Kids eat on different lunch schedules than their parents, because school regulates kids to eat at a certain time every day. If they eat at 11:05 every day at school, they will be hungry at 11:05 every day at home. Parents can help kids learn to make their own lunches, and kids can have the fun of cooking.
Brown Rice and Steamed Vegetables
Minute Brown Ready Rice in cups is a good basic to have on hand for kids. Brown rice is healthy and is a neutral staple that adds to the meal without being a food that kids tend to have strong opinions about eating. To make the rice, kids:
- peel off the cover
- cook for one minute
- leave it in for a little bit while it cools (the cup gets really hot)
- pour it on a plate
Kids can mix the rice with steam-in-the-bag vegetables. Ziploc has Zip 'n Steam Microwave Bags that kids can put fresh vegetables in to steam, or Birdseye has frozen vegetables in steamable bags that have cool-touch spots to hold when pulling them out of the microwave.
Depending on the vegetable options, this is an extremely healthy, low-fat meal. Minute Brown Ready Rice has 150 calories per cup, and steamed vegetables are low calorie foods. In fact, many vegetables are negative calorie foods, which means the body uses as many calories digesting them as are in the vegetables.
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Tomato Soup
The One Word Review looks at Smucker's Uncrustable Grilled Cheese sandwiches and asks, "How can you make something so ordinary like Grilled Cheese worth buying instead of making yourself? Cut off the crust baby." Grilled cheese is worth paying for when a 3rd grader is making it. Kids do not like to clean up in the kitchen (who does?), and Smucker's Uncrustables are easy to make and easy to clean.
Kids can easily follow the microwaveable instructions:
- unwrap the sandwich
- put it in the microwave-safe container
- put the container on a plate (the cheese tends to leak out, so a paper plate or paper towel is best)
- cook for 45 seconds
- wait for it to cool before taking it out and putting it on a clean plate
Kids can add to the meal by also making Campbells Soup at Hand, which is easy to open and cook. The cans are easy to make and can be eaten directly from the microwavable container. It is best to try cooking them at 30-45 seconds first, because the soups bubble over. The soups come in creamy and regular tomato flavors.
Uncrustable Grilled Cheese sandwiches are 150 calories, and soup is about 80 calories, depending on which version is selected. This is another easy, basically healthy lunch kids can make.
Like making easy breakfasts, kids may need to be shown how to do this by parents before taking it on themselves, and like making easy dinners, kids may need parent supervision. Easy lunches require no measuring, and kids can eat on the school schedule that they are used to following.
Alex Sharp - Alex Sharp is a teacher who has been keeping Suite101 readers up to date with the latest in audio- and e-book gadgetry since 2008.
