It's Almost Lunch Time

It’s the time of year that I start to get itchy about school lunches, and so far my anxiety and panic have not set in. In some ways I think I have the system down:

• I have some good fast stand-bys for quick lunches I could pack in my sleep (hummus, bagel, fruit, cheese sticks, chocolate milk).

• I’ve finally learned that I can actually put a lot of the lunch together the night before. That took years. Really.

• My girl started to pack her own lunch during camp this year. We shopped together to make sure we had foods were nutritious and that she enjoyed, and she packed what she wanted to eat from that selection.

One trick over the colder months is to make sure you have a small, wide-mouth thermos for hot soups and beans. Big pay off with the thermos.

Lots of people are talking about school lunches these days. I hate to give a shout out to Whole Foods these days because the CEO is just being a dimwit, but I found a nice flyer there with a great list of foods for lunch. It helped me think of using jicama, snap peas, and green beans and making wraps from whole grain tortillas. That made me think of the Levant sandwiches I used to get at La Mediteranee in Berkeley: basically cream cheese and cucumber with some herbs and lettuce rolled up in levan bread like pin wheels. Those would definitely go over big with my girl.

Our president is talking about school lunches too. I saw Obama interviewed by an 11 year old Damon Weaver, and he is ready to make a move about school lunch. He made similar points in a health care strategy meeting today.

So far, so good.


Thanks to Aubrey's Antiques (aubreysantiques.com) for the lunch box photo. That was the one I wanted when I was a kid.

Shocking, but True

I’m dismayed to report this. The truth hurts. Most of the new people who come to this blog find it through a google search for “lunchables.” The evidence is overwhelming and disheartening.

For those few of you who don’t know, Lunchables are kind of like the Swanson TV dinner for the school lunch crowd, but in my opinion only worse. Like TV dinners they appeal to our sense of order, a kind of high sodium, high fat bento lunch box. Kraft says it was designed to be “gift-like.” According to their website, “Recognizing that the prepared lunch category was a relatively untapped market, Oscar Mayer set out to create a product that would revolutionize the industry, create a solution for busy moms and help to boost company sales.” I don’t like to think of my child as an “untapped market,” and I’m not so sure that helping busy moms (and dads?) really was a priority over company sales.


The people at Kraft work hard putting together combinations that kids will love. Take the combination of Pizza and Cracker Stackers: “Inside you’ll find a tasty new pizza-flavored cracker, cheese and pepperoni-flavored sausage along with a sweet treat for afterwards. With two different varieties available, with or without a Tropical Punch Kool-Aid Jammers for even more lunch yum.” Ick.


Yes, food can be “fun,” but that’s not the first word I think of when I’m putting together a meal. I don’t really need an action figure (or “brigade”) to entice me toward roast chicken. Do you?

David Kamp wrote a good piece about this in The New York Times back in May, complaining about how many restaurants and parents assume that unless kids have chicken fingers and French fries they won’t eat anything else. I don’t think the fear is that our kids will starve, but more that they will be a nuisance to our own dining experience. Kamp goes to nutritionist Marion Nestle (What to Eat) who criticizes the notion of “kids’ food.” You know the fun stuff, like lunchables. What are we teaching our kids about food when we fill our shopping carts and contort our menus with foods that entertain because of a shape or (worse) a cartoon character tie-in?

The Times recently reported on a study that showed that kids thought the food wrapped in the McDonalds brand packaging tasted better than the food that didn’t. According to the article: “Almost 77 percent, for example, thought that McDonald’s french fries served in a McDonald’s bag tasted better, compared with 13 percent who liked the fries in a plain white bag.” They go on to say that the same was true for carrots and milk; they tasted better to the kids when they came wrapped in the brand paper packaging.

So I’m with the guy who hates lunchables. I apologize to all of you who find this site and are discouraged, think me snob, or some no fun kinda gal. My mission this school year is to pack more hummus and make school lunch tables a safe place for plain carrot sticks and bean salads. And I promise to try to steer My Girl toward regular food and away from food marketed as fun for kids. I'll keep you posted.

Lunchables

School is coming up on me, and I just got that letter home telling us we can’t send any nut products for lunch or snack. The Girl was just about doing a happy dance when she heard the news. Last year I gave her PB&J sandwiches for about a month, and I finally got sick of making them and then throwing them away every day. She has refused them ever since.

Still I was hoping that I could get away with a month of slathering bread with spreads with I waited for the coffee to kick in. No such luck.

So here’s an attempt to come up with a list of possible lunches that can survive without refrigeration but may require a hot thermos.

1. Some kind of pasta

2. Edamame

3. Sliced apples

4. Cheese and Apples

5. Fruit – all kinds

6. Red pepper strips (or orange, yellow, green)

7. Carrot sticks

8. Hummus and carrot sticks (or celery) or pita

9. Did I mention pasta?

10. Crackers and Cheese

11. Dried Fruit (esp. cherries because she’ll eat them)

I just asked Es what she sees other kids eating that she likes to eat. She said “pasta.”

12. Beans (esp. black beans)

13. Ravioli – oh right, that’s pasta

14. Tea Sandwiches: cucumber? Smoked turkey? Apple and cheese? [For mornings when I’ve already had a lot of coffee.]

15. Soup

Okay, so that’s my starting list. I’m going to keep adding to it…and suggestions are always welcome. What I don’t want to hear is how horrible dried fruit is or how bad anything else is on this list. I already left yoghurt off because of SFMom. And I’m telling you right now, chocolate milk is going to qualify as a snack in this house and that’s it!

And I'm also laying down the gauntlet to any folks from the nabe who scoff at Pizza Friday. They can start making lunch for my kid every Friday if they vote that little weekly reprieve down—and that goes for the little Anti-Pizza Friday contingent in my own house too!