what's in that kids lunch box returns...... 16

Okay so last week I failed to post. Our school added 2 pupil free days onto the long weekend so the kids were only actually at school for 2 days last week. We had a productive weekend working in the garden and then I fell sicky with a horror head cold and spent the rest of the week feeling sorry for myself!


This weekend and week has kicked of with some mega storms from Mother Nature and has undone of my good tidying work outside so I am in a bit of a mood about that but still managed to remember to take a photo of today's lunch. 


So, this kid has:

• a cheese, ham and pickle sandwich. Yes it's boring, but I made the whole weeks worth and have frozen them ready to go. This makes my chaotic mornings far more tolerable, and that is best when I am sick and cranky!
• a fruit crush
• polenta cake
• a mandarin for recess

Polenta cake

whisk half a cup of fine polenta into 1 and a half cups of simmering milk. Stir continuously for 5 minutes and then take off the heat. Add in some grated orange rind and honey and sultanas. Spoon in to muffin molds and cool. They set firm like little cakes and are super yummy. You can switch up the flavours too with maple syrup or nuts or cinnamon or other dried fruit. SUPER easy and SUPER yummy

WiTKL.......15

Whoops, I'm a day late with this post. Did anyone really notice? Guessed not.


Well we had a nicey playmate yesterday and Flynn has declared that she is "his best friend EVER". It was super cute and I am so glad that they like to hang out. Sometimes I worry that his friends are by default - you know - only because they are siblings of Lucy's mates.


Week 16, this kid has:

back to the old phone camera

• an apple for recess
• pizza scrolls (made a dough in the bread machine and then just did a roll up thingy. This is an easy way to may vegemite or cinnamon ones too) 
• Fruit juice
• banana yoghurt treat *(see below)

* You may have noticed that our lunches usually don't contain much of the fun dairy stuff like yoghurt squeezey things or yogo's or custards. That's because we have a bit of trouble digesting the majority of dairy products available for lunchbox convenience.  I always manage to keep our calcium level up with other items and I try to include all the dairy that we can handle as much as possible. Up until recently it hasn't been a big issue. We are now entering a phase of Lucy noticing what other kids have or do and comparing them to what we have or do. Generally we discourage trying to 'keep up with the Jones' ' type of attitudes, and we celebrate being different, but sometimes it erks me when I feel like she is always missing out on something.

The something that has come up a lot is the treats that other kids get in their lunchboxes. Chocolate seems to be a repeating offender, but I want to stay firm on that one and maybe only give her something like that once a year! And Yogo. I think it's the only really naughty thing the kids  can get from lunch orders. (We don't have a canteen on site so there are no slushies or icy poles to compete with.) We can't eat Yogo. Insert sad face here! 

So I have started making our own yoghurt delight treaties. Todays is banana nesquik flavoured but we usually have chocolate using a natvia based drinking powder so it is sugar free too.

I basically hang some Mundella natural yoghurt in muslin over night to remove all the watery part and then mix in some flavoured drink powder. Nesquik flavours are super yummy. Hanging the yoghurt isn't absolutely necessary, but it does make it thicker and removes a little bit of the tang.

Lucy thinks it's a winner too. It's a nice feeling to know she feels part of the cool kids all because of a bit of yoghurt.

WiTKLB..........14

Another big weekend has been successfully followed with another dreary Monday morning. We had a lovely day out with our little family at the Pearce Australian Defence Force Air Show. It was a long day as we were out for approximately 12hours. Even though we were all in bed and asleep by 8.30pm I think we could have used at least another 6 hours sleep each


So today is going to be filled with a whole lotta "bugger" and a side serve of "all"


Week 15, this kid has

• crackers, ham, cheese and cucumber
• soy milk and sipahh straw
• an apple for recess

Today's meal just didn't seem enough to me. However Lucy was upset when I tried to add some carrot sticks for a snack that it was too much for her to eat. I agreed to take them out as long as she had milk to bulk it up a bit. I don't want to force feed her, but I don't her to be hungry either.

There is every chance that I will send some sultana's as well tomorrow - just in case!

WiTKLB........... 13

EEEEeeeek the camera - or camera cable - is playing funny buggers this morning! Perhaps it has the Monday morning yips. Everyone else in the household has them, so why should the camera miss out.
I did take a photo this morning, and it is stored safely on the camera. However I am having trouble loading it onto the PC so I will have to add it in later (when the hubby gets home and fixes it all) All done now, apparently it was "user" error. HA typical


So after a lovely Mothers' day weekend, week 14, this kid has:

• a "green eggs and ham" mountain bread wrap
• sesame snaps
• a fruit crush up
• grapes for recess

I thought that maybe having a funny theme for a simple old wrap or sandwich might provide a bit more excitement. Lucy seems to think it's pretty funny too. The "green" part of the wrap is provided by the ham which is speckled green with pesto. You could also add spinach or lettuce or herbs to get more green. We didn't simply because we ate all of ours on the weekend and I forgot to go to the markets yesterday and get some more.

