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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are grown and flown now but I always packed [b]mini-versions of regular food [/b] as school snacks for when they were in ES and MS. My kids bento boxes often had the following snacks. 
- blueberry pancakes (sweeten with dates puree in the batter, no need to send syrup)
- cut up cheese cubes
- cut grapes or berries
- tangerines (half peeled)
- yogurt (homemade)
- french toasts
- quesadilla
- spiced vegetable appe, upma, spiced idli
- crepes filled with nutella or just sweetened and cardamom-flavored or vanilla flavored mashed paneer or ricotta.
- tea sandwiches - usually cucumber or egg salad.  Cut a full sized sandwich in 4 squares or triangles. 
- Use rice wrappers, mandu wrappers,  puff pastry sheets, empanada dough,  parantha dough, dosa batter, cheela batter etc. -  and fill it with any stuffing on hand + cheese - and bake it or steam it.   I would go crazy with different fillings - eggs, meat, beans, vegetables,  cheese, rice, nuts, leftover pasta, mac and cheese, deli meats, and fruits.

[/quote]

Thank you for this— my son’s school provides lunch, but it isn’t healthy and he doesn’t like it (like, jelly sandwiches and white rice) and he needs so many more calories lately. I’ve been going crazy trying to find things he will eat that are nutritious, or at least include some protein/fiber/fat so he isn’t famished at pick up.[/quote]

This is only helpful for someone with the time to prepare all of it. I used to prepare lunches like this for my kid when I was a SAHM. I no longer do, sadly. My kid gets a lot more pre-packaged and processed foods now because it's a way to get food in a lunchbox with minimal effort. I feel bad about it and try to buy the healthiest stuff I can.

The average working parent simply cannot prepare food like that. I know because I've done it.[/quote]

I absolutely 100% disagree with you.  You can prep or make most of the food before or reuse leftovers in creative ways.  You just have to get away with buying into the myth that only packaged food are snacks.  [b]Stop believin that giving healthy foods is time consuming or costly.  [/b]

If your kid had a life threatening illness or food allergy, you would be making every single meal at home.

Giving healthy foods to children is a solved problem already.  This is not something that you have to solve from scratch.  Cheese cubes, loaded sandwiches, fruits, veggies ...these are not rocket science  to make or pack. [/quote]

I didn't say giving healthy foods is always time consuming or costly. I said that the foods the PP suggested for packed lunches are too time consuming for most working parents and therefore not particularly helpful for a parent looking for ways to efficiently prepare packed lunches for kids while also juggling work and other responsibilities.

Most working parents don't have the bandwidth to make pancakes from scratch for the express purpose of packing them in lunches through the week. Another issue with making food like this for lunches is that freshly prepared food mostly won't keep for 5 days. When I was a SAHM doing lunches like this, I had to do meal prep several times a week in order to assure food was fresh and appetizing in lunch boxes. I tried keeping this up when I started working full time by doing weekend meal prep, but a lot of items don't store well for that long.

It is really condescending to not recognize the time and financial constraints of parents. The suggestion of "just make a variety of freshly prepared items at home and serve them in small portions in lunches" is totally unrealistic for a lot of parents. [/quote]

Dp. That poster suggested cubed cheeses and berries. Cheese comes cubed at the grocer and lasts a long time. Cucumber sandwiches can be quick too. [/quote]

This single line from that list of suggestions invalidates it as a reasonable solution to most parents' healthy eating quandaries:

"- yogurt (homemade)"

Anyone who would say this to busy working parents trying to feed their kids is a bad person, the end.[/quote]

Homemade yogurt takes 5 minutes of prep time in an instant pot. I don't do it, so I would not suggest this to anyone, but I don't see it as a guilt trip either. Not everything has to work for everyone. That doesn't make her a bad person.[/quote]

Right! I experimented with homemade yogurt (my kid didn't like it and it wasn't a hill I was ready to die on) and I got a yogurt machine. You pour milk in, put in starter, and then...push a button. The machine I have will "keep warm" after the cycle is over. So yeah, if you want to make yogurt, you pourt the ingredients in before work, push a button, and voila, when you get home there is yogurt![/quote]

Correction. If you want to make yogurt, you: buy a yogurt machine or hot pot, figure out what you need, build it into your schedule, then add the ingredients an push a button, then give it to your kid who decides they don't like homemade yogurt, then give up on homemade yogurt, then find somewhere to store the freaking yogurt maker you bought for this project, then condescend to people online about how "easy" it is to "just make your own yogurt!"

It's a little more involved than pushing a button, admit it.[/quote]

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