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Lunch Box Basics Doing the Math - Free & Reduced Lunches - Lunch Bags & Boxes - The Thermos -Plastic Bags & Resealable Containers - Keeping Things Cold - Keeping Things Hot - Planning Ahead- Keeping it all Clean - Mayonnaise Suggestions of What to Put inside the Box
Doing the Math
Packing lunches is a bit
of a bother. It takes a few weeks to get used to thinking about
it and making time for it every morning, day in and day out. I
would be lying if I said there wasn't a minor element of drugery to it.
Still, there are really
good reasons to bite the bullet, put up with the drudgery, and pack
your own lunches anyway. Home packed lunches are usually more
nutritious than school or fast food lunches. It's easy for us
to offer skim milk, fresh fruits and vegetabes in season, and
low-cost, protein-filled soups and casseroles. The lunches we
make ourselves are more filling too. I have noticed that school
lunches serve a lot less food than they used to. The portions are
smaller, and they serve fewer items to the children too. I know
my 11-year-old can easily eat twice as much as he is provided with in
a school lunch. Home packed lunches can be adjusted to
accomodate growth spurts and other changes in appetite.
Homemade lunches taste a whole lot better too. At home we
Free & Reduced
School Lunches For folks who don't meet the income requirements for free or reduced lunches, it is well worth the extra work to prepare your own lunches at home, and send them to school or work with the family.
Lunch Bags & Boxes Small children often prefer a plastic lunch box with cartoon characters on the side. I suggest you buy these as cheaply as possible. They only last for a year or two before the children drop them or the latch breaks. At $6 to $10 a piece, buying brand new boxes has never been a good investment for me. I have purchased them new when I desperately needed the thermoses that came with them. After the plastic lunch box broke, I purchased replacements from my local Goodwill. I continue to use the same thermos year after year.
If the art work on an
older lunch box is shabby, you can easily replace it. Use
rubber cement to glue down a new picture (cut to size) and then cover
the picture with clear contact paper. I've done this, and it
lasted almost 2 years, until the lunch box cracked and became
unusable. Amy D. describes the process in detail in the first
book of The
Tightwad Gazette. For older children insulated lunch bags work best. They don't have the juvenile connotations of plastic boxes with matching thermoses, so older kids usually don't object to carrying them. I like them because they don't break when they get drop-kicked across the livingroom by a budding football player. Since they have soft sides, it is easier to fit more food and odd-shaped containers in them too. They usually have zipper closing and shoulder straps for carrying them. I buy the largest ones I can find because I find them easier to fill. Many modern insulated bags have several extra zipper pockets and sections on the outside to carry little extras like napkins, spoons and salt or pepper packets. My boys like these but they aren't really necessary. Purchased brand-new, insulated lunch bags cost between $5 and $15. If you wait until back-to-school-sales you may find them cheaper. Over the summer they can often be found at yard sales. Insulated lunch bags usually do not come with their own thermos, so you will have to use some you already have or buy them separately.
The Thermos
If you absolutely need to
buy new thermoses then the greatest selection is in August, right
before school starts. I prefer
I have also seen small
cold-only thermoses. They usually hold about 4 to 6-ounces, or
about 1/2-cup. The lids go into the freezer overnight, and then
chilled food is placed inside the thermos in the morning. By
lunch time, the food is still fresh and cold. This works well
for homemade pudding, jello, chilled fruit, yogurt, and the
like. I used to try to use these for hot things too, but it
turned out they only work for cold things. Live and learn.
Plastic Bags &
Resealable Containers Sandwiches, popcorn, fresh fruit, veggies sticks, and boiled eggs go into flip-top baggies. I let my boys throw the bags away when they are done with them. Store-brand bags cost about 1/2¢ a piece, and save me having to wash any extra plastic bags. The plastic containers come home for a good sudsing everyday.
Keeping Cold Things Cold Blue freezer-packs are inexpensively available at most discount stores and many supermarkets. They go in the freezer overnight, and in the morning they are popped into the lunch box along with the food. The freezer pack keeps everything in the lunch very cold. I use them in conjunction with the insulated lunch bag and find that I don't even need the thermos any more. Instead I use a pint sized sports bottle for each boy. With the thermoses they were only getting 8 or 10 ounces of beverage, which they complained was never enough. Now they get a full 16-ounces, which seems to satisfy them much more thoroughly. I fill the sports bottle and chill the beverage overnight. Then it sits in the insulated lunch box with the freezer pack for 4 or 5 hours. By the time the kids eat lunch, the milk is still very cold. I really like using the cold pack in conjunction with the sports bottle.
The beauty of using the freezer-pack or frozen beverage system is that it frees up the thermos for more exciting things like tomato or vegetable soup, hot chocolate, casseroles, spaghetti and meat sauce, enchiladas, burritos and other things which will fit into the wide mouth thermos. Meanwhile, the lunch box itself holds all of the cold things, like pudding, yogurt, salads bound with mayonnaise, lettuce and other vegetables, cut up fruit, and anything else that is best kept cold. This little bit of lunchbox technology has really revolutionized my lunch menus.
