Bento Packing...

There is no other way to say it....school lunches suck may lack what your child needs for the day. Okay whatever, they mostly SUCK! Now, I know that there are some of you that do not have the time to pack lunch but after this post maybe a few days a week you will be able to. I started packing E's lunch (she is 9) last year. After a trip to school seeing a tray that looked kind of like this:

Now this may not look to bad to some, but where is the color? Where are the vegetables (corn in my book is a starch). I felt like the school was carb loading my kid for a triathlon!!!! Now they have a open salad bar that hardly any of the kids utilized and there is only one choice for lunch, so if you don't like what they have you don't eat. So after seeing that most of the kids were throwing away their lunches and not eating I decided that my child would have things she liked from home. I came home to research and stumbled over this world of Bento. This Japanese style of "food art" was catching on in the west and I caught the fever. The basic concept is a lunch that is balanced, containing a starch, meat, fruit, and vegetable. If you are super level 87 advanced in it you can make lunches that will make you World's Greatest Parent. I mean just Google it and you find images that look like this:

See this and go "awwwwww! It's so cute!"

See this and go "is that really what she is talking about?!" That's exactly what I said... So I took the simple approach. 

Most of the time it takes me anywhere from 15-30 mins to construct her lunch and that includes heating it and cutting anything I did not prep earlier in the week. The key to making this a quick process is PREP. If you are cutting veggies for dinner, cut a few for their lunch. Make a little extra pasta and stick it in the fridge. Cut up fruit and store in containers in the fridge. This not only makes sure that you have enough for them but you have healthy snack on hand for yourself during the week. So here is one of E's lunches that I made:

It may not have fun panda's or leprechaun's running for a rainbow, but it is full of things that she will eat, is healthy, and took me about 15 minutes to make. I would suggest checking out what your child's school is serving for lunch...you may not like what you find. A quick prep during other meals in the week means that you can get them out the door with a healthy meal that will really fuel them for the day :) I'll post at least one good bento meal that I did for the week on Friday's and try to impress the masses with my lunch prep skills. LOL  From one busy mom to another, you can do this!