Food Wars

I think one of the greatest challenges of school life, is food. Trying to make sure your kids eat breakfast and lunch, and trying your hardest to make sure it’s at least semi healthy. 

Breakfast

In my household this is almost a dirty word to the older kids. The youngest two are great. They will happily throw down a bowl of weetbix, or have a sandwich (they are weirdly anti-toast). The sandwiches won’t exactly be healthy, maybe Nutella or peanut butter but I try to make sure it’s not a regular thing. Weekends are easier, they might enjoy some eggs, French toast, cheese and vegemite toast, stuff like that.

 

The older two are as much of a pain in the ass and as irritating as a bad case of hemarrhoids (I do NOT speak from experience with this metaphor!) when it comes to breakfast. The whinging, complaining, sighing, the “I don’t know”‘s, the efforts to avoid breakfast all together and leave the house on an empty stomach – it’s all so painful! They are unfortunately like me in one respect, we don’t like to eat when we first get up. I leave it around an hour or so between waking up with my magical morning coffee, and eating. The kids though, they take it to the extreme and would like to have breakfast around 11am. They might be convinced to chow down one measly piece of toast, or coerced into eating some yoghurt and a piece of fruit, and in their worse days they’ll try to go for the laziest thing possible – an “Up’n’Go”. My eldest recently discovered the joys of rye bread (which I eat) so now is generally having two pieces of rye with some peanut butter – not too bad.

 

Snacks

We have 3 different schools to contend with. Each of them has their different policies and agendas around food. This ranges from policies on nuts, to the acceptable containers you can bring, and because the youngest has just started so school – there is also sip’n’crunch to contend with (a mini break in the morning before recess where kids are lined up like battery hens to eat their fruit).

 

The kids go through their phases with fruit, so you never know what to stock. One week you never have enough bananas, the next you have a bowl of black banana like objects. Soooo frustrating. So you go for a cross section of fruits and pray they will take (and hopefully eat) what they like.

 

Then of course, there is general snacks. Our eldest has now gotten to the point he doesn’t bother with snacks, I think he’s too busy with his friends to bother with food (score!). The others still need that vast array of snacks ranging from healthy to crappy, and we have to try to regulate it as best we can, so sometimes they can have their crappy snacks as well (although I’m sure they’re having them way more than we’d like in an ideal world). Shapes, Cheese n crackers, dips, tiny teddies, pretzels, cucumber sticks (our eldest girl actually likes them sometimes). We have a damn box just filled with little packets in the pantry You can’t win here either because you buy something, they see it, then obsess on it and finish it all off. Then the next day of course, they complain there is none left and nothing else they want – grrr.

 

Lunch

The EASIEST meal of the day, and I will delude myself happily the kids are eating all their lunch each and every day (shut up all of you!). I’m a leftovers person. I like to cook so there will be leftovers. If it’s a meal the kids really enjoy, they will fight over the leftovers. The older three are actually more than happy to eat room temperature leftovers of most anything. Gotta love them for that. It’s an awesome feeling when my eldest for example, takes a container of stir fry veg and meat to school instead of some crappy sandwich (no chance of making properly healthy sandwiches filled with salad – screw you if your kids will eat that. </jealous>). I have to admit though, our eldest daughter is now foraying into the world of adding tomato and lettuce to wraps, so I’m proud there.

 

If they don’t go leftovers, or there aren’t enough, they are pretty easy with sandwiches – vegemite, cheese & vegemite, fritz and sauce (devon to you New South Wales types, and to overseas readers – some kind of sliced processed meat), tuna, ham & cheese etc. Each kid also takes a bottle of water which I keep cold in the fridge overnight. We definitely don’t think the kids need any flavoured drinks or soft drinks etc. for school.

 

We’ve been pretty lucky so far with school lunches and snacks. There is always school ‘politics’ around this stuff, where some kid gets heaps of junk, or cool lunches like sushi and other kids get jealous. We actually had once instance where a kid was being given macca’s to bring in for lunch (McDonald’s for you non-aussies). Thankfully my kids are smart enough to know that’s bloody terrible. In general, my kids don’t complain much about what other kids get so I love them for that.

 

I often read all these articles showing “healthy lunches” for kids, and providing recipes which “kids will love!” and I just laugh. If I tried to get my kids to eat these healthy lunch boxes there would be mutiny. I find recipes like “Sundried tomato, cauliflower and spinach muffins’ being sold as “hidden veg muffins the kids will love” a complete joke. My kids have taste buds, they aren’t the greatest fans of veg, and again – I’m walking the plank if I tried to usurp their BBQ shapes with a “hidden veg” muffin. I think I’ll settle for trying to get their veg in by way of the dinners I make, thank you very much. It all comes around in its own time anyway, as I mentioned above with my eldest boy taking stir fry’s, and eldest girl starting to experiment with salad in her wraps. Let them grow, but just keep them in check I reckon.