It’s officially ski season here. I should be more excited about that, but honestly it mostly just represents more work for me. I don’t actually get to ski, it’s pretty much all about ski lessons for the kids right now.  Once they all know how to ski, or they can all be in full day lessons (the girls are, but our autistic boy isn’t quite there yet), then I might be able to go skiing. (although we’re basically spending all our money on their lessons and tickets, so skiing for the parents isn’t really in the budget this year).

Anyway - back to the lunch. 

The Lunch Idea: 

If you’ve been skiing, you know that buying lunch in the lodge gets expensive fast. So I try to pack our lunch as much as I can. For ski lunches I try to pack in a bit more calories than I do for a regular school lunch. They are very physically active out in the cold, so they burn a lot more calories. I will include more carbs, and even a chocolate treat, in every ski lunch, to just help keep them fueled up for the day. 

In addition to the lunches you see here, I also pack a bunch of snacks. For the drive up to the mountain each kid gets a sippy cup of chocolate milk for the car, along with a baggie of cheerios and a piece of cheese (and this was after having a bowl of cereal at home for a quick breakfast). Then I take another bag with us full of drinks - water bottles for everyone, chocolate milk boxes, and organic juice boxes.  And there’s a bag of extra snacks for after skiing - nuts, fruit leathers, crackers, peanut butter crackers, animal cookies, etc. It’s a pretty wide variety of stuff and I just keep the same bag packed and stocked throughout the season, and replenish it as needed. 

Lunch this week was burritos. I think burritos are just about the perfect on-the-go meal. They are tidy and compact, easy to eat, and you can pack a lot of calories in them. 

What’s in the lunch:

• Burritos - two have just beans and cheese, and two have beans, cheese, and a delicious enchilada chicken that I made.  You can see how I made it here. 
• Carrots
• Three of the kids have tomatoes
• One kid has an extra cheese
• The kids have strawberries, husband got an extra carrot
• Animal cookies (for the kids), almonds, dried cranberries, and mini peanut butter cups
• My lunch was different - I had a salad with green leaf lettuce and a scoop of the same chicken as in the burritos, tomatoes, green onions, and cheese on top. My dressing on the side is a simple combination of sour cream, guacamole, and green salsa.  I love making this as an easy dressing or dip. I also had a few almonds on the side, some edamame rice crackers, and a little dark chocolate salted caramel. 

The burritos were eaten cold. The place where we eat lunch on the mountain actually does have a microwave, and I offered to warm any burritos up (which was also why I wrapped them in plastic), but everyone was happy to eat them cold.

Sometimes people comment about how these EasyLunchboxes don’t look like they hold enough for an adult meal. I can assure you they do.  My husband and I were both very satisfied with the amount of food we had - we were full enough without being overstuffed.