Every Parent Needs These Back-To-School Lunch Ideas ASAP!
Finally! Schools are opening and as much as parents are rejoicing after a rather long vacation period they’ll soon be faced with coming up with lunch ideas for the new term! Unless of course, you have opted in for the school catered lunch and your child loves those meals it should be much easier for you. I for one have to battle daily with coming up with new lunch ideas for an almost out-of-the-woods picky child and seeing that she’s going to a new school, she might choose to starve than eat what’s being cooked at the school canteen if she does’t like it.
Am i the only one rejoicing school has opened and at the same time dreading the early morning waking up and cooking lunch, prepping snacks and the likes, pulling a reluctant child from the bed to shower and get dressed (*insert few shouting and threats*) driving through anything which looks like traffic consistently for the next 90 days??? Like I am caught between a hard rock and a granite stone.
I have compiled this list for children between the ages of 4 to 10 years but feel free to adjust it (especially the snacks) for the older pre-teens. This compilation will be easy to incorporate into your schedule if you prep ahead a day or the weekend before, trust me on this. This has worked for me over the years and the day I forget to prep will be me losing my mind that week or every other morning. Shame on me. You can also do a mix of the various snacks to see what works for your child(ren).
As much as you can, try and keep out ultra-processed meals out of your child’s lunch box. If you can’t see the ingredient in a product which has “Potato” or “Rice” or “Vegetables” on it’s labelling and you can’t see that ingredient, then it’s an ultra-processed product. Children need a good balance between whole fiber foods, fruits & vegetables and healthy fats. If you start them early on vegetables and whole fiber foods, they’ll definitely grow up loving greens as adults.
Let me put it out here that these lunch ideas are all HI, not AI, as in human intelligence generated from my own brain. The only credit I will give to AI are those flower borders because Canva was hell for importing from Sheets to the designing app.
To make your mornings easier before rushing off to drop off, prep ahead. Prepping looks like; cutting up vegetables and some fruits to save you precious time on school mornings, seasoning meats etc.
Here is a breakdown of what that looks like:
Season Meats
Chicken and fish can be seasoned for five minutes and still taste amazing but beef, goat and pork beg to differ. Always pre-season the hardier meats and steam them to soften them up for use the next day. Store the steamed meats in the fridge or freezer.
Mince The Meats.
If you don’t have a mincer, nicely ask the supermarket butchers to mince the meat you selected and save a lot of money buying pre-made patties and sausages. Minced meat can be shaped as a burger patty, rolled into a sausage shape, rounded to make meatballs and cooked down to make a thick rich tomato minced meat sauce (ideal for spaghetti and pasta). You can also cook down minced beef to add it to Jollof, fried rice or plain rice. Beef and pork are easily the best meats to mince as they hold up much stronger than fish and chicken. Nevertheless, you can also mince fish and chicken together for chicken burgers etc.
Bake/Grill/Fry Meats
When you cook meats like chicken, goat, beef and pork ahead of time, you save so much time in the mornings as long as you defrost them properly in the fridge overnight and reheat in the oven you’re good to go. NEVER defrost cooked meat in warm temperatures (in the kitchen etc) as doing this will encourage bacteria growth.
Chop/Slice The Vegetables
This is a no-brainer. Slice carrots, English cucumbers, bell peppers, cauliflower, green beans, zucchini etc into strips and store them in ziplock bags for use throughout the week. To ensure freshness, wrap them in foil before the ziplock for maximum crispiness.
Slice Some Fruits
Apples, watermelon, pawpaw, grapes etc can be sliced the night before, drizzle lemon over them to maintain freshness and store in a tight glass container.
Bake Ahead
Butter cookies are ridiculously easy to bake and they taste way nicer than the store-bought ones. Bake muffins and store them in ziplock bags. I muffin a day keeps a hangry child away.
Juice. Juice. Juice
No child ever refuses juice packs! If you’re worried about high sugar content juices, why don’t you make your own? It’s healthier and saves you a lot of money seeing how one juice pack is between 10-15 cedis. Make several bottles ahead and reuse the bottles to reduce your plastic waste or have a separate thermos juice bottle if you can get it.
Fries
Another favourite of every child under the sun. I’d recommend sweet potato and yam fries over Irish potato fries 🍟due to some preservatives being used on them. Slice yam and the sweet potatoes, blanch them in hot water, let them cool and bag-store them in the freezer. You just pick and fry! Easy peasy!
I know these tips will help you Mummies and Daddies 🤭 in having a less stressful morning as school opens. Did you enjoy this post? Please share it to all your parents WhatsApp groups and save a life 😜. We go Dey alright!