Just so you don't feel left out in the photo department here is one of the two cuties who make me a proud mummy, and gave me a wonderful mothers' day full of love and cuddles.

WiTKL.........12

I can hardly believe that I made it through last week without a single complaint about her boring lunch! It has planted seeds of thoughts into my head like: "why on earth do I even worry about making her something nice or vaguely interesting?" and "blow it- she can live on crackers and lamingtons and I will get at least an extra half hour sleep every week".
Alas I have not given into these thoughts. And here we are back again for another installment. 


Week 13, this kid has

• ham and salad sandwich
• mini blueberry muffin (if you haven't guessed by now - it came straight out of the freezer!)
• Soy milk and Sipahh straw
• and apple for recess (not pictured)

I am starting to need some inspiration. This week I will put my thinking cap on and try to bring a better game for next lunch. Please share if you have some great ideas! This challenge is tougher than I first thought. Maybe we need to go hot again?

WiTKL?........ ten

Term 1 completed - Check
Survive April school holidays - Check
2 out of 2 tasks completed. Now to do it all again but with jumpers on because it is bloomin' cold. In the scheme of things it's not as cold as full blown winter yet, and other places and countries survive much colder weather. But here in WA anything below 20degrees Celsius and we are all pulling out our thermal undies and ugg boots. It also adds a different dimension to the morning routine, because getting up in the cold and dark is strange and convincing the kids to get into action is a bit tougher because they still think it is night time.


I may have to start thinking of warming lunches too. Does anyone know of a good "kid friendly" thermos? Something that can be opened easily by little hands?


Week 11, this kid has:

• Soy milk and Sipahh straw
• Pasta salad
• a slice of Fruit cake
• Red seedless grapes for recess

If your kids are happy with eating "fork" food at school then pasta salads are an easy lunch to throw together. Especially if you have leftover pasta from last nights dinner. Then add any salad veggies you have in your fridge that your kids will happily eat. Lucy chose cherry tomatoes, cucumber, basil and parsley. I also added some shredded ham and her favourite salad dressing which is a creamy potato salad one (not my preference - I'm more of a balsamic vinaigrette gal, but it's not my lunch so I let her have it) Other options could be with cheese, olives, salami's, spring onion, pinenuts, capers, etc. Anything your kids will eat really.

The fruit cake is one of my lunchbox cheats. This one is store bought and I cut it all up and freeze it. It is always defrosted by the time she eats it and it keeps it fresh all week. No thinking in the morning and is friendly on your finances too.

Maybe next term I will try and do a rough costing of how much each lunch is. What do you think? Hmm already sounds too hard. Maybe not.

what's in that kids lunchbox........... nine.

LAST WEEK OF TERM! I am slightly proud that I have managed to keep this up for the whole term. Plus I am really looking forward to the next two weeks off. So all in all I guess I am in a good mood today.


Easter is only a week away now so this weeks lunch box is a tiny bit Easter themed.


Week 10, this kid has

• a hot cross bun (of course!)
• what Lucy has named "Picky Mixey", which is basically a lunch of bits and bobs that you eat with your fingers. This one has a hard boiled egg, some cabanossi, cucumber slices and some tomato.
• some yoghurt covered fruit balls (because they look like little eggs!)
• a fruit juice
• and an apple for shared fruit recess.

Last week's lunch box had one criticism. She didn't like the freeze dried apples much - but Flynn did so she swapped him those and started taking some apricot bites instead. You know the ones that are in the dried fruit section that are rolled in coconut and probably full of sugar.


A good friend gave me some blinking beautiful fudgey date balls that she made over the weekend and they are so yummy that I intend to get the recipe and share it here. They will most definitely be my treat over Easter instead of chocolates. They would also be great treats for afternoon tea with a nice cup of green tea. YUMMY.


Enjoy your short week! Hope you like the rain as much as my garden does.

what's in that kids lunchbox..........eight

How did we get to week 9 of the school term already. Honestly it has gone so quickly that we haven't really gotten into any type of rhythm yet and we are already staring down the school holiday path. I must admit that I am looking forward to the 2 week break with my special girl. Full time school is tough on a 5 year old and her sooky Mumma. We have never really spent this much time away from each other.

