Nursery Meals for 50p

monnagran

sjbm45 wrote: »

I have no intention of serving turkey twizzlers.

I was asking for some ideas that I could maybe adapt as I was struggling within the limitations. Asking the parents for more money is not an option due to their socio-economic status.

Thank you for your input.

Nursery age children don't usually have big appetites. What they do like is small amounts of a variety of things. With the limited array of cooking methods you are going to have to be inventive.

Small jacket potatoes, or half slightly bigger ones. You can do these in the microwave. Variety of toppings - tuna mayonnaise, finely grated cheese, baked beans, coleslaw, .cherry tomatoes, strips of cucumber, carrot sticks, strips of peppers, pieces of celery, sprigs of watercress. Any of these are healthy and most children will find something there that they like.
Small children like to recognise what they are eating so mixed up food like soups and stews are not very popular.

They love finger food so tiny sandwiches with healthy fillings, eggs, cheese, ham, tuna, pate (a little goes a long way), plus the salad bits and maybe a crisp or two for the occasional treat.

Little pizzas could be warmed in the microwaves. If you could lay your hands on a small tabletop oven your options would increase dramatically.

Puddings. Little jellies in cups, ramekins or even cupcake cases could have little bits of fruit set in them,could have some evaporated milk whisked into them before being poured into the containers.
milkshakes, with a shortbread biscuit if funds allow.
a slice of Swiss roll with custard, the instant sort whisked with boiling water or the readymade boxed sort.
A piece of chocolate concrete. (for recipe look in today's Daily thread.
Yogurt, fruit as already suggested.

If only you could make things at home and bring them in your world would open up, but I suppose that wouldn't be allowed.

50p per child looks better if you say £5 per 10 children and you would do well to think of tiny servings rather than trying to get as much as possible for the money available.

Hope this helps, you are providing a great service. I hope it succeeds.

x

rach_k

I think people are being a bit snooty about this! 50p for lunch only is perfectly adequate for nursery-age children who will eat a lot less than an adult and will, hopefully, be having their main meal at home for dinner.

I like the idea of jacket potatoes - 15 normal size spuds in 2 microwaves is easy and quick and will serve 30 children. Add a few different options for toppings and you have a perfectly decent lunch. My kids' school has this every day as an alternative for those who don't want the main choices; they go down very well. The 'salad bar' (i.e. some tubs of different chopped fruit and veg, sweetcorn, maybe a pasta or rice salad) is very popular too and kids will often try something they wouldn't usually touch at home.

I'm not sure about the timing but if you can get a couple of large slow-cookers, you could do things like plain whole chicken. I think 2 large chickens (£4-ish each from Tesco) would be enough for 30 small kids for lunch, leaving you with enough money left over for potatoes (microwave-cooked so not roasties but will tinies notice/care?) and some veg.

You can do scrambled eggs in the microwave - some may disagree but I think eggs, toast and beans is a nice enough lunch occasionally.

If you don't have to do a hot meal, 'snacky and dippy' always worked for my kids when they were little. In fact, it still does now and I like it too! Several different colour dips - guacamole, salsa, sour cream/soft cheese, houmous etc - plus veg sticks, cheese sticks, bread sticks/pitta strips/toast/crackers makes for a fun lunch and you can get it pretty well balanced.

For pudding, my kids' school has fresh fruit, yoghurt, fruit smoothie, jelly, cheese and crackers - all things you could do. They have cake sometimes - maybe you could do that in the microwave. You can do a very nice rice pudding in the slow cooker if you can get one and I believe you can also do fruit crumble in them too.

Good luck!

JIL

My son used to love mini pitta breads with cheese in them, they were done in the toaster.
Baked beans on toast, baby tomatoes, carrot sticks cheese cubes, ham sandwich triangles. Mini cocktail sausages,
Tinned pineapples, dried fruit.
Have a look around aldi, they do some great things for packed lunches that you could use.
It is lunch you are providing so doesn't need to be a hot meal?

Brambleberry

Are you able to buy in from a local school who may already be preparing in bulk? My friend works in a small primary and their dinner system is to buy in the main course / pudding from the local middle school canteen. While I'm not sure of the costs, it seems that they benefit from the economies of scale in the larger school kitchen. It may not work everywhere but it is a very effective solution for them.