You may have also heard me talk about how much I believe in "everything in moderation".  We don't follow any specific kind of "diet", other than eating just real food.  (I don't consider that a diet though, I consider that to just be normal.)  Because we don't have any food allergies or specific food intolerances, there isn't anything that we can't eat.  We are omnivores, who eat all real foods, in moderation. But moderation to me means that we don't eat all the things all the time, and we shouldn't eat all the kinds of things at every meal. So even though I don't have to for a dietary reason, you will still find me fixing meals for my family that are gluten free, grain free, nut free, dairy free, meat free, etc.  I believe in doing this to provide variety for my kids, and I think it's good for them to learn that they can have a great meal even if it doesn't include bread, or dairy, or meat, etc.  

I've been packing school lunches now for 6 years - I started when my two oldest were 18 months and going to a little developmental toddler preschool a couple days a week, and now they are almost 8.  In that time, I've tried a LOT of different lunch containers and lunch packing strategies.  There are a lot of good lunch containers out there, and I would definitely still recommend many of them.

I get lots of questions about the products I use to pack our lunches, so I thought it might be helpful if I gathered up all my favorite items in one post.

I think one of the most important aspects of easy lunch packing is to have products and containers that are consistent and reliable. While it is fun to have a nice variety of accessories, if you want to be quick and efficient in your lunch packing, choosing a reliable set of stuff that you can use day in and day out is going to be your best bet. 

This is the one place to look for all of the lunches I have packed since the beginning of the current school year - a full year of school lunches, plus lots of adult lunches mixed in as well.  You'll see all my lunch ideas here, including breakfasts for lunch, nut free lunches, gluten free lunches, non-sandwich lunces. 

Grandma and I were going along for the second grade field trip, so I packed a more grown up lunch to go for us. We have two salads for lunch - a chicken salad and a kale salad, with some edamame rice crackers on the side.

ScheduleSo my lunch plan for this week is: make it easy and take shortcuts wherever I can.  Fortunately I had some pizza rolls in the freezer still - the last of them, so I will make more when we get home.  I don't buy a lot of pre-packaged snack thingys, but I do like them for airplane rides. Target had a bunch of stuff on sale - buy three get one free - so I while I was getting airplane snacks I also picked up a little extra to get me through the week with some easy lunch options.

Friday sandwiches + Friday pizza all in one!  I've been wanting to make this for a while, and a rainy Friday seemed like the perfect time.  I did not make this lunch ahead, I just made it this morning.  I'm not sure how well it would keep overnight with the pizza sauce on this very soft bread.  Maybe on a thicker bread I think it would do fine, but this very soft whole wheat bread was all I had and I didn't want to take my chances.  But they were easy to make and came together really fast, so making these in the morning was really no big deal.