Back-to-School Lunches
What’s for Lunch?!
Douglas County Schools are almost back in session and if you haven’t been thinking about what you’ll be making for lunches – it might be time to start! When you’re making lunches for kindergartners through teens, picky eaters or not, it helps to have some go-to menus and recipes for healthy, palatable, packable lunches.
Start with Peanut Blossom’s ideas for 30 days of lunchbox recipes – with no repeats – and tips about lunch bags and boxes, cookie cutters and presentation!
Picky Eaters’ Lunches
Meredith at Perfection Pending often makes enough dinner the night before so that leftovers can be boxed up for lunch. Here are 20 of her favorite Super Healthy Kids slow cooker dinners that make it into kids carry-out lunches the next day.
Wraps that kids will love – adults, too! – can be spread with cream cheese and veggies, apples and cheddar, guacamole, beans and rice, strawberries and almond butter — even hummus and cucumbers. Not all kids like all these ingredients, but Super Healthy Kids offers five even more kid-friendly wraps to tickle taste buds.
Betty Crocker’s eight easy roll-up recipes –for older kids’ palates – has a variety of ingredients guaranteed to make mouths water, even if they’ve just eaten!
Thrifty Jinxy packs up chicken “tacos” in a bento box, with shredded lettuce, cheese, chicken and tomatoes with tortilla chips to scoop it all together. The bento box keeps the different ingredients separated and a cool cooler keeps things fresh until lunch time.
Some Sammys, Some Not
Parents Magazine has 10 nutritious sandwich ideas beyond PB&J that will get gobbled up by kids combining ingredients like apple butter and fresh apple slices or spreadable cheese with ham and grated carrots. The magazine also has a slew of after-school snack mixes for kids that will keep them satisfied once lunch has worn off!
Bon Appetit’s four cream cheese sandwiches for older kids uses different kinds of bread and a few unexpected ingredients in between. And these four ideas from I Pack Lunch were put together by an adult for work lunches, but the chicken pesto pita pizza and nectarine salad will also appeal to teens.
Food.com comes through with 30 ideas for lunches to pack that turns traditional sandwiches upside down, like peanut butter and jelly sushi rolls, BLT pinwheels, no-bake granola bars and ham and cheese muffins.
And Thirty Handmade Days has a few other ideas for healthy lunches, with enough food to fill up a growing teenager, like BBQ quesadillas, avocado bacon pasta and lasagna roll-ups.
Make Ahead Lunches
Lisa at 100 Days of Real Food came up with tricks for packing lunches and 10 recipes for freeze-ahead lunches. Her appetizing ideas include waffle sandwiches, spaghetti and meatballs in a mason jar and homemade Pop-Tarts®.
Café Mom collected seven make-ahead lunches that will save your mornings, and Somewhat Simple has another 10 favorites like baked mac ‘n’ cheese cups and chicken and rice patties. And don’t forget dessert!
Nut-Free Lunches
The Kitchn offers up 10 sandwich-free lunch ideas for kids that are free of nuts. Check out the combinations for literal and creative inspiration.
Breaking out of a school lunch rut doesn’t have to take a lot of time and ingredients. This page from Pinterest includes plenty of hot lunch ideas – think comfort foods – for when the weather turns cold. Hard to imagine right now, it’s coming!
Back-to-School in Crystal Valley
Douglas County Schools consistently receive rave reviews and high ratings near the master-planned community of Crystal Valley in Castle Rock! Check out the beautiful selection of new home designs from Richmond American Homes and D.R. Horton, priced from the high $300s. And – coming soon – new homes by Kauffman Homes!