We had such a beautifully busy weekend that we were barely home, which resulted in having no fresh fruit or salad left and no shopping done. Luckily I was still able to scrape some things together and come up with a half decent lunch

Week 9: this kid has

• cream cheese and vegemite sandwich (don't knock it till you've tried it!)
• a slice of carrot cake (thank goodness for the freezer)
• apple crisps (these are so yummy, 100% apple freeze dried with nothing else added)
• a fruit juice
• carrot for shared recess

I received no complaints about last weeks lunchbox. I best do some shopping though so that next week we don't have to resort to canteen orders!

what's in that kids lunchbox....... seven

I had a lunchbox FAIL last week! Lucy didn't like the pizza. Actually she didn't like the muffin that I used for the pizza base. So I won't be buying those again. It wasn't a complete waste as Clint made the most of it and he took them for lunch instead. And Lucy had sambo's. 


Don't you hate that feeling of wasting all that time making things that turn out to be a flop........grrrrrrr. Oh well lesson learnt.


week 8, this kids has

• "chicken salad" and lettuce mountain bread wrap. (the chicken salad is  leftover BBQ chook and celery blitzed in a mini food processor and mixed with mayo and salt and white pepper. It's even better if you add in walnuts too but had to leave this out due to the school nut policy)
• choc and zucchini muffins using this recipe - but with a few changes. I swapped butter for olive oil and white sugar for raw and I used grated dark choc instead of cocoa powder. I also added dried craisins to half the batter to add some extra pizazz. The batter is super moist so when you make them into muffins you don't need to worry about them being dry.
• carrot sticks
• soy milk with a sippah straw

what's in that kids lunchbox.........six

after a week stuck in quarantine we are all glad to see the start of a "normal" week. The kids and Clint both dodged catching the nasty germ but we were all still very cabin feverish in the last day or two. Lucy is eager to see all of her school friends too.


So week 7, this kid has

• fruit juice
• homemade mini pizza's
• coconut bites (100g coconut, 100g panella, 1 egg white; combine and cook balls for approx 10mins in moderate oven)
• cucumber slices
• apple for shared fruit recess

My kids really like cold pizza so this works well for us. It's a great leftover lunch item. I class it in my "hot to cold leftovers" lunch category. You know - things that were hot but can be eaten cold. Other things in this category are quiche, chicken wings, sausages etc. We usually make our pizza's on pita's or Lebanese bread, but I especially bought English muffins with this in mind for Lucy's lunch box as they are the perfect size.

Week fives lunchbox wasn't complete smooth sailing. Lucy loved it, however it took too long to eat, so she was unable to finish in time to play. So we played around with the quantities and took out a snack. It was a good lesson for me to learn. Having enough time to play is important to a 5 year old! 

what's in that kids lunchbox?...........five

How was everyone's weekends? The cool change was welcomed in our house. Although I still managed to get some sunburn from the teeny tiny amount of time I spent in the garden. I won't complain though as I did manage to escape getting bitten by the 2 extremely large redbacks that I discovered living in the vege garden. YUCK.


Even though we had an easy going weekend, I realized last minute that we didn't have enough bread for lunches today. So I had to think a little bit outside the square. I also hadn't done any baking, but by some small miracle Lucy invited her Grandma over for dinner and she just happened to bring some homemade Anzac bikkies. Thank you lunchbox miracle fairies.


Week 5 - this kid has: 

• ham, egg and picky salad
• Grandma's Anzac Biscuit
• Fruit crust up (frozen)
• Sultana's
• apple for shared fruit recess

The only down side to this lunch is that it really needs to be made fresh daily. But on the upside I just used any salad items that I had on hand and that she likes to eat. You could also put in a little pot of mayo to use like a dip. If you have a few kids to cater for another fun thing to do would be cut everything up and then get them to fill the container for themselves each morning. Handball some of the responsibility.

Again nothing came home from last weeks lunchbox. During the week she did end up switching her fruit slices to apple and then on Friday she did tell me that other kids have chocolates in their lunch and she would like one too please. I told her she was dreaming! I might consider making a chocolate zucchini cake for next week though. I am not a complete meany.

what's in that kids lunchbox?......four.......

 This week I have been thinking about portion sizes. Lunch boxes and insulated lunch bags don't come in "age" or "appetite" sizing. They all seem to be one size whether the user is 4 or 12years old. My aim used to be to fill the entire bag or I thought that I mustn't be feeding her properly. And if the lunch bag came home still half full I would be upset. Then I started thinking about how much she would eat if she were home for the day. A sandwich and a large apple would be sufficient for an adult so why was I trying to make her eat double that? 
I also don't want her to be hungry either. So my rule of thumb is that if they still have one or two mouthfuls of food left in the lunchbox at the end of the day then you have packed the perfect amount. And not to be upset if half a sandwich comes home. In reality it means that they at least had half a good sambo. I kind of think that is why it's important to make sure the main lunch item is good and the snacks aren't too naughty so they have good fuel for learning and playing.
So how I've worked out how much to send was I made a note of how much she ate at home, and then I just add a few extra grapes/crackers/sultanas etc. Simple really. And if I am trying out a new recipe or sandwich filling that she hasn't tried before then I will pop in an extra snack in case it turns out to be a flop. (But honestly it's better to try new stuff with them on the weekend so you can see first hand whether they will eat it or not)


