Making school lunches is my least favourite parental chore. It doesn’t help matters that my youngest child turns her nose up at every speck of food. In theory, I could send her same uneaten lunch to school every day for a week and rid myself of this repetitive task. No? Sigh.
To satisfy Princess Picky Pants, I’ve had to become a more creative lunch lady. By making lunch more fun, an ordinary lunch becomes....funch – a virtual party in a lunchbox.
Here’s how to funch your child’s lunch:
Switch it up every day. Same old-same old gets boring fast.
Make lunches the night before. No mother can be creative in a rush at 7 AM.
Hide a special treat or note in your child’s lunchbox...ahem, funchbox.
Include interesting shapes and textures.
Go Bento style. This makes lunch into an exciting smorgasbord.
A ranch dip for raw veggies or yogurt to dip fruit...always a winner. Who doesn’t like to dip?
Start with something your kids are most likely to eat, make that the focal point and extend from there. My kids don’t care for soup or cold pasta, so a sandwich is our sure thing.
Some of our fave sammies include:
Regular shish kabob skewers are too pointy for young children, so spear some fave sandwich ingredients on a pretzel rod or wooden dowel (I used candy making sticks here).
Use cookie cutters to create some silly sammy shapes! Save crusts in a Ziplock to make into croutons later.
An egg salad sandwich has never been so unbearably cute.
Sneak grated carrot into a tuna sandwich. Also, go two-tone – white bread slice on top, whole wheat slice on the bottom.
Cut off crusts, roll bread flat, spread on yummy toppings i.e. cream cheese and jam, roll and slice!
Spread humus on bottom slice, add green, yellow and red veggies and cut out three small peep holes. I’ve also made this sandwich with lime marmalade, yellow marmalade and strawberry jam.
Happy funchtime everyone!
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