Packed Lunches vs School Dinners

jellymid

If you have a dishwasher, invest in some dishwasher proof lunchboxes - it reduces the hassle no end. If you make the lunch the night before and store in the fridge it helps to keep them a bit fresher. Can your children mix and match to suit you or do you have to commit to a full half term for school dinners?

Janepig

DD has just started mixing and matching! It's roast dinner day on a Wednesday which she doesn't like (DD doesn't do meat - apart from sausages, very healthy :rolleyes:) and her best pal has a packed lunch then too so we've been trying it. I don't really want to go down the route of chocolate and crisps (like DD's best pal :rolleyes:), so she has cheese sandwiches cut out with pastry cutters into "interesting" shapes - well she is only five , cocktail sausages (her faves), a frozen frube, and a tub of raisins and apricots. I made some flapjacks and cheese straws for her last packed lunch but they came back uneaten. I'm going to make banana bread this week and put a slice of that in, and she's also asked for jelly so I'm going to make a couple of pots up. I also freeze her bottle of water before putting it in to help keep things cool.

So I now pay £6.80 a week instead of £8.50.

Jxx

chaliepud

Thanks everyone, some great ideas there! Never thought of putting jelly in, my dd loves jelly! Will see if I can change daughter over next week, should be okay. Ds1 undecided but will work on him and ask school if we can change over mid term.

Thanks again!

H

luxor4t

After I saw the dinner ladies serving up plates of cheese & potato pie with boiled potato and baked beans as a "balanced" meal (NO choice) I was glad my kids all had packed meals!

(the pie was mashed potato with onion and a bit grated cheese on top).

oompahloompah

Packed lunches are definitely more economical. I give my 3 packed lunches 4 days a week - they only have school dinners when they have PE as they have a lot of kit to carry around too - the rest of the time it is packed lunches.
I make them fresh each morning; it takes 5 minutes - sandwiches, juice, crisps, fruit and a treat - haven't added up how much it costs but it is certainly much less than the £2 each a day for school dinners - I probably make all 3 lunches for less than that.

conradmum

Lakeland do a great lunchbox that's compartmentalised, so you can keep things separate in it:

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/product.aspx/!6480

VK-2008

i would say it comes down to balance - you have to know what your kids are eating you see all these programmes where kids just get junk for lunch with the school dinners

i would say it comes down to balance

give pack lunch maybe mon, tues and thurs and then on a wed and fri they get skl dinner

simple things for packed lunches are just make an extra portion of dinner at meal time and put it in wee box for them, or make up sandwiches the nite b4 that way it all ready for them in morning

it just gives u the chance to help them eat better put in some fruit salads and yougurts

theres pitta breads, rolls, wraps if they are fed up of sandwiches even making up wee pasta boxed or salad with a few cocktail sausgaes

it may seem a stress after a long say making up pack lunches but think of thre longer term health benefits