So if you are following along with my school lunch journey , then just adjust the quantities to suit your child's appetite and needs. And also note that I am not a dietitian or nutritionist - I am just a loving parent trying my best


So on that note week 4 This Kid Has

had terrible time taking the photo this morning and the husband wasn't around to  fix it for me. Sorry

• an apple for shared fruit recess
• a ham, cheese, lettuce and mayo on wholemeal sandwich (this is her favourite combo)
• a piece of oat slice (no icing)
• slices of nectarine and plum
• a fruit juice

(last weeks lunchbox didn't have anything return! It did however make the Husband jealous.)

what's in that kids lunchbox?.......three......

We are now at week 3 on the school calendar. I can't say we survived last week without tears or tantrums. Seems full time school is a bit harder to adjust to than I first thought. Hopefully we will have found our groove by this time next week. The official score on last weeks lunchbox was a 5! (obviously I'm lucky that her expectations aren't high) Only a few grapes came home and I think that is a win. So I have decided not to get her to score her lunch. I'll just monitor what comes home.


Love is in the air this week with Valentines Day only a few sleeps away. We don't celebrate the day in the commercial type way of flowers or chocolates or gifts. But I think its fun to enjoy all the love heart shaped things. So to keep in that spirit I have decided to add some to Lucy's lunch box.


Week 3 This Kid Has

• quinoa nori rolls
• Wholemeal heart pikelets
• Fruit juice
• dried mango
• and a apple for shared fruit recess

I found those little fish shaped soy sauce things at my local oriental grocer. They sell packs of them so very cheap and they are perfect for on the go. And I also put in some pickled ginger.

Lucy loves all this food so I hope she enjoys taking it to school. I have surrounded the sushi with the frozen fruit juice and an icepack on the other side - the last thing we need is food poisoning!

Only 2 sleeps till her birthday so I will prob have an entire post on party "pinkness" before next weeks lunchbox. Hope you are all enjoying it.

what's in that kids lunchbox.......two......

Week 2 already. And we have survived without tears or tantrums.

 Last weeks lunchbox was given a score of 4.5 out of 5. 

Only the carrot sticks came home, and apparently that's because she was already full and they took too long to chew and she wanted to go and play. I think her assessment and critiques were fair. Lets see how this one goes

Week 2 this kid has:

• an apple for shared fruit recess
• the classic combo of chicken, lettuce and mayo on a white bread roll (I could blame Woolies for being sold out of the wholemeal ones, but I didn't just go to the bakery instead. Kinda figured it wouldn't kill the kids to enjoy it's fluffy whiteness every now and then)
• red seedless grapes
• homemade spicy and seedy biscotti

I used to make biscotti all the time when Flynn was a bubba. His milk intolerances meant that regular shop bought rusks and other biscuits of the same nature were not suitable for us. 
And now with rules about no nuts at schools because of allergies, I think we can adjust things so that isn't a problem either.
 I know that the purists probably don't think the way I make them is correct, but we love them all the same.


Spicy and seedy biscotti
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg 
Whisk these together until fluffy and creamy
3/4 cup of plain flour
1/2 tsp of baking powder
1tsp of cinnamon
1/2tsp of ground cardomom
1/2 cup of sunflower seeds and pepitas
stir these into the egg mix
divide the mixture into 2 sticky and wonky logs on a baking paper lined tray 
bake in a moderate oven for about 30minutes
remove from oven and let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes
then cut the logs into strips and place back in the oven (turned down to about 140degrees) for about 15minutes  or until brown and crispy.
I think they are "supposed" to be thin dainty things - but I make them chunky and rough. 
Bit like me really.

what's in that kids lunchbox?....one...

I know it's not Monday yet and I really could just save this post for next Week, but that would be sneaky and not at all like me......... much........

Lucy's first day at Pre-Primary is today and this is her first packed lunch of the year. I hope it sustains her little mind as she learns the new rules of the classroom, and it gives her enough energy to play with all her friends (some old and hopefully lots of new ones too)

So to kick start my new plan of lunchbox updates: 

This Kid Has:

• An apple (for her fruit time, all the kids bring a piece and they share it all at recess)
• Ham, cheese, spinach, grated carrot and mayo mountain bread wrap
• carrot sticks and lavosh crackers with chive and onion cream cheese dip
• a fruit puree "crush up" pouch(I freeze it so it doubles as an ice pack and is all icy and slushy by lunch)
• and a small fruit box (she also takes a water bottle so this is just a treat)

I'm pretty sure I have covered most food groups. Though whether I have done well or not will all be revealed when she gets home and we see what/if anything is left.