School Lunch

My high school aged daughter likes to "brown bag it". It seems to be something that is actually more "in" than what we think, especially amoung kids that realize that the price they are paying for food in the schools isn't in sync with the amount of food they are given to eat for the money.

What I did for her and my other kids was to go to Walmart and buy them food thermoses from the sporting goods section of the store. I can pop them in the microwave before they leave for school and they can take whatever they want in them. Usually it's leftovers from the night before but they also like to take soup or canned ravolis, etc in them.

How about just sending them meals in the Rubbermaid or Tupperware left over containers? They don't need a bag. They can just stick that in their backpack or locker.

you didn't seem to get many lucnh ideas so here are a few..

Instead of preslice, packaged lunch meats (which aren't exactly nutritionally sound anyway), pick up a whole chicken or two and roast/bake it at home. Make pulled BBQ sands one day and chicken salad for another - even cold fried chicken is good! Buy a bone-in ham instead of sliced stuff. You'll get a way better yield and more possiblities - ham wraps, pizza topping, also good with BBQ sauce or as a salad. For sides - why feed them chips? Full of empty calories and boys do not get full eating them. Instead buy different types/shapes of pasta and make pasta sides. There's a billion different recipes for pasta dishes on line, let them choose a few. Bake quick/easy breads like banana, zucchini or pumpkin and let them take slices of that instead of premade cookies/sweets. If they like pudding/jello make your own! Pudding takes about 8 minutes to make and only has about 3-5 ingredients (eggs, sugar, vanilla, cornstarch/flour, milk and flavorings). Use tortillas instead of bread. They sell whole-wheat ones and with the price of bread, you can use a few of these in lieu of bread. Make tuna salad wraps, egg salad, grilled chicken and veggies (again use your whole chicken). Above all, involve the boys! They can help pull chicken, cook pasta, cut veggies and bake breads. Have an idea of what they want for the week and spend an hour on Sunday and one on Wednesday to prepare for the 5 days they'll need. With the 3 of you in the kitchen it'll be a breeze. Make it fun and exciting and I'll be in a matter of weeks their friends will be so jealous of what they're bringing, they'll be asking their parents "to brown bag it".

Hope some of this helps! Good luck!

i was a "brown bagger" (oldest of four) and i made it - i know it's not cool, but they'll deal. also i have a teenage brother (youngest of 4) who, while the rest of us think he's quite spoiled, JUST got his first car at 17, and he mows lawns and does other odd jobs for extra cash. not an actual part time job because he has sports and his homework, but just enough for him to have some extra spending cash. my mom loves it. if they could do something like that, (check craigslist) maybe they could eat school lunches a couple times a week or something. just a thought. good luck!

I'm not sure how old they are, but once I was a Junior (before that I went to a school that required everyone to buy lunch) I made my own lunch or bought my own lunch. I could tell my mom what I wanted before she went to the store that week or just take what we had. Now, I wasn't a highschool boy, but I took cereal, yogurt, a piece of fruit and water or diet soda. I didn't like making lunch. Maybe you can let them make their own lunches (it doesn't have to be traditional) or give them a certain amount. My mom when we were in gradeschool and it wasn't cool to brown bag it let us pick out one meal a week to buy... Talk to them, maybe they'll come up with a solution no one here has even thought of!

K.

I thought whoever suggest that the kids do odd jobs around the neighborhood or wherever was a great idea. You could budget them a certain amount for the week and then if they don't want to brown bag the rest of the week, then they can work for their money. Does you 17 year old have a job? If not, he should. My husband started working when he was 14 at Taco Bell and by the time he was 19 he was a manager and he was in the band in the fall and orchestra in the spring every year and did band camp too (in HS and College). He paid for his own lunches with the money he made working. He now has an awesome work ethic and has been promoted twice in the last 6 months with the Fortune 500 company he works for. He has only had two jobs in his life and this is number two, he is moving up the corporate ladder. So you can't afford their lunch, and I know boys eat a lot, but they are both old enough to pay for their own two or three days a week and you pay the other. Good luck and God Bless.

Many, many high schools, and middle schools have microwaves available. Get a good thermos for hot food to put leftovers in warm. and a good quality insulated lunch box. have your kids make their own lunches and have on hand at all times canned fruit, instant pudding, as well as 1/2 c and 1 cup containers to put them into. Bread, lunch meat, cheese, pb, & jelly, I buy a month supply from Aldi as well as chips and crackers for 3 kids and 1 adult for less than $60. But in order to prevent over doing it when kids make their own lunches, pre-measure chips/crackers in zipper bags to regulate portions. Lay out guidelines for what you expect them to put in their lunches and check up occasionally. They will suprise you at how well they will do, but they will also test your guidelines. Planning ahead will make lunches a very quick 5 minute task. Don't buy prepackaged anything!!!! repackage bulk product into serving sized portions. They also don't need any sweets beyond fruit, pudding, or 2-4 cookies from the $1 family size packs from walmart. Don't get sucked in to lunchables and little debbies, these are monetary black holes!! and have little to no nutritional value.
It is really not too hard if you plan ahead. I do keep lunch expenses seperate in my budget. and I shop seperately for lunch food. Your biggest cost will be the insulated lunch bags and thermos, be sure they get washed immediately when they get home, the thermos will hold odors if not washed. Good luck, R.

