School Lunch Day 16: Burritos, and a sack lunch!
I wanted something that could be easily eaten on the field trip, held in one hand and not fall apart or have a lot of little pieces to deal with. Burritos are perfect for that. You could practically just take it in your pocket. It's easy to make ahead, and personally I think they taste just as good cold as they do hot, especially if they have just simple ingredients (I don't think I'd like a cold steak burrito, but bean and cheese does just fine). I just buy organic canned refried beans, and I shred big blocks of cheese. I'll try to do a video one of these days about the rolling, but it's really quite easy - the trick is to not over stuff the burrito. Just a few spoonfuls of beans, a sprinkle of cheese. I microwave these enough to get the cheese melting into the beans and the tortilla nice and soft. Then fold the sides in, and roll.
School Lunches 2014-2015 - week 16
If you're paying attention and go back and look at the lunch posts, it will seem like I skipped a bunch of weeks. I did. But I got weeks 11-15 all caught up in one post last week, so I'm still on track with sharing all our lunches for this year.
The first week of the New Year was all about catching up from the holiday break - putting away new toys and clothes, getting the kitchen back in order, doing laundry - certainly not a time to get fancy with the lunches. So my goal for the week was to keep it simple, but still make it attractive and something that anyone would want to eat. Also - it's the start of ski season. Where we live we are only an hour away from the local ski mountain, so some combination of kids will be in lessons every Saturday for the next 2 months. (Sounds exhausting, and it is, but it goes by fast.) So for the next two months I will be packing lunch 6 days a week.
Catching up on 2014 school lunches
The holidays really throw my routine out the window. In November and December the school lunches were made, and the photos were taken, but I didn't get around to blogging them for you. So here you are, a catch up of several weeks of school lunches.
Remember, the food itself doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just take an extra minute to present the meal in a fun way, and it will seem so much more appealing. If you look at the contents of these lunches, most of them do not contain anything really revolutionary, just normal kid lunch stuff presented in an appealing and organized way. I try to make sure the lunch is balanced with a protein, a fruit and a veggie (although looking back at some of these pics, I see I haven't done so great with the veggie - something to work on in 2015!).
A week of school lunches
Week 10 already! Halloween has blown by and it's already November. I can hardly believe it, time moves so fast. I'm enjoying having my lunch menu each week, which gives me some fall back standard when I'm too tired to figure it out. But I've also managed to mix it up a bit and try a few new creative things.
With kids and food, we celebrate small victories. Three of my kids are pretty good eaters (we won't talk about the fourth one!). They eat a decent variety of foods, but anything resembling leafy and green is where we struggle the most. Pretty much kale chips are it, and aside from that I'm just sneaking it in.
Another week of school lunches
I'm trying really hard to get last week's lunches posted before this week is over! I'm pleased with myself for the lunches last week, I got a little creative with trying a few slightly different things, but still kept it easy. What a week! Halloween and parties and school field trips - I needed the weekend to recover. But then the time changed, and not all my kids have adjusted to that yet. Ah well, such is the mom life. I love it anyway.