Packing kids’ lunch boxes is so often an exercise in frustration for parents. After eliminating the foods that , and weeding out the meals their own kids have banned with a declarative “eww,” the list of choices can seem hopelessly short.

Then there’s the pressure of offering up something nutritious. With all the talk in recent years about healthy school lunches, the focus has been on school cafeterias and the often unhealthy fare they’ve been serving up. that parents don’t do a whole lot better on their own. As many teachers can attest, home-packed lunches tend to be pretty awful as well: low on fruits and vegetables and heavy on pre-packaged, nutrient-poor foods and snacks.

Then there’s the pressure of fellow parents. Busy parents toss ready-made snacks into their kids’ lunch bags worrying about what that mom in the schoolyard who brags about all the organic food she serves her children will think. The “mommy wars,” it seems, have somehow found their way into kids’ lunches, leading to “lunchbox shame” and plenty of guilt.

Lunch-making is virtually a competitive sport in some parenting circles. It’s not enough to simply slap together some luncheon meat on bread, to these parents. Instead, the sandwiches have to be cut into animal shapes with fruit sculptures on the side. There are now dedicated to pictures of artfully assembled lunches, in which have been created through the judicious use of lettuce, cheese and edible markers.

In Japan and elsewhere, there are even courses available to parents who need to learn how to turn bland mounds of white rice and nori seaweed into portraits of Michael Jackson or Nemo, just so that they can keep up with their parental peers.

It’s no wonder many parents approach the task of lunch-making with weary dread.

Think outside the (lunch) box

But then there are parents like Melanie Power Antweiler. The Vancouver mom of two actually says she loves packing her 8-year-old son’s lunch, carefully assembling each food, and scrawling “Mommy loves you” on a banana, then posting pictures of the result to Facebook. Fellow parents, she says, often respond with, “Wow, will you pack my lunch too?”

Antweiler says she’s not interested in creating displays of lunchtime artistry with her sons’ lunches.

“Compared to some school lunches out there, mine are pretty boring,” she admits.

What Antweiler says she tried to focus on is nutritious lunches that her kids actually want to eat. The busy stay-at-home mom says it was really her son who forced to think outside the (lunch) box back when he was in kindergarten.

“The simple reason I make these is that he doesn’t like sandwiches. So I had to get creative,” she says.

What worked, she found, was multi-compartment lunch boxes that allow several foods, colours and textures to make it into the lunch box at once.

“Having the containers that have little portions means that if there’s something he’s not in the mood to eat, it’s not the only thing that’s in his lunch and he’ll find something he likes,” she says.

School lunch ideas

A typical lunch nowadays includes a hard-boiled egg, perhaps shaped like an animal, a selection of chopped veggies and fruit and a home-baked mini muffin. Sometimes, she’ll make a tortilla rollup with ham or with chocolate spread wrapped around a banana. And many times, her son’s lunch is essentially a deconstructed sandwich: cheese cubes, ham triangles and baguette slices. Nowhere will there be a pack of granola bars or fruit gummies.

She uploads pictures of her creations to Facebook, she says, simply to keep a record of her creations.

While the lunches look time-consuming and elaborate, Antweiler insists they’re not. The stay-at-home mom says she’s always busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to devote to filling lunchboxes each day. She’s found her solution is doing batch cooking on the weekend and freezing everything.

When she makes dinner, she’ll double up the recipe, for example, so there’s enough for leftovers in a thermos the next day. She chops fruit in big batches and buys yogurt for smoothies in giant tubs, When she makes dollar-sized pancakes, she whips up several dozen at a time to freeze and then portions out a few in a lunch box with a little side container of syrup.

The lunches she creates are not only litter-free, but Antweiler says they’re also a lot more economical. And she insists her approach is a breeze.

“In, some ways, I think it’s actually easier than making a sandwich, because I’ve done so much ahead of time,” she says.

“I also do all the packing the night before. I find in the morning, it’s just too much of a rush, looking for backpacks and everything. And I’m not a morning person,” she says.

After assembling the lunches, she likes to keep the final result a secret from her son. Not only does it get him excited for lunch, it also makes the job just a little more fun for her.

“I didn’t take lunch to school when I was a kid until Grade 9 so this is all still a novelty to me,” she says.

In a few years, Antweiler says, her sons are probably not going to let her to make their lunches for them and they’ll want to make their own food choices. But she hopes that by exposing them now to lunches with lots of variety, they’ll grow up appreciating the value of homemade meals.

“I know this isn’t going to last forever,” she says, “but for now it’s working.”