School Meals v Packed Lunch

iceicebaby

I dont have children but have found this thread incredibly useful for my own packed lunches! I was getting fed up of the boring sandwiches all the time!

Penny-Pincher!!

DD is 12 and has recently started at secondary school. She receives a free school dinner as we are on Income Support. The meals on offer are excellent and they have a fish and chip day on Friday. They have a small soup to start, main meal (choice of 4) and a pudding (choice of 4). All are made with organic local products, so feel very confident about this. Even if we had to pay £2.25 a day, I think is worth it.

They also offer pasta, tortillas with either hot/cold fillings, jacket spuds with numerous fillings, wholegrain sarnies and the salads are free-they just help themselves. All cakes etc are made on the premises.

When she was at primary last year it was terrible-I posted about it on here! The food was that bad that 75% of the kids who were having dinners stopped and went to packed lunches. They eventually called in new caterers but it was just before DD left. Even though we were entitled to free dinners, we refused and sent her in with a packed lunch as they were truly that bad!

DD's lunchbox often included things like:

Ham/Cheese/Marmite sarnies or rolls (often stuck salad in too)
Chicken and Rice/pasta
HM Sausage Roll
HM Scotch Egg
HM Flapjack or Fork biscuit
Yogurt..sometimes HM
Crisps 3 times a week
3 Pieces of fruit
Bottled water

HTH

PP
xx

Picklepo

I keep the kids drinks in the freezer as well as the frubes so it keeps it all cool in this weather - it means that the drinks are nice and slushy by lunchtime too which they seem to like. Also mine are quite fussy eaters but do like savoury rice in a tub as a change from sandwiches