Keeping Hot Things Hot In order to keep things hot in a thermos both the food and the thermos must be heated in the morning. Liquid foods like soups and beanie weaines can be heated on the stovetop. Bring them to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 5 full minutes. You want the food to be well heated, all the way through. Meanwhile, fill your thermos with your hottest tap water. Place the lid on the thermos and allow it to sit while the food heats. When you are ready to fill the thermos, dump out the water and quickly pour or ladel in the hot food. Be careful not to overfill. Usually there is a fill-line inside the thermos. Check yours to see if you can locate it. After filling the thermos, carefully screw on the seal and the lid.
Other foods that are
chunkier like casseroles, macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with meat
sauce, will have to be heated in the microwave or in a double
boiler. To use the microwave, place a serving of the food in a
glass bowl and heat at HIGH until very hot. If it is cold from
the refrigerator, then 3 to 5 minutes should suffice, depending on
your wattage. Preheat the thermos while the food is
cooking. Empty the thermos, fill with the hot food and
seal. I have a special trick for burritos. Prepare bean or beef burritos in your normal way. Wrap each burrtio individually in tin foil. Heat in the oven at 400° for about 15 to 20 minutes. When they are hot all the way through, slip them into the preheated thermos, and screw on the lid. The burritos will be hot and delicious come lunch time. Tommy is especially fond of this meal.
Planning Ahead: Now I plan out my lunch menus each week, ahead of time. Saturday afternoons, or Sunday on the way to church, I ask the boys what they want in their lunches. They always say pudding and grilled cheese sandwiches. I always agree and then they suggest other items too. If I'm planning menus for the week (which I do sometimes, but not always) I include their suggestions on the weekly menu. If I don't have the time or inclination to make up the menus for the full week, I still jot down five lunches, so that I'm never lost in the morning, before the coffee kicks in and my brain begins functioning in earnest.
I
decided to use this as the standard for my homemade lunches.
When I know what is involved in making a balanced lunch, I find it
easier to plan ahead. With this meal plan as my guide, I do my
pre-packing the night before. Vegetables like carrots, celery
or broccoli are cut up and placed in plastic flip-top baggies.
Anything which will need
to be reheated and put into a thermos the next day will benefit from
pre-packing too. Usually I measure out the amount of soup, or
casserole I will need the night before. Then I put it into a
small saucepan, put the lid on it, and chill it overnight. In
the morning, I only have to pre-heat the thermos with hot water, and
bring the food to a good rolling boil. Then I spoon it into the
empty thermos and screw the lid on tightly. Hot chocolate, can
be made from scratch the night before and reheated in the
morning. Inexpensive canned soups are good for a hot meal when
you are pressed for time. Vegetable and Tomato Soup Remember to tuck in a spoon or fork when you send food in the thermos. Use plastic ones if you children are trained not to throw them out. Otherwise metal ones are sturdy and less likely to be thrown away. While we're on the subject, do not send plastic or metal knives to school! Schools these days have zero tolerance for weapons. Myself, I never considered a plastic butter knife a weapon, but most schools do, and it is best not to tempt the fates. So rather than having a big, overly publicized media event centering around plastic knives in elementary school lunch boxes, just think ahead and keep all the knives at home.
Mayonnaise A reader recently shared this link explaining why modern mayonnaise is much safer than most people realize. It's a pdf document, Right Click and Save As to download it to your harddrive. Or you can just click and read it here. |
Lunch
boxes and lunch menus are a private obsession of mine. I can
spend hours pouring over lunch box descriptions, thermos manuals and
sandwich cookbooks. With so many of my brain cells invested in
lunch box knowledge, this aritcle is a personal favorite.
Assuming
5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, and 9 months a year, this saves
between $270 and $360 a year for 2 children. If you have 5
children in school, you can save $900 a year. Adult lunches
offer even more opportunity for savings. An adult who spends $3
a day for lunch, will save more than $500 over the course of a year
if he eats a home packed lunch for about $1 a day. If an adult
is spending $5 a day for lunch, then reducing it to $1 a day for a
very hearty, home-packed lunch saves over $1000 a year! As you
can see, packing lunches really does pay off over time.
use
more love and care in preparing them, and are more likely to use
better quality ingrediets. After all, we have a personal
interest in the quality and contents of the lunch, seeing as we are
personally vested in the person who consumes it. To sum it up,
home packed lunches taste better, offer more food, are healthier and
cost a quarter to half as much as a purchased lunch. They are
one of the greatest bargains we can produce in our kitchens.
things that the National School Lunch Program offers are their free
and reduced lunches. When I was a child we always qualified for
free lunches and breakfast, and we loved them. If you qualify
for free or reduced lunches, then by all means, take advantage of
it. You will save time and money in the long run, and you
children will eat a hot, nutritionally adequate meal, provided by the
American tax payer. I can think of very little that I would
rather pay for with my tax dollars than lunches and breakfasts for
school children. If the lunches are too skimpy for your hungry
children, then pack them extras to eat in addition to the school
lunch. That way your morning work load is still somewhat
diminished and the kids won't leave the lunch table hungry. 
