This week on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):
Cooking With Kids: School Lunches
> Personally, I can see the storm cloud of chicken nuggets gathering on the horizon, but my daughter Iris, 3, just started preschool, and her school doesn’t serve hot lunch. So I have to send sack lunch, and if it’s no good, I have no one to blame but myself.
I’m getting better at making lunch, but the real test of my mettle will come next week when I have to send snack for *the whole class.*
The picture on that article looks like “The 21 Balloons Does School Cafeteria”.
Perhaps you should review “Eat Drink Man Woman” (one of the great foodie movies) for some pointers on how to pack a real school lunch!
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve survived basically my entire life on lunches consisting of PB&J, fruit, and chips/cookie. Now that I’m packing a lunch for Ellric too, I gave him the same thing… but the kid has less tolerance for repetition in meals than I, it seems (sniff) so he eventually claimed he didn’t like peanut butter any more. We switched to ham&cheese sandwiches or turkey&cheese sandwiches, but the turkey paled almost immediately though the ham got him through the end of the school year. At this point, we have him on a three-sandwich rotation of salami & pepperoni & cheese & ketchup; a hotdog & cheese & ketchup; and PB&J. And fruit and a dessert. For now, it seems to be working.
Making snack for the whole class is wonderful fun. I always thought of it as akin to making cocktail snacks, but without the chaser…
Jamie Oliver has some good kids stuff in one of his books.. He makes candies (sweets) from just really slowly drying out fruit slices in an oven overnight.. the result is a great tasting fruit bite – that tastes like candy, but has none of the usual crap in it.
If that doesn’t go down well, just spike them!
Making snack for the whole class is a snap. The possibilities are endless. I already did my snack mom stint at the very beginning of the year. Scones with jam, Hummus with mini pita, cherry tomatoes, and baby carrots; Cheese, crackers and fruit, …banana bread etc.
I’m determined to send a snack at least one day that Iris would never eat at home, just to see what happens.
Other fun snack ideas:
Mini quiches (use store bought pie shells)
Wrapped pancakes filled with jam
Cubed Bread, ham and pineapple toothpicks
Plastic cups of apple crisp
Plastic cups of fruit
So many fun things to do….Di
Well, I believe that I finally got some real instructions from one of the “engineers”? at Apple. I am now using a third mouse, which I hope will do the job. As to snacks, I could suggest some of the stuff we have at teatime here at home, but we would be taking the chance that Iris would be summarily sent home, having been exposed to such unwholesome fodder. Hugs and Kisses