Packing kidsâ 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 âeww,â the list of choices can seem hopelessly short.
Then thereâs 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 theyâve been serving up. that parents donât 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 thereâs the pressure of fellow parents. Busy parents toss ready-made snacks into their kidsâ lunch bags worrying about what that mom in the schoolyard who brags about all the organic food she serves her children will think. The âmommy wars,â it seems, have somehow found their way into kidsâ lunches, leading to âlunchbox shameâ and plenty of guilt.
Lunch-making is virtually a competitive sport in some parenting circles. Itâs 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.
Itâs 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 sonâs lunch, carefully assembling each food, and scrawling âMommy loves youâ on a banana, then posting pictures of the result to Facebook. Fellow parents, she says, often respond with, âWow, will you pack my lunch too?â
Antweiler says sheâs not interested in creating displays of lunchtime artistry with her sonsâ lunches.
âCompared to some school lunches out there, mine are pretty boring,â 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.
âThe simple reason I make these is that he doesnât like sandwiches. So I had to get creative,â 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.
âHaving the containers that have little portions means that if thereâs something heâs not in the mood to eat, itâs not the only thing thatâs in his lunch and heâll find something he likes,â 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, sheâll make a tortilla rollup with ham or with chocolate spread wrapped around a banana. And many times, her sonâs 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 theyâre not. The stay-at-home mom says sheâs always busy and doesnât have a lot of time to devote to filling lunchboxes each day. Sheâs found her solution is doing batch cooking on the weekend and freezing everything.
When she makes dinner, sheâll double up the recipe, for example, so thereâs 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 theyâre also a lot more economical. And she insists her approach is a breeze.
âIn, some ways, I think itâs actually easier than making a sandwich, because Iâve done so much ahead of time,â she says.
âI also do all the packing the night before. I find in the morning, itâs just too much of a rush, looking for backpacks and everything. And Iâm not a morning person,â 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.
âI didnât take lunch to school when I was a kid until Grade 9 so this is all still a novelty to me,â she says.
In a few years, Antweiler says, her sons are probably not going to let her to make their lunches for them and theyâll want to make their own food choices. But she hopes that by exposing them now to lunches with lots of variety, theyâll grow up appreciating the value of homemade meals.
âI know this isnât going to last forever,â she says, âbut for now itâs working.â