Every evening, after dinner, my children review the school menu and make the big decision. School bought lunch or "lunch from home". This year, I have tried really hard to make lunch from home a more popular choice. The menu for tomorrow is BBQ pork riblets with corn. The "hot alternative" for the whole week is a steak and cheese sub. The "cold alternative" is yogurt, a cheese stick and bread. If I could, I would pick the yogurt for my kids, and be done with it. I am not that interested in spending an hour wrestling four lunch boxes into my over packed, condiment filled fridge. However, according to the rules at my children's school, I can choose school bought lunch or "lunch from home". I may not choose what school lunch each child gets. This is to make things easier for the teachers, easier for the lunch ladies, easier for the children, and it if I don't care what my children eat, easier for me. There are many things in this world that I don't care about, neighborhood gossip, my ex, sports of any kind etc. Unfortunately, I do care what my children eat. I'm not even sure BBQ pork riblets is an actual food. Since I have tried to change/bend/break this rule without success, I have engaged on a promote "Lunch from Home" campaign. I don't want to start any food battles with my kids this early in life. My approach has been to buy healthy foods and allow them to eat what, when and as much as their bodies tell them. This worked really well, until Lilly, my ten year old discovered that "cool kids eat school lunch". I'm not even sure my twins know what cool kids are yet. In this house, Lilly is the undisputed authority on what is in and out. She is the Justin Bieber to my Bon Jovi. I just can't compete. Thus, begins my "Lunch from Home is a Home Run" campaign. (yes, I named it and yes everyone rolled their eyes at me when I said it).
So far, this campaign is already way over budget. I am hoping for some matching contributions from the government. Here are some of my strategies:
- Apple dippers. These are pre-sliced green apples with a little pocket of peanut butter or yogurt. They have caramel also, but I distract my kids, and grab the other two, before they realize this exists. They also have the ones with baby carrots and low fat ranch dressing. Anything that is in an overpriced single packet serving is attractive to children. If Lunch from Home is elected, I plan to switch to buying big bags and little tupper ware containers in my second term.
- Frozen Go-gurt. These little tubes are interesting to my kids because we freeze them and they thaw by lunchtime.
- Cool shaped sandwiches. I got some of those large cookie cutters and use it to cut the sandwiches into cool shapes. They are so interested in what shape the sandwich will be, that they have not noticed that I make them with 7 grain bread.
- Cool shaped cheese cubes. I also have little cookie cutters to create interesting shapes from blocks of cheese. It takes a little work to create these. It helps to slice the cheese a little thinner than a cube. I take the leftover cheese nubs in my lunch. I have given up on being cool and suffer the ridicule of my colleagues for my odd shaped cheese nubs.
We are still waiting for final results, but I belive that the campaign is showing moderate progress, as we have pulled ahead of school bought lunch by a slim margin in the polls.
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