School lunches

‘Tis the season everyone posting pictures of their kids’ lunches (is this what the Internet is now? Not even what I had for lunch, but what my kid had? It would be sad if I didn’t enjoy it.)

We try to pack LG a lunch similar to what she’d eat at home, but have learned that some things don’t translate. Crab tacos, for example, LG will eat at home, but won’t eat at school, which was fun to find out when we picked her up and noticed leaked crab juice all over her lunch bag. (THANKS FOR NOT JUST THROWING THAT AWAY, TEACHERS.)

Because I refuse to buy kid-specific food, we’re at the mercy of what we have in the fridge at any given time.

Here are some favorites:

Sandwiches (if we have lunch meat; if we don’t, we’ll cook up an egg and voila: egg sandwich)
Tortilla roll-ups (if we have lunch meat; cream cheese is also a plus if we’ve got that)
Cold eggs (hard-boiled eggs)
Olives
Carrot sticks
Popcorn
Salami
Pasta (with or without sauce)
Rice (better at school than at home, where I have to clean up the mess)
Beans (just plain old beans, any kind)

And here are some things we’ve tried that do not work:

Crab tacos!
Any kind of seafood, actually
Quinoa
Anything resembling salad

While LG is pretty into vegetables at home, she won’t eat a ton of veggies at school, minus the carrot sticks. Sometimes I can talk her into a snap pea or a green bean, but it depends on her mood. And of course not a week goes by that one of us doesn’t say, “Let’s just make her a peanut butter and je—UGH NEVER MIND.”

I’m always looking for new ideas—what do your kids take for lunch?