Today We Snackle

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #8:

Menu

I pack my kids’ lunches everyday. I respect all the reasons to not do this (primarily self-reliance), but it’s something I do for my kids that I haven’t quite been able to give up. I know that if I put them in charge of their own lunches, they’ll just pack junk food, eat from a vending machine, or starve and be miserable. I don’t want them to have to worry about food, and I want to make sure they eat some kind of nutrient. I’m not the Queen of Healthy Food, by any means, but I’ve been known to sneak a carrot or a grape into the mix. 

Some of our most common lunch items are:

-Sandwiches 

-Muffins

-Crackers, cheese, and pepperoni

-Celery with peanut butter

-Tortilla chips with refried beans or nacho cheese for dipping 

-Cold chicken nuggets (Bare Lightly from Costco)

-Salads (mostly taco and crispy chicken)

-Noodles and parmesan 

-Veggies and dip

-Yogurt parfaits

-Fruit/goldfish/string cheese/pretzels/applesauce/etc.

I’ve tried sending hot foods in thermoses, but we haven’t had much success. The food doesn’t stay warm enough, and my kids say it’s gross. Over the summer we experimented with chicken nuggets and pizza rolls in the thermoses, and I left them in there for the amount of time it would sit in my kids’ lunch boxes. Then I checked the temps, and they were luke warm and kind of soggy. I followed the advice online to pour boiling water in the food jars to heat them up and then put paper towels in them to absorb the moisture from the food, but none of us were impressed with the results. Plus, packing hot food is a lot of work, so I don’t usually bother. 

Zoe is my hardest child to feed. She doesn’t like anything. She won’t eat sandwiches - the staple of lunches - which makes lunch very complicated to provide for her. She will like something one day and hate it the next, so I get really excited when she likes something new and then really disappointed when she suddenly won’t eat it. For now, she likes muffins and celery with peanut butter, but that could change any time. If she had her choice she would eat ramen or chicken noodle soup for every meal with an occasional tamale. I don’t know why she like tamales! The kid has so many sensitivities to textures; I don’t know how she’s okay with masa. 

For Friday lunch (or whatever day is a short day - this week it’s Thursday because there is no school on Friday), I make them snackle boxes (except for Nicky. He needs something more substantial because he usually has things after school and doesn’t come home until 5:00 or later). My kids have always loved for me to make them “snack plates,” which is just a random assortment of whatever I can find around the house or need to use up thrown on a plate (I used to use 6 cup muffin tins for “snack plates,” but they got rusty, and I never replaced them). Eva especially loves snack plates and always asks, “Mom, will you make me a snack plate?” So I bought them some divided containers, and on short days, I make them snackle boxes for lunch. It’s really hard to make an entire snackle box for Zoe that she’ll actually eat, so I just give her a little bit of this and that, and I tell her it’s a “try it” box. I’m sure she throws a lot of it away, but I’m not there to see it, so ignorance is bliss!

Can we all just take a moment to roll our eyes about the fact that a bag of Welch’s fruit snacks only has six fruit snacks in it?

This year Eva’s teacher has snack time during class because their grade has a late lunch time, so I throw together an additional snack for Eva everyday. The teacher has some snacks on hand for kids that don’t bring one from home, and I found out that Eva lies to her teacher and says she didn’t bring a snack because she likes the teacher’s snack better. This worked great for her until the day the teacher ran out of snacks!

The little stinker!

(Eva. Not the teacher).

So there’s a little glimpse into our lunch menu. Today, we snackle! Tomorrow… oh boy. No school. 

Update: All this talk of snacks had me needing a 10:00 am snack plate of my own! Tell me I’m not the only one who still occasionally eats from a divided baby plate. 

Pepsi is snack