexibility to use the ingredients you have, but you can also adjust to what sounds good in the moment.
This same concept works great for school lunches. Look at what you have on hand, apply a little creativity, and let your kids get involved. You’ll be packed and ready for the day ahead in 5 minutes or less! Below I share two lunch wins that can be put on repeat all year long.
Lunch: Hummus 3 ways
Hummus is protein packed, has tons of flavor options and can be served in endless ways. From the list below choose how you want to serve your hummus, then select 2-3 toppings to include. In moments you have your main lunch item prepped and ready!
Serving Style:
Bread
Tortilla
Small bowl of hummus
Toppings:
Sliced peppers
Baby carrots
Cucumber slices
Crumbled Feta
Snack: Build your own trail-mix
Store bought trail-mix can have a lot of sneaky ingredients and added sugar that you may not expect. As opposed to buying pre-made trail-mix, it’s much more cost effective to simply buy the ingredients you enjoy most, keep them on-hand in your pantry, and mix up a portion of trail-mix for snacks at home or on-the-go. Check out the suggestions below for inspiration. I recommend building your trail-mix by choosing one sweet and two savory items, mix them up and you’re covered for snack time! Bonus: if they don’t eat the whole snack at school it’s can easily serve as a post-school snack.
Sweet
Raisins
Craisins
Coconut
Mini chocolate chips
Savory
Almonds
Pistachios
Sunflower seeds
Next Steps
I hope these suggestions leave you feeling empowered and ready to start the new school year. Most of all I encourage you to find ways to involve your kids, so they learn healthy eating habits right alongside you, and the work of lunch packing is done in half the time!
If you’re curious to learn more, click the button below to download the free Quick Start Guide featuring efficient and delicious meals you can take from the fridge to table in 30 Minutes!