Packed Lunches

Tips for packing lunches 

• Use a variety of tasty and visually interesting bread for sandwiches. For example, use pitas, mini bagels, tortillas, English muffins, hamburger, hotdog or submarine buns.  
• When shopping, choose an assortment of ripe and less ripe fruit. The less ripe fruit will be ready to eat in a few days. 
• If you are using a communal fridge remember to label and date all your containers.  
• If you or your family member doesn’t have access to a fridge, pack an ice pack, freeze a water bottle or juice box, or freeze yogurt tube and place any temperature-sensitive foods close by.  
• It’s easy to forget utensils, try to pack them the night before in your insulated lunch bag.  
• Kids can be picky eaters here are some ways to encourage healthy eating habits: 
  • Small food is often fun food. It is easy to convert your favourite muffin recipes to mini: Spoon 1 tbsp of batter into each 24 greased or paper-lined mini muffin cups. Bake at 375° for 10-12 minutes or until muffin tests done. Remove from pan or cool on a rack.
  • Set out washed vegetables like a salad bar and let kids build their own salads or choose their vegetable stick mix. Offer vegetables such as snap peas or snow peas, red, yellow or orange peppers, jicama, zucchini, carrots and celery. Hummus makes a great dip for vegetables.  
  • A lot of kids won’t eat sliced fruit if it has started to brown. When preparing lunches, slice fruit into an anti-darkening solution made from:  
    • 2 tbsp Fruit Fresh in 4 cups cold water or 
    • 2 tbsp bottled lemon juice in 2 cups cold water. 
  • Let fruit slices sit in the solution for five minutes. Drain and store in a sealed container.