Packed lunches, how much do you spend?

poe.tuesday

In the winter my kids take their hot pots which will have things like chili, stews, curry or bolgnaise etc - they are usually served with pasta which goes in the bottom of the hot pot and then the bolgnaise etc covers the pasta - they tend to stay hot for about 4 hours - they will also take some salad etc to snack on along with a frozen frube and some fruit - this is usually the cheapest meals but as for cost, I really don't know, I suppose about a £1 a meal each

in the warmer months they have a mixture of wraps with salad, fruit, frozen frube and maybe a pot of crisps etc, if they are not having wraps then they get their bento boxes which we will make open steamed wontons (usually with pork and spring onion filling), rice balls, some noodles with shreaded ham and veggies etc, along with sliced cucumber and carrots and for pud they may get a poached pear. we did do things like stuffed savoury bread rolls but they did not stay fresh long enough - these meals reasonably cheap but they are time consuming, they are more than the hot pots but the kids love them as they do the cooking for them, we will batch cook up the wontons and spring rolls etc. They also like sushi which is really easy to make but raw fish is not great if it can not be kept cold enough - we always use freezer blocks unless the kids have the hot pots

as for chicken, I cook it and then freeze it and put it in their wraps frozen, by the time they get to school they are all defrosted and do not make the wraps soggy

emsywoo123

zippychick wrote: »

I have to ask, what's a humzinger?

I googled and got this:

http://www.hummzinger.com/
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: as google corrected the spelling without me realising.

apparently it is this:

http://www.humzingers.co.uk/

galvanizersbaby

jetta_wales wrote: »

When deciding on how much to give your young child for school and worrying if it's enough or not, look at the amount of food you have in front of you and think of yourself if you ate all that. Would you be full? If so then it's too much. Yes they're growing but they're still about a quarter to a third of our weight and they should not be having adult portions of any meal as this is one of the most common mistakes that leads to childhood obesity. My girls (will be 5 and 7 in a few weeks) both still have half a sandwich each in their lunch box and half a large peeled carrot, raisins, frube and cheese of some sort. If I put in all that plus a full sandwich that would be an adult lunch.

Sometimes we get the small loads that warbutons do of nice wholemeal bread bread that makes a perfect size sandwich for a child too.

By the way one of the biggest money savers is not buying raisins in lunch box multiple packs but buying ahugebag for about £2 from where the baking things are in the supermarket and it lasts months and months.

lol! I eat more than that for my lunch and I wouldn't say I have a large appetite tbh - I am quite a petite lady - perhaps the kids have adopted my metabolism.