School Meals v Packed Lunch

A question about : School Meals v Packed Lunch

Hi

Can anyone give me ideas for sandwich fillings that kids will actually eat; as my 4 year old is due to start a school which doesn't have a canteen, so Im going to have to start giving her exciting pack lunches to try to get her to eat up. Im really stumped for ideas.

Thanks!

Best answers:

• Mine eats just about anything: ham, cheese, cheese spread, spreading pate, sandwich spreads, sliced meats, tuna mayo. Occasionally he has sausage rolls or a pasty, not too often though because pastry is very fatty. Most kids like egg mayo but it stinks by lunchtime! Salad goes soggy in bread, what you can do is make a sandwich that goes bread-thin ham-tomato-another slice of ham-bread.
  Pasta salad makes a nice change - cold pasta, crunchy veg like cucumber, sweetcorn and peppers, mixed with some salad dressing and tuna. Some parents swear by slices of cold pizza, but my kid won't touch it!
  I'd suggest getting an insulated lunch pack to stop her lunch getting warm and stale. I make sandwiches in bulk and freeze them, and put them in the lunchbag still frozen. They defrost by lunchtime
• What Filigree said ;D
  Sometimes my kids get fed up with sandwiches so they have what they call pick n mix. Cheesestring, peperami, tomato, chunk of cucumber, mini cheddars, scotch egg, mini pasty or sausage roll, fruit and anything really that makes a picnic ;D
• If your little one is anything like mine don't dwell too much on lunches! They are so desperate to get out and play that most of it is untouched until they leave the school gates!
  For an alternative to sandwiches I sometimes put in a chunk of french bread with a piece of cheese or chicken kebabs (obviously only little bits of chicken). She seems to like these cold and they are quick and easy to eat!
• I try to give a different thing every day to stop them getting bored. Mine have:
  1. Slices of peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, cheese chunks and ham / chicken slices (kinda like Troos 'pic'n'mix' ;D)
  2. The pasta salad like filigree said.
  3. Cheese (either sliced cheese or triangles) and crackers with slices of ham.
  4. Chicken drumstick - might be a bit young at four for this though.
  5. Slices of quiche.
  6. Breadsticks with 'dips' (cheese triangles, sandwich paste etc)
  If you eat a corner yogurt - rinse out the pot then you can put the dip in the corner with mini breadsticks or sticks of carrot / pepper etc in the main part. Cover it in cling film or put it in a food bag to keep everything in.
  If you're giving sandwiches try using biscuit cutters to make them more interesting - you can get them in so many shapes every day can be different.
  Try having 'packed lunch days' at home and get to see what your child likes from these ideas or as a sandwich filling. My 6 and 10 year olds love doing this even now!
  Let your child help when making the sandwiches or other options to get them more interested and let them make choices (not all the time - just during 'packed lunch days' or the rare occasion you may have time when they start school). If they've helped and chosen they're more likely to eat it.
  I agree with insulated packed lunch boxes - I have mini freeze blocks that I put in as well. I haven't seen a school yet that has a fridge to store lunch boxes :-X. Another tip if you can't find the mini freeze blocks is to freeze bottles of juice (NOT pop) and the night before put one in the fridge - they'll be half defrosted by the morning then fully defrosted but nice and cool by lunchtime with the rest of the food being chilled as well.
  The other things I put in lunchboxes apart from the main 'meal' are:
  1. Drink - pure fruit juice, bottle of made up juice ( by made up I mean from cordial - not pretend juice.....y'know whatta mean! ), water and a milkshake on a Friday
  2. Fruit - halve a kiwi, put it in a food bag and give a teaspoon to eat it. Strawberries go down well in the summer. Grapes are usually popular. If you give an orange - peel it and separate the segments when they're young and put it in a small container or food bag. Banana. Apples are usually only ever half eaten :-/
  3. Yogurt or fromage frais
  4. Small biscuit
  5. Crisps or mini cheddars (although I try to just give them a couple of times in one week)
  6. Mini boxes of raisins
  END OF SUGGESTIONS!
  Well I know you only asked for sandwich ideas but thought you might need other ideas as well : ;D
• Instead of little boxes of raisins, I buy big cheap bag of dried mixed fruit and put some in placcy bag. My daughter loves fruit salad. I just slice strawberries, apple, melon raspberries or anything else i have to hand, sprinkle with a little sugar and lemon juice. Don't worry too much about what you put in though, as long as your making sure you give her a good breakfast and tea, she won't miss out. Also, the good thing with pack lunches is (if your school do this) is they send all thats not eaten home, so you know how much they've had. Always worried when mine wre on school dinners that they'd come home hungry (which they did a few times) cos it was something they didn't like.
  Lots of luck on her first day at school.
  160
• I always put meat slices in my girls sandwiches - I just get the bigger packs and stuff her rolls I find that rolls are easier - the little hovis ones that look like a mini loaf of bread are her fav.
  Also, have to say, the squeezy yogurts are fab, no need for a spoon and no lost cutlery either - little kids just need to practice getting the packs open!!
  Try and get your little one to put all the left overs in a sealable poly bag (80 for Ј1 in most Ј shops) as the results can be icky on hot days especially with banana's!! I also avoid drink cartons (our school sends the kids back with all left overs so parents can see how much the kids have eaten)
  HTH
  Ally
• Meant to say... I keep little plastic tubs, the sort that have dips or coleslaw in. Wash them out and use them for packing lunches in. That way, if your dopey son throws them away (grrr) you haven't lost a proper Tupperware tub. Learned that lesson the expensive way! :
