Back-to-school time means back to packing lunches. It can be all too easy to get into a rut, packing a virtually identical lunch every day just before the family flies out the front door in all directions. But with a little advance planning the night before, or even over the weekend, you can mix and match a variety of tastes and textures, vitamins and minerals to create lunches that are healthy and kid-approved.
Supplies you will need
• Durable lunch box
• Thermos or water bottle
• A variety of reusable containers and cutlery
• Cloth napkins
• Frozen ice packs
Healthy drink options
• Unsweetened herbal iced tea in a kid-friendly flavor (our favorite is peppermint)
• Dark-chocolate almond milk
• Water
• Homemade juice blend, such as apple-carrot
• Coconut water
Non-sandwich mains
• Almond butter with apple, carrot and celery dippers
• Black bean dip with whole-grain tortilla chips
• Peeled hard boiled eggs
• Tortellini-veggie salad
• Hummus with sugar snap pea and pita dippers
• Vegetable-loaded mini pizzas
Favorite kid sides
• Trail mix (experiment with different combinations, such as pistachios, gogi berries, whole-grain sesame sticks, apricots and a few dark-chocolate chips)
• Squeezable greek-yogurt tubes
• Healthier bar choices, such as Kind bars or Lara bars
• Cut fruit and cheese cube shish-kabobs
• Shelled edamame
• Healthy homemade muffins that pack some nutritional punch, such as blueberry-zucchini muffins