Inspirational School Lunches

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If you have school-aged children you’ve probably already been thinking about school lunches and what you’ll do this year. I’m going to concentrate on no-trash lunches where there isn’t anything that needs to be thrown away after the meal. Meaning, no pre-packages foods. Last year, on Earth Day, my sons school asked that each parent send a no-trash lunch as they weren’t going to throw anything away. It was a great exercise and one that I want to try to make a full-time habit. It’s hard though — so many items that I want to include in a lunchbox come pre-packaged.

I know that it will be very difficult to avoid ALL pre-packaged items and I’m not going to beat myself up over including something like that if I think it’s worth the nutritional content, but there are several things that I can easily do that will drastically reduce the amount of trash in his lunch this year. One is to always use a thermos or big sippy cup instead of sending a juice box. Another is to buy reusable sandwich and snack bags. Here’s a great video that showcases several products to help making a waste-free lunch possible this year:

Healthy Options
Foodmomiac has some great ideas on how to make healthy lunches. She buys premade pizza dough from her local grocery store, cuts them up to make several mini pizza crusts. Then, she packs them in the lunch box with toppings for her kids to make at school. Brilliant! See her tips on this video:

Creative Ideas
One of my favorite ideas is to use pretzels to secure meat or other foods instead of a toothpick. Parents.com shows how to make a pretzel kabob. And, here are some super cute, mini sandwiches from Steamy Kitchen.

I’m going to try to vary the types of bread I use to make sandwiches: whole wheat bread, pitas, mini bagels, sandwich rounds. Anything that will add variety to the regular PB&J. What are you going to do differently this year?

Related:

• Reusit.com’s “5 Steps to a Waste-Free Lunch“
• FoodMomiac’s post, “Time to start thinking about school lunches!“
• Balancing Motherhood’s first attempt at a no-trash lunch
• BlogHer’s “Lunch Box Ideas for Back to School“