It seems like you haven't received a lot of ideas for what to send with your boys. I'm sorry about that!
Here are some ideas that they may like:
tortilla chips with a great dip (mix salsa and avocado together, maybe a bit of sour cream or refried beans)
apples with peanut butter (reuse small Tupperware for the pb)
soups in thermoses
spaghetti in a thermos will stay warm
hummus and cut up veggies
pita pockets
dried fruit and nut mixes
spring rolls (you can find recipes and make them pretty easy at home)
pad thai/foreign food (they're friends will think they're pretty cool, especially if they can talk about what's in it... have them help you make it)
cereal bars with chocolate on top
cottage cheese
Nature Valley (or other healthy) granola bars
sandwiches on toast, condiments on the side (they stay better longer and don't get soggy) (again, try something unique: cucumber sandwiches with ranch dressing, hummus with lamb and lettuce and tomato, etc)
Just find what's on sale at the supermarket and be creative. Have your boys go online, find a recipe they are somewhat interested in (about the most you can sometimes hope for), and have them help you figure out how to make it work as a brown bag item.
Good luck!

If your boys have a good relationship with their teachers, they may have access to a microwave. I teach high school math and have one in my classroom. I have a few students who do use it for their lunches and I know I'm not the only one in my building who does this.

I think the quality of school lunches varies a lot from school district to school district. And I think that at most hs the kids have 'ala carte' stuff - and they end up spending much more than the $2.50 for lunch. (I know when I was in school you had a punch card for lunch and that was it...Today the kids have 'accounts' and a cc so they can spend way more each day compounding the problem.)

I know that the elementary lunches at my kids' school will be $2.05 this year and with 3 in school my kids will be brown bagging it. (Our school district puts spaghetti sauce on a hot dog bun and calls that an entree!)

I think you just have to be straight with the boys...School lunch is too much for your budget given what they get for their money. And that the solutions you have are: earn the money, pack a lunch (or you will pack one) or something else they come up with. (When I was in HS most of my friends didn't eat lunch)

I think you can make a school lunch for under $2.50 a day --- and make something that is more nutritious. I know everything is more expensive - that is why the cost of the school lunches went up......BUT you can get several sandwiches out of a loaf of bread....you can get a thermos that keep food warm and send left overs.

Have you called the school to ask about a microwave? I'm 27 & the rural high school that I attended had a microwave in the cafeteria.

I don't know what your financial situation is, but maybe you could qualify for free or reduced priced lunches.

Hi S.,
I don't know if this has be suggested, I haven't gone to read the other responses.
Have the boys find some odd jobs they can do around the neighborhood for their lunch money! When I got old enough, I did all kinds of babysitting, which the money went to my mom, a single parent of 7, to help the household. My husband also worked, in the Texas cotton fields with his mother, and helped his family with his earned money (mom and dad and 13 children).
This is not something to look down on, it was a way to teach our how to work, how to help, and how to be responsible. Granted, I am a grandmother now, from the "back in the day" group, but it can still work today. If they want to buy their lunches, let them use their own money! Surely there is something they can do for the $2.50 a day they need.
Give them a hug and send them out the door to learn and earn.
Jan in MO

Here's what I do...I'm not entirely happy with it, but it works. I give my high school kids a weekly lunch allowance of $6. That covers a lower-cost meal for three days, or one of the higher cost meals for two days. Ideally, they bring their lunches for 2 or 3 days. Or they can bring their lunch every day and pocket the money (that never happens.) Most of the time they refuse to bring anything from home, so what does happen is they end up sharing food with others, or spending their regular allowance on food, or for the ones with jobs, they spend their tip money. This is ridiculous, of course, when there is free food to bring from home every day. When they are in school, there is no controlling what they actually eat, whether you pack a nutritious lunch or buy a meal ticket for a (nasty) school lunch. They are going to swap food with friends, or buy junk from the snack center, or spend it all on drinks from the vending machines. I make a healthy dinner every night, so hopefully whatever nutritional evils they've ingested at school will balance out at home.

