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It’s that time of year again, and the age-old question of what to feed your children for lunch while they at school is upon you once again. With all of the talk about the poor quality of school lunches, you may decide to start sending a lunch with your children. But if they are like most kids, their first choices may not be the healthiest or the least expensive.
To recharge them after a long morning and get them through the day, avoid sugary foods and provide at least one source of protein. Remember to pack a dairy product, use whole grains, and give them at least two veggie or fruit items.
Here are some simple ideas for keeping them healthy and strong while keeping your budget under control:
* Sandwiches – Peanut butter, deli slices, cheese, or even leftover meat loaf or roast beef all make great sandwich fixings. Pair them with whole grain bread, pitas or tortillas. Add the complimentary condiments in separate containers to keep the bread from getting soggy, and include a plastic knife for preparation.
* Jello – Most children adore a Jello snack in their lunch box, but purchasing these pre-made can get pricey. Instead, buy boxes of Jello powder and mix it up over the weekend to dole out each day. Use fruit juice in place of water or add canned fruit to the mix to take care of one of your daily servings of fruit. Invest in some small plastic containers that are about the size of the pre-made Jello cups to make it easier.
* Fresh fruit – Toss an apple, orange or banana into the lunch box each day. If it isn’t eaten at lunch, chances are it will get eaten after school. Fresh fruit is better than canned fruit and if sent whole it doesn’t require a special container of its own.
* Fresh vegetables – Baby carrots, celery slices, broccoli pieces, cherry tomatoes and even salad are easy to carry in a lunch box and can stand alone or go well paired with dip or dressing in a separate container.
* Soup – Mix up a batch of home-made soup or stew over the weekend or open a can of soup and heat it up to boiling before school. Pour it into a thermos and it should still be safely hot by lunchtime. Pair it with items that do not need to be cold to ensure everything in the lunch box remains at a safe temperature.
* Chips – You can avoid regular potato chips and still have a cheap, healthy addition to your child’s meal. While pricier, whole grain and baked chips will provide a nutritional advantage over the white flour and fried varieties. Purchase large bags of chips and dole them out in baggies or washable plastic containers each day to keep costs down.
* Milk or yogurt – Many schools will allow your child to purchase a container of milk, or you can send along a thermos of ice-cold milk. Send a container of yogurt; if frozen overnight it should be nicely thawed by lunch time and will help keep other items cold during the morning.
With many of these options, refrigeration or heating is required but probably not allowed. Investing in a good quality thermal lunch box, a freezer pack and a thermos to keep items hot or cold is well worth it. Use washable containers for each item instead of disposable baggies to keep your long-term expense down.
Making wise choices for your children’s lunches this school year will keep both them and your bank account healthy and strong.
Also Available:
Crockpot Cooking Made Simple
Meal Planning Made Simple
The Hillbilly Housewife Recipe Collection
About Freezier Cooking Made Simple
Description: This ebook is filled with all the information necessary to learn how to freeze foods and make those dollars stretch. With information such as how to get started, what items you need, what foods freeze well and foods that don’t quite cut it when it comes to freezing, this eBook tells it all. Worksheets, printable labels and even a few quick and easy recipes are included to get you started with healthier meals when living on a tighter budget.
Review: As a mother, wife and just all around caretaker of my home I needed to find something that would take less time and save me money in the kitchen. I went looking for ideas and found many that seemed to be the answer. Most of them I found to be more time consuming than anything. Then, I came upon this ebook.
Freezing foods makes sense in all aspects. It’s amazing how in just one afternoon you can have a freezer full of healthy foods to feed your family for a month. This ebook will show you how. It’s easy to understand, has all the facts you need to know and will give you the answers to any questions you may have.
Freezer Cooking Made Simple is set up so that even the newly married can find what she needs. It explains why freezing foods can save you money and time. It talks about what you need in the way of equipment, how to shop for foods and how to cook these foods.
There is a section that explains how to safely store your freezer meals including labels to help you remember exactly what you have and how to reheat it. Susanne has included a printable shopping list along with a worksheet to help plan your meals on a weekly and monthly basis. Best of all, there are even a few recipes added to get you started.
