Lunch ideas for DD (5) at school please

FarmersWife_2

Hi

Ive been having a struggle with DD for a while...

She wont eat sandwiches, she hates the school dinners, well they are horrible and are brought in !!
Both DDs will not eat pizza, fish fingers, baked beans etc !!

So I thought Id send her some soup and the school could warm it up... homemade soup, barley veg and red lentils :-)...

WRONG!!!

health and safety means they cant warm it up !

So I am having to go pick up DD bring her home for lunch and take her back after....

Any ideas please? Im concerned about sending her to school with a flask of soup.. how would I know if it was too hot or too cold by dinnertime....

C x

edited to add... OH says I should take her a plated meal up of pheasant in red wine or rabbit pie (both of which she would eat!).. he says they would soon change their minds about warming a bit of veg soup up ....

DebtFree2012

How about wraps or snack items instead of in bread? all the stuff you would put in a sandwhich but without the bread, plus fruit and a yoghurt?

Bitsy_Beans

Do you have a flask you can test with first, just to see how long it can stay hot for?

What does she like to eat? My DS is a big lover of crackers and cheese. Does she like pitta breads or tortilla wraps? Would she eat a selection of crudit!s, chunks of cheese and maybe those grissini breadsticks?

FarmersWife_2

She wont eat wraps, tried that. She will eat toast. She already takes fruit etc I just dont feel she is getting enough. She comes home sometimes with a headache and really hungry

C x

Bitsy_Beans

Would she eat cold toast? How about plain old bread and butter but filling in a separate pot?

The headache would suggest more to me dehydration, make sure she's drinking enough at school. The hunger is well......she's being a bit faddy and that's the consequences. I understand you don't want your child going hungry but there comes a point where they need to accept new things or there are consequences. Not being harsh but there is only so much you can do if she won't meet you half way.

lizzywig

What about salads or pastas? My mum used to make us 'inside out pizza' basically a calzone....and we hated pizza. She just made a pizza base and put various fillings inside, we thought it was excellent!

yummymummy79

I'm not surprised school won't heat anything up, aside from H&S, lunchtime is chaotic enough with (depending on size of school) 200+ kids trying to get through dinner.

I don't suppose it has to be a traditional packed lunch, any selection of foods she will eat put together may be an idea. If it seems a bit random then it doesn't matter!

The other thing to think about may be to try and get her to like some more things maybe? Having watched a million episodes of House of Tiny Tearaways with kids with eating issues, it's not easy but they do often end up liking a few more things after some work. I would just worry that having a 5 year old who seems very fussy already, it's likely to get worse and more restrictive as she gets older.

Hope that doesn't all sound too patronising or anything, just what popped into my head!

FarmersWife_2

Thanks. She eats well not what I would call a faddy child, just doesnt like bread or 'kids' meals.. She would soon polish off a pot of olives, a beef stew and what I call real food. Maybe its my fault I have never bought that sort of stuff

C x

Yummy mummy.. school has 60 kids and 5 adults on at lunchtime

triticale

Would she eat cold pasta/rice salad type things? Mine have green pesto on pasta in a tub, with sweetcorn/peppers and either tuna/cooked chicken/ham on top. Plastic picnic fork so they can't stab anyone

Its difficult for schools re: food safety these days, I remember back when warm, sweaty ham sandwiches were part of the summer! Now they can't risk it because of the food poisoning hysteria.

I think many schools have chilled areas for packups, so warm things in flasks don't work so well. DDs friend once took a flask of hot chocolate to find it stone cold by lunchtime, because it'd been in the storage.

Bitsy_Beans

What did she eat for lunch before attending school? Mine have "real" food (although to be fair I don't think a sandwich isn't real food, not exactly turkey twizzlers and if it's good enough for the Earl of Sandwich then it's good enough for me ) generally in the evening, no way am I cooking twice in the day for them no matter how much I love them LOL

If she's never eaten bread then you might not get her to start now but a pasta salad etc would be fine. Is she used to having hot meals at lunchtime?

rachbc

I can understand school not heating it up tbh - because what if 200 kids all decided they wanted a homemade hot meal. I guess she would tell you if the soup was too hot or cold? How about a bento box - basically a picnic of lots of snacky stuff not involving a sarnie? Pasta/ cous cous salad? Cold frittata/ spanish omlette? Quiche? Bread sticks and dips, chunks of cheese and slices of cold cuts? Sushi?

She doesn't sound like a fussy eater - she sounds like a sensible girl - school dinners can be horrid, I don't eat sarnies and it sounds like she eats real food but doesn't like the junk...all to the good really!