But that wasn't really your question! I would ask your boys what they'd like to eat in their lunch and if they have no answer, ask what they see other kids eating that they'd like. My kids still like Lunchables, which I do not approve of on any level, but I make them at home. If your kids like the pizza lunchables, those are easy to make - I used to do this all the time. Get a pizza crust mix and make pizza crusts in small size disks and bake them in advance. Put them in pairs in ziplock bags and refridgerate or freeze them. Package up pizza sauce in a repurposed plastic container (like those little cups applesauce comes in) or in a snack-size ziplock bag. (They can tear the corner off and squeeze the sauce on the pizza. Put shredded mozzerella in another small bag with pepperoni. My kids loved that in middle school. Kids are gross - they eat it cold!

Reading all the posts makes a lot of sense, and I struggled with this same issue. But the I thought about something - $2.50 a day is not really a lot of money if you look at the big picture. Going out and buying all the different types of foods your children would like is going to cost you at least the $25.00 a week or more in additional groceries. Lunchmeat and bread are ridiculously expensive as is milk or anything else your child may want to drink with his meal. And most kids won't take just a sandwich (or 2), you need the side (baked chips, applesauce, a piece of fruit). Even lunchables you really can't get for less than $2.00 each(on sale). Just a thought......Good luck!!

Hi S.!

I know that it all adds up and if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. Giving the kids a budget and letting them figure it out is a good strategy. But, when I think of what I pay when we fast food it, $2.50 sounds like a steal; even if you are paying for two kids. I also agree with the others who note that groceries are extremely expensive and I spend A LOT of money on food, especially prepackaged stuff for my kids' lunches. $8 meat/week, $3 bread/week, $5 chips, $5 sweet treat/week not counting drinks and after school snacks, etc.

Good Luck!

D. - trying to feed two teenage boys and a 9 year old daughter who can out eat her 14 year old brother.

I would be tempted to have them pack their own lunch. That way they get what they like plus one less task for you in the mornings. Another idea is for them to get a part time job after school to help pay for their expenses. Great valuable lessons can be learned from a part time job.

I began working at the age of 14 and learned more from those little jobs than any education I received in college. Your teaching them responsibility, how to work with others, various life skills and working skills, etc. I would encourage them to find the job, apply, and interview by themselves but of course they have to tell you what they are doing.

Having them begin work now is a way for them to decide what they would like to do for a career.

Best Wishes,

J. H.

And the question is???,, WHO is the parent, I grew up on brown bag lunchs at school. so Why can't the kids now days to the same. IT is not cool? SO who says they have to be like other kids.
Pnut butter sandwich, crackers, apples. Tons of stuff can be made or put in a bag that are good for the boys. AND you have to watch what u put on a sandwich. SO IT WILL NOT SPOIL.
They are old enough to understand. IF they want to buy a lunch every now and then, they can work for it, earn an allowence. Help a neighbor. YOU are the parent, so you tell them what they are taking, if they do not like it. THEN go hungry till after school snack.

If you could save enough money in the rest of your food budget, you could afford the increase. Try checking out Angel Food Ministries. You can get a LOT of good, normal groceries for 30 dollars AND, you can order as many of those boxes as you want. The menu changes each month so you don't have to worry about becoming bored.

Do you pay for your own lunches while at work? Kids have so much to carry to and from school already. I don't blame them for not wanting to brown bag it.

Suzi

Your high school doesn't have an accessable microwave for students? That's deplorable! That may be worth a PTO or Student Council project.
I would first suggest getting them each a good reusable thermal lunch bag, best to let them pick what they're willing to be seen with. Also look for hot/cold food containers that will help their hot food maintain its temperature. (Be warned-Thermos products do still have glass insulators-very nasty if they break-buy wisely)
Do either of your boys like to cook or prepare food? Let them come up with their own meals if possible.
Do they eat sandwiches at home? If they're good enough for home, they're good enough for school.
Get their input on this.

I agree with Tina. $2.50 really isn't that bad. I think you would spend more than $25.00 a week for two kids on bread, lunch meat, chips, granola bars, fruit etc... The cost of groceries has gone up so much now! Good luck at what ever you decide!

Most schools these days have a microwave for the students to use. Even the elementary school my children go to have one for the little guys to use (with help, of course). You may just need to inquire at the office about it first! You could also just have your teenagers help pick out what they want in their lunch, that way they're sure to eat it. Good luck!

Do they get an allowance? We got $20 for allowance each week and were given the option of making our lunches and taking them, thereby saving the cash for the weekend and fun things, or using it for lunch. I know cash is tight and giving them money outright may seem difficult, but if they don't already have an allowance, I bet you're forking over more than that without realizing it. I'm not opposed to teens working, but at the same time, they have the rest of their lives to have jobs. It seems like a lot to ask just for lunch money. Now, if they want to buy a car or something, then that's a different story...

For lunch ideas, I am a fan of leftovers. Whatever I make for dinner, I make enough to have again the next day. Then I only have to worry about making one meal a day. Not everything is good cold, of course, but lots of things are. I agree - get them involved in menu planning/grocery shopping one day a week (this will help them understand how much the food they want costs and help them stick to a budget), and make their own lunches. Good luck!!!