  500g size margarine tubs are a good size for pasta salad, too.
• I buy the yogurt in a tube (frubes?) too, I used to buy cartons of yogurt but the kids would throw my spoons away with the carton :
• Wow, Thanks for all the culinary tips. Im trying to track down an insulated sandwich box at the mo. We are going to try a few lunch box meals as suggested.
  Thanks so much for the help... Keep them coming
• BTW - Whilst having my toast this morning I noticed that Marmite are doing an insulated Marmite sandwich box for 4.99 with a purchase - it comes with space for an ice pack too if I remember rightly from my quick scan read at stupid o'clock this morning!
  Hope that helps
  TQ
• Hi just wanted to add a bit.
  My little boy isn't at school yet but he loves most of the things listed but also loves humous(sp?) with pitta bread.
  My main point though is my mum buys lunchboxes for my little brother from matalan. They are blue and have a section for the ice pack (which is included) not sure how much they are though
  HTH
• My kids love cheese and crackers bcos they think its 'grown up'!
  other yummy fillings for sandwiches - peanut butter and marmite, tesco value meat paste, JAM (greatly underestimated in my opinion) cheese and marmite, a thin spreading of pesto with whatever you fancy, such as chicken, ham etc. I dont use margarine unless the filling isnt itself sticky. Also my daughter likes the filling separate if its cheese or ham or salami, she likes to make ker own sandwiches. You could provide a banana for a banana sandwich to be made if your child can cope with this - yum! Schoolday memories flooding back.
  I no longer buy crisps or chocolate coated biscuits. If my kids need a packed lunch they get some dried fruit - apricots or sultanas, breadsticks, frubes are good as you can freeze them, so they keep the rest of the lunch cool, or freeze the juice bottle and get it out in the fridge the night before so its still very cold but not totally chilly. Make little buns, one egg, 3 ounces each of self raising flour, sugar and vegetable oil, cook for about 10 minutes at gas 7 in the middle of the oven. If your kids help out they will usually eat what they have made proudly ;D
  I tend to only pack apples as most other fruits dont survive well being in a lunchbox.
• Remember we all liked things as kids we wouldn't eat now!
  I had a two year love affair with salad cream sarnies = poor mum was almost gagging when she made them! We also have a favourite in the house of peanut butter and cucumber (might be worth checking if any kids at the school have such a bad nut allergy that other kids having them set them off as happened at our local school).
  Ham and cheese is a more mundane favourite - or cream crackers make a nice chnage with those squares of plastic cheese.
  Mine take pitta breads with ham in, my oldest has never eaten a sandwich at school in her life and made it fairly healthily to her teens!Slices of cold pizza, homemade rolls are a very strong favourite (even the oldest will have those!).
  I think half of the battle is to get the children involved with the making of them and that seems to make them think more about actually eating them.
  Homemade cheese and ham scones are something kids will eat without thinking about it ebing more or less the equivalent of a sandwich.
• I think I lived on salmon paste sandwiches for about 5 years when I was a kid! They were always better with prawn cocktail crisps in them if I remember correctly..... wouldn't touch the stuff now.
  I would never eat all 4 sandwiches (1 round of bread cut into 4 little squares) so my Mum used to cut them up into 3 long "soldiers" & I would eat all 3 - despite it being exactly the same amount??!! odd child!
• I seem to be giving my kids the same stuff over and over cheese/ham/marmite sandwich. Piece of fruit,packet of crisps and chocolate bar.Seem to leave fruit and sandwich. sometimes give olives,raisons,apricots. Has anyone got any intresting,healthy options that kids go for?
• Jamie Oliver was talking about this in the Daily Mail tv supplement, he reckons packed lunches are even worse than school dinners!
  He has a new book out and devotes a chapter to this. Two things that were mentioned in the article were a bag of cherry tomatoes, my daughter loves them, along with mixed leaves and a little cling film wrap of dressing that they add before they eat. The other was freeze a carton of fruit juice, I use the Tesco value orange for lunches, while cold it acts as a cool pack and is squashy by lunchtime.
  Jamies website, https://www.jamieoliver.com is worth taking a look at for his diary, recipes and there is a forum there.
• My girls take a cold tuna or chicken pasta thing sometimes. Just cold pasta, mayo, tuna or chicken & some sweetcorn or cucumber. You can add whatever they will eat or whatever leftovers you have to this.
  Dont use just bread all the time - my girls love pitta bread filled with tuna or soft cheese or chicken. Add some chopped up cucumber & a bit of lettuce if they'll eat it?
  Another thing which I wish I'd started ages ago is - get them involved in deciding & making it! My girls come up with all sorts of ideas & they're more willing to eat their own creations. ;D
• Cheesestrings, frubes, mini peperami, mini salad, breadsticks (these are great cos they come in loads of different flavours ;D) There's more but I'm suffering from brain frazzle at the mo ;D
• Apples, grapes, bananas - no preparation
  Mix a few fruits together (fruit salad) to pick at.
  Kiwi fruit with top cut off like a boiled egg (don't forget to pack a plastic spoon)
  Chuck a few lettuce leaves, cherry tomotoes, feta cheese, olives, tuna and mayo in a box - salad nicoise very quick.
  Mine like the M & S duck wraps (only usually as a treat) but make own too - wrapped in tortillas
  I have stopped putting any chocolate bars in their lunches now - part of the retraining of their behaviour towards healthy eating.
  They like the part-bake crusty baguettes too.
  Try finger foods carrots, peppers, cucumber with dips