My girls have started having lunches at school instead of school meals. I’ve started having nightmares about what to put in said lunches. Who would have thought packing a small meal each day for little ones would be so stressful? Confession time: when my older two were little, they had in their lunch boxes exactly the same as mum would make me, one cheese sandwich, one banana and a packet of crisps. These days kids are taught about healthy food, crisps and such are frowned upon. Lunches have to be healthy and tasty. So let the nightmares commence.
I have a board on Pinterest on Bento. Mainly because Eldest Daughter is a big Bento fan and introduced me to it a couple of years ago.
Here is some Bento we had at Mount Fuji restaurant:
So I collected bento pictures and soon realised that I could do Bento style lunches for the girls. Pinterest is such a great resource for storing things of interest so I was soon finding all sorts of blogs and sites that are helping me think of new and interesting things to put in the lunch boxes. The lunch boxes I use most are Easy Lunchboxes which can be purchased from Amazon. I was lucky to win a pack of four in a competition a while ago. I love them because they already have little compartments. You can also use little boxes to keep things separate or even silicon or paper cupcake cases.
The first time I used a sandwich cutter I was horrified at the loss of bread, what a waste. Well, it can always be used for breadcrumbs (and I’m sure to find more recipes) The thing is, if you put whole sandwiches you’ll probably end up with just as much waste at the end of the day. Most kids don’t eat all the bread.
So Thanks to Pinterest my inspiration has been fired and I’m sure I’ll come up with some healthy and interesting lunches for my girls. Here is one of my early attempts. This is a home made bread roll hedgehog with raisin eyes, home made cheese puff snails on a bed of lettuce, with a cucumber fence and some grapes.
Do share your lunch box ideas and recipes, and if you have any ideas of what to do with leftover bits of bread.
Love your hedgehog bun! I've been doing packed lunches as well. It was much easier at the beginning when I was really inspired. Then I started to run out of ideas and time haha. Now my daughter is having school lunches 2 to 3 times a week, and packed lunches can vary from warm food to sandwiches only. At least there is a variety 🙂
Thanks a lot for sharing with us! I really appreciate that you wrote this article and shared some really good information on this specific topic. Jessica @ Fresh Food HQ