Fred uses a medium sized cooler. He is usually gone for 24 to 48
hours, so he needs alot of food to keep him going. For children
and teenagers, you can usually find inexpensive lunch boxes and
insulated lunch bags at yard sales and thrift stores.
If you have a thermos left over from older lunch boxes then use
it. Whenever you can use something you already have it saves
you money. If you don't already have a thermos, then try your
local thrift stores and yard sales. They can often be found for
50¢ to $1. Objectionable artwork can sometimes be removed with
fingernail polish remover. If that doesn't work, then cover the
picture you don't like with another picture you do like. Trim a
piece of clear contact paper to fit neatly over the new picture and
press it firmly into place. Be careful when you wash the
thermos. Don't soak it in the dish water for hours and
hours. This will help preserve the new artwork. 
wide-mouthed thermoses, sometimes referred to as insulated
food-jars. They come in a standard 10-ounce size, and look
exactly like regular lunch box thermoses on the outside. Inside
however, their mouths are large enough to put chunky foods inside,
like casseroles and beanie-weanies. They are also much easier
to clean because of their wide mouths. 
containers in 8 and 4-ounce sizes. They last a long time, and
are just the right size for jello, canned fruit, pudding, cobbler and
salads. By the way, there is no rule that you must to fill a
container all of the way full. You can fill a container half
full of jello, yogurt, or pudding and send it to school just like that.
ability and commercially available cool-packs food can be kept cold
and appetizing for several hours.
If
you don't have a freezer-pack or don't want to buy one, then you can
improvise your own. Fill a sports bottle or other beverage
container about a third-full at night before you go to bed.
Screw on the lid and place the bottle in the freezer overnight.
When morning comes the beverage will be frozen solid. Fill the
bottle up with more of the same beverage. The frozen drink will
melt as the morning wears on and will keep the beverage and the lunch
box cool and fresh until lunch time. Experiment with the amount
of frozen beverage you need to keep everything cold, while still
giving it a chance to melt by noon. Ask the kids about it and
make a mental note when you hit on the right balance.
a
thermos then get ready for a bright variety of hot lunch additions.
To
use a double boiler, bring about half a pot of water to a boil in
the lower pot. Place your cold food in the upper pot.
Position the lower pot over the upper pot and let it slide into
place. With the bottom water boiling, the food in the upper pot
should heat for at least a full 15 minutes before placing it into
your preheated thermos. If there is a lot of food in the upper
pot, or if it is exceptionably cold, then 25 minutes will probably be
long enough. 
ahead
of time. I was really slow to understand this. I tried
to make lunches in the wee hours of the morning, when I was cranky
and tired, and failed miserably more mornings than not. The
kids complained. They wanted to eat good food like the other
kids. They were getting bazaar sandwich combinations like brown
beans and mayonnaise, because I hadn't thought ahead. I would
need lunch meat and 
cheese
for sandwiches, or tortillas and cheese for burritos. The poor
boys ended up with a hybrid bean-salad sandwich with pickles and
stale popcorn for lunch. That was pretty much the low point of
my lunch making endeavors, and I am proud to say, the beginning of a
new standard of lunches for the boys. 
School
lunches are required by law to include a specific amount of
nutrition in each lunch. For elementary children it includes:
Muffins,
popcorn, or cookies are baked and cooled before packaging and
placing aside until morning. Any sandwich fillings, like egg,
tuna or chicken salad can be mixed up the night before. This
gives them a chance for the flavors to blend and makes the finished
filling better tasting. Canned fruit and yogurt can be
portioned out into their small containers and allowed to chill until
morning. Sports bottles are filled with milk, and freezer-packs
are placed securely in the freezer to work their miracles the next
day. Pudding and jello 
can
be prepared at night, and by morning they will be set and ready to
surprise the lunch box crowd. 
(prepared
with milk) are the two favorites at my house. During cold
spells I will often send a hot soup in their lunch box every
day. I think it helps to dispel the chill of an impersonal
school cafeteria in the wintertime.
Cleanliness
of comfort levels, next we come
to Mayonnaise. I send my children sandwiches with mayonnaise in
them. Not everyone does this. Some people are worried
about the mayonnaise going bad. I have found that using the
blue freezer-packs keeps the food cold enough to eliminate any
worries I might have had about the mayonnaise going bad. Before I
stated using the freezer-packs, it was common for me to send tuna or
chicken or egg salad bound with mayonnaise, or baloney and cheese
sandwiches with mayo and mustard. The sandwiches would sit probably
about 4 hours before they were consumed. My children never
suffered any ill effects from the mayonnaise in their
sandwiches. I will admit though, I have more peace of mind,
know thing that the sandwiches are kept cool until they're
eaten. Each mom has to make her own decision about these
things. If you choose not to use mayonnaise, you could
substitute homemade salad dressing, which is cooked, or prepared
salad dressing from the store, or choose sandwiches which do not
require mayonnaise at all.000000000000000000000000000000