Back to school starts next Tuesday for us. This also means it’s time to think about school lunches. The way that my children’s school lunch program works is that every three months you have to choose their lunch by day and send in a check for all of their lunches up front. Each day, the packaged food that you choose is given to your child to eat. It’s a very tedious thing to go through the menu for three months out and picking and choosing what they will have to eat on any given Thursday. It’s also very expensive running about $200 per child every three months. Obviously, the more children you have at the school, the more it costs. There are no discounts. So with two children in school, it costs nearly $1200 a year just for lunch! And, the school lunch is rarely healthy.  There is nary a fresh fruit or vegetables in sight.

So this year, we decided to send lunch everyday and to just order  the desserts that were offered and the “special”  holiday (Thanksgiving turkey sandwich with a side of jello)  lunches. It cost just $64 for both kids for the first three months.  I highly doubt that I will spend the extra $336 to make homemade healthy lunches versus what I would have spent had I ordered food this trimester.

The best way to manage the financial aspect of the lunches is to plan a menu every week and set a budget. This way you can use coupons and match ups effectively go shopping  for everything on your list for the next week. Also, knowing what you need to make everyday cuts down on stress and alleviates part of the morning rush. No digging around the refrigerator at the last moment while you are yelling to put shoes on!  Even better, is to make lunches the night before and have everything at the ready for each kid to grab on their way out the door. Time is of the essence!

Everyday, the kids will take a small salad or fresh cut up veggies and they will always have a  fresh fruit. The main course will be a bit more challenging as each child has specific likes and dislikes and of course they are complete opposites. Only one likes eggs and only one like tuna. (As an aside, I don’t like them to eat too much tuna because of the heavy metals, so I limit their intake to only one can per month.  Here is a great website that calculates how much your tuna is safe to consume by your child’s weight.)  I will make hard boiled eggs, egg salads, chicken salads, vegetable sushi and homemade pizzas. There will also be hummus, yogurts and cottage cheese. I prefer to use grilled chicken breasts or make my own nuggets over processed lunch meats. Wraps are very popular around our house and you can cut them into bite size pieces.

So, for the month of September, we have just seven, (yes, 7!) days of school. There are a lot of holidays this month. Here is my menu for those days.

Day 1

Cut up raw broccoli and cauliflower with dressing for dipping

Whole grain pasta with diced tomatoes and light sauce

Grapes

Day 2

Small green salad, with sliced red peppers, carrots, chickpeas and cucumbers. Dressing on the side.

Vege wrap with egg salad (for one)

 2 Hard boiled eggs with a whole grain slice of bread (for the other one)

Banana

Day 3

Small green salad, with sliced red peppers, carrots, chickpeas and cucumbers. Dressing on the side.

Hummus with whole grain crackers

Cubes of cheddar cheese

Apple slices

Day 4

Cut up raw carrots

Sliced chicken breast on a vege wrap with lettuce and (tomatoes for one, avocado for the other)

Sliced mangos (for one)

Grapes (for the other)

Day 5

Raw sugar snap peas

Tofu and yam hash

Whole grain crackers with sliced cheese

Banana

Day 6

Small green salad, with sliced red peppers, carrots, chickpeas and cucumbers. Dressing on the side.

Spinach and cheese triangles in phyllo

Vanilla yogurt

Sliced cantaloupe

Day 7

Cabbage and carrot salad

Vege sushi rolls

Whole grain crackers

Grapes

Planning ahead, making a menu that respects the children’s input and gathering all the ingredients is essential to making school lunches effortlessly and a lot less expensive.

If you have lunch ideas you want to share, please submit them. I plan on keeping track of my expenditures for this menu and will let you know exactly how much this saves.

Happy Eating!