If you’re looking for a way to save money and time in the kitchen, I strongly urge you to take a look at Freezer Cooking Made Simple. Once you read through it, put it into motion immediately. You will see that this is a very simple and easy way to make those hours in the kitchen count. Shopping, cooking and freezing foods aren’t as hard as many of us believe. Give it a chance and you will find the answer you’ve been looking for all along.
Article written by Susanne Myers of HillbillyHousewife.com
Healthy eating habits begin when your child is a baby. Unfortunately, as they grow older, those healthy habits don’t always remain. If your teen is eating more junk than you’d like, here’s some tips on how to encourage your teen to eat healthy again.
Since most teens have a growth spurt during this time, it’s important to encourage them to eat foods that can help during this time. Teens may gain about 20% of their adult height during this period, and as much as 50% of their adult weight. Their need for vitamins and minerals, particularly calcium and iron, also increases, so it’s even more important to encourage your teen to eat healthy meals and snacks.
Eating as family for as many meals as possible will encourage your teen to be more choosy in what they eat. If they know you cook meals and generally eat at the same time each night, they’ll do what they can to be home. Obviously, eating meals together is more than providing physical nourishment; it’s also about reconnecting at the end of the day and knowing they’ll have an opportunity to talk with you.
Another way to encourage healthy eating habits is to ask your teens to help in the kitchen. If they have a hand in preparing the food, they may be more likely to eat foods that are good for them. Of course, you have to be serving healthy foods for them to eat them.
If you eat in front of the television, you and they could be more likely to overeat or choose unhealthy foods whenever food commercials are shown. Advertisements are made to elicit a response to purchase what you see in them. Quite often, however, the ads merely encourage you to eat whether you’re actually hungry or not. In fact, leaving the television off as much as possible can go a long way toward helping everyone in your family eat more healthfully.
Keep healthy foods in your house at all times. This means having plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grain snacks, and healthy beverages available and easily accessible. If your teen can quickly grab some grapes, an apple, or vegetable sticks, they’ll be less likely to seek out snacks that aren’t so good for them. Not bringing the junk food into your house will mean they don’t have much of a choice when they’re hungry, so they’ll have to get the stuff that’s better for them.
Be a good role model for your teens. If they see you consciously making an effort to eat foods that are good for you, it may encourage them to follow suit. If all they do is see you eating chips, dips, and sweets they’ll be less likely to eat healthy foods.
Refrain from eating at fast food restaurants too often. Although some fast food places now offer healthier choices, if you eat there often your teen may choose non-healthy foods instead. If they must eat a hamburger, encourage them to get the smaller portion rather than the super-sized portions.
The teen years will see your children grow toward adulthood and independence. If you’ve encouraged your teen to eat healthy foods while they’re at home with you, they’ll be more likely to continue eating well when they move out of your home.
Do you have trouble getting your kids to eat their veggies? I sure do.
My daughter used to be great about trying and eating just about anything…and then she turned 2 ½. Now it is pretty much impossible to get her to eat anything other than corn when it comes to vegetables. So I had to come up with some fun and sometimes sneaky ways to get some veggies in her. Here are a few of my favorites.
1. Make big pot of vegetable soup, and then add some fun noodle shapes. You can use alphabet noodles or look for some fun novelty shapes. You may be able to find some cartoon characters, toy and sports shapes etc. I have even seen pumpkin and Christmas tree shapes. With a little luck your kids will be too busy spelling words, or identifying the shape to notice all the veggies they are eating in the soup.
2. If you can’t make them eat it, make them drink it. Pour some vegetable juice over ice and add a straw, a cocktail umbrella or a stick of celery and watch them drink it up. Your kids may not get as much fiber as eating the entire vegetable, but getting them to drink their vegetables is better than not getting any vegetables in their system.
3. Have you tried offering them some raw vegetables with some ranch dressing to dip them in? Many kids who don’t care much for cooked vegetables will eat them up if they can dip them. Just grab a bag of baby carrots and cut up some red and yellow peppers and some cucumber. Arrange them on a plate with a little bit of ranch dressing or your favorite vegetable dip on the side.
