Getting to that point of the year where I’m wondering “What do I make for school lunch?!”…so I made this Easy School Lunch List for us all – just mix n’ match the choices from fruit, grain, protein, and veggies to make a complete and healthy school lunch. Hopefully, this will make school lunch making a little easier…
Easy School Lunch List
It’s the fruits and veggies which challenge me. Here’s a tip: when you bring the vegetables home from the grocery store wash and cut them up immediately. A bag of cut carrots and cucumbers ready to go makes school lunch making so much easier! And for fruit, my tip is to have an assortment of fresh and dried fruit on hand. Fresh fruit for the organized days and dried fruit for the crazy days when you need to pack lunch fast (our dried fruit days always comes on the day I have to go grocery shopping…because we have no fresh fruit).
And did you know you can freeze bread? I always have a pack of bagels in my freezer for Plan B school lunch. When there’s nothing else to pack – I get out a frozen bagel – sch-mere some butter or nut-free spread on it and pack it in the lunchbox. By lunch – it will have defrosted (and bonus: it works as an ice pack!).
Dairy is an important part of the diet of kids (calcium helps bones!) so add a bit of cheese or be sure to include milk or yogurt.
Protein is the one food group all my kids love to eat. I have no problem packing lunch meat into a wrap or sandwich.
For treats…the choices are pretty obvious to include on your own Easy School Lunch List
- homemade muffin
- brownies
- cookies
- pudding
- Rice Krispies squares
You might want to check out our Checklist For Healthy Litterless Lunches or my recipe for Red Fruit Salad (both great for school lunch!).
The only food all of my children like in their lunch is pizza – cheese or pepperoni and banana bread. Otherwise they all have varied tastes and lunch making is a pain in the…
love this list! Great for us adults too!
Love this list! School lunches can be daunting at times. Thank you, this list will help!
Good list! Thanks for sharing, got some new ideas!
Thanks- I’ve been dreading doing school lunches again!
Omgosh Brilliant I Love it, I am wondering why I didn’t think of this before now??? Thanks so much for sharing =) Adding this to my favs
Love this!! Thanks for the great suggestions! My kids would like to choose from a list like this.
When I was making lunches every day for my girls, I would always use frozen bread which would be thawed by lunch time for them!
Great ideas not just for wee lunches!
We usually get into a lunch rut right about now so this is definitely a helpful list.
This is great! I’m always looking for different snacks for my kids…other than just cheese crackers and peanuts.
Reading over your ideas for portable snacks is very helpful in getting organized. Being unprepared when I’m hungry and am out and about leads to poor food choices and unplanned expenses on food purchases.