4. Take it even a step further and let them create artwork out of their vegetables. Offer raw vegetables in different colors and shapes and encourage them to make a vegetable collage on their plate. You can easily make a face using slices of cucumber as eyes, a baby carrot as nose and a slice of red pepper as a mouth. You can use watercress or shredded carrots or even some cheese as hair. Before you know it, you’ll find them sampling their “art supplies”.
5. To get them to eat more vegetables at dinnertime try a little salad bar. Put out some lettuce, some sliced or chopped tomato, slices of cucumber, shredded carrot, slices of red and yellow peppers, small broccoli flowerets and anything else you can think of. You may also want to offer them some choices when it comes to salad dressing. Favorites in our house are Ranch, Italian, Catalina, and French. To top it all of set out some croutons and shredded cheese.
6. Get the kids together and make a cold vegetable pizza. Start out with a can of crescent rolls. Unroll the dough, but don’t pull the triangle shapes apart. Instead push the seams together and bake on a baking sheet according to the package directions. Let the sheet of dough cool completely, then spread with some crème cheese (we like a vegetable or herb flavored one) and top with some thinly sliced raw veggies. Cut into squares and serve.
7. Get them involved in the kitchen especially when it comes to cooking. Ask them to wash the vegetables, if they are old enough let them cut veggies (under your supervision of course), let them help you stir, or anything else you can think of that would be age appropriate. You’ll be amazed at how proud they will be of their finished product. Believe me, they’ll try just about anything if they made it.
8. If everything else fails, hide the vegetables in other food. My mom used to make us some special orange mashed potatoes. We thought it was very fancy, but all she did was to cook some carrots with the potatoes and mashed them right in there. You can also cover broccoli with tomato sauce or cheese. Think of a dish your child really enjoys and sneak a little bit of vegetable in there.
Give a few of these ideas a try and see which ones work best for your children. Keep at it and sooner or later they will start to develop a taste for vegetables.
Toddlers and young children can be fussy eaters who refuss to try new foods at least half of the time. Approximately half of all toddlers fit this description, so it is no wonder that healthy eating and food issues are often a source of stress for parents.
Establishing healthy eating patterns is important to avoid problems such as obesity and eating disorders later in life. Various strategies can help your child accept a wider range of foods. It may be necessary to offer a food to your child as many as ten different times before they choose to eat it. The problem is, many parents get frustrated and give up before the fourth or fifth try.
Try to make foods fun. Colorful foods like carrot sticks, raisins, apples, grapes, cheese sticks and crackers can all be fun and healthy choices for your growing toddler. Explain to them that eating good food is important so they’ll grow big and strong, and how it will help them run faster and play longer.
One of the newer more popular ways of making sure your child eats healthy food and meals is to grind up or puree foods into dishes such as stew, soup, pasta sauce, etc. Using a blender or the Magic Bullet, puree healthy foods such as spinach, carrots, or any other healthy food. Once added to another favorite dish, odds are the child will never notice the additions and munch on a good and healthy meal.
Children learn behaviors from their parents. If you restrict yourself to a narrow range of foods, your child will take notice and mimic your actions. Don’t limit your child’s food variety to only those foods you prefer. It may be that your child’s tastes are different to yours, and perhaps you are simply serving them foods they don’t happen to like. Try to set a good example and try a variety of foods in front of your child.
If your child seems healthy and energetic, then they are eating enough. If you are still concerned, keep an eye on how much food they actually eat over the day. Children tend to graze constantly, rather than restrict their eating to three meals per day like adults. You may be surprised how those little handfuls and snacks add up. For further reassurance, check your child’s growth and weight charts, or check with your child’s pediatrician.
Try not to worry, and remember, that unless a child is ill, they will eat. Children are very good at judging their hunger and fullness signals. Try to stay relaxed about mealtime and offer your child a wide variety of foods, and most importantly, remember to set a good example by trying a wide variety of foods yourself. You may discover you and your toddler share a new found favorite food!
