I let my three elementary school aged kids make their own lunches for a week and here’s what happened. Everyone packed a fresh and healthy lunch–and everyone ATE that fresh and healthy lunch. They felt totally proud of themselves. It wasn’t no-work on my end but I can see how this will eventually get them…
Cheesy Summer Squash Tart with Sun Dried Tomatoes
This cheesy summer squash tart with sun dried tomatoes is my eight-year-old’s favorite way to eat summer squash. Full of eggs, cheese, fresh basil and plenty of salt and pepper, the creamy filling pairs perfectly with puff pastry. (Because, what doesn’t, right?) Plus it’s a make-ahead dream. Put your cheesy summer squash tart together earlier…
4 Ways to Make an Instant Meal Out of 1 Baguette
This may be one of my favorite school lunch ideas of all. Slice a baguette, then pile on the toppings to make instant open faced sandwiches the whole crowd loves. Not bad for about 2 minutes’ work. BROILED BAGUETTE MINI SANDWICHES Ham & Baby Swiss with Sliced Pickles Instructions: Fold a piece of ham (I…
Real school lunches: 5 days of healthy, fast lunches ideas for preschoolers and young kids
It’s time to pack school lunches again! This year I have two elementary aged girls plus two preschoolers and I’m packing healthy lunches for ALL of them. Which means things need to be quick. Packing for four also means the potential for a LOT of waste, so I’m sharing our kids’ favorites from the week. These…
Ridiculously Cute Mini Taco Cups
These mini taco cups turned out to be a lunch our kids loved–and a built-in, whole-wheat snack too! I used leftover taco meat & beans from taco night, about a cup to make a dozen mini taco cups, which served 4 small kids. Of course the math would change with the ages of your kids, so…
Amazingly Quick & Easy Broccoli Soup that Starts with a Bag of Frozen Broccoli
I’ve tried making broccoli soup for my kids before. With tons of cheese. And love. It took a ton of love to grate all that cheese alone, and guess what? They hated it. The soup. I’m assuming (for my own mental health) they’re into the love. This time I went simpler. MUCH simpler. There’s no milk…
Lunchbox hits and misses: Pictures of my 6-year-old’s school lunches before & after
Does your child’s lunchbox come home half eaten? Are you struggling to find the right balance between Nutritious Food to Keep Them Going and Stuff They’ll Actually Eat? Me too. But I’ve figured a few things out. Since our goal at Foodlets is raising kids who love real food–and we’re right in the thick of…
5-Minute Meatball Skewers
The season for packing school lunches is in full swing around here, and these 5-Minute Meatball Skewers are part of the reason I haven’t tried to climb into my morning cup of coffee. So far. These meatball skewers are so easy, hearty and a colorful addition to any lunch box. Technique Start with frozen but…
5 Simple Ways to Make School Lunches Special
It’s lunch box season again! I pack lunches for 3 of our 4 small kids. Every day. One is (going to be) a first grader this year; the other two are preschoolers. (And the baby eats with me.) Last year I shared my strategy for packing school lunches without going crazy, including all the foods my…
Healthy School Lunch Ideas
Are your kids getting 5 servings of fruit & vegetables a day? That’s what experts recommend. At least. Sound hard? That’s where our healthy school lunch ideas come in. About lunch boxes My four kids love their PlanetBox lunchboxes. Made out of stainless steel, they’re practically indestructible and boy do they make food look nice….
Sliced Cucumber Sandwiches
No bread here, just crunchy slices of cucumber. The cucumber IS the bread. Why? Because we have 457 million cucumbers growing in our garden right now. Plucking 4, 8, 12 cucumbers out of the yard every day means my fridge is overflowing with the darn things. (Are they mating in there? Raising happy little families right…
Birds’ Nests: Baked Pasta Cups with Spaghetti & Spinach
Leftover pasta becomes an easy lunch for kids, one with a little imagination that makes for cute lunch discussions. It also includes spinach. Because you know my policy on making things Florentine: Do it as often as possible. We’d had spaghetti for dinner the night before. I threw in an extra handful of whole-wheat pasta, then stored…
Easy Pita Pizzas with Cheese & Spinach
There’s nothing like an easy lunch for the kids. Unless it’s a healthy lunch. And this one’s both. Bonus, even though these easy pita pizzas with cheese & spinach are warm and gooey, the whole thing is done in 5 minutes flat. Our kids don’t always like a “cooked lunch”. I’m guessing because they often have to…
3-Ingredient Strawberry-Peanut Butter Wraps
The idea for these easy strawberry-peanut butter wraps came from a new cookbook I’ve already grown to love,“Real Baby Food: Easy All-Natural Recipes for Your Baby & Toddler”. We’ve devoured had these several times and when I say “we” I mean all the kids, even baby Violet, and me. And we can’t wait to have…
10 Dinner Leftovers that Make Great Kids’ Lunches
I know, where was this post 8 months ago? Dinner leftovers that make great kids’ lunches is the kind of information that would’ve been useful…earlier. These so-simple lunch ideas for kids will get us through the remaining weeks of school and don’t worry. Kids will still want lunch again in September, or August when our school begins…
The tiny way we improved the already moist (and healthy!) cornbread our kids love
Is bacon. These bacon-topped cornbread squares are a riff on our already beloved makeover of Ina Garten’s cornbread. As with all of our Barefoot for Babies recipe makeovers, our version is healthier, sweetened with honey and packed with either wheat germ or ground flaxseed. But there’s also lots of plain yogurt and milk in there, resulting…
one-pot homemade mac & cheese
I THOUGHT I NAILED IT with our 15-minute homemade mac & cheese. Then I heard something mind-blowing. You can make one-pot pasta. With almost anything. Now I just walk around saying, “Wait, what?!? WHY haven’t we been doing this all along? Why have I been washing all these pans? Is this some sort of joint conspiracy…
Easy Veggie Calzones
MY KIDS WERE BORN IN ITALY so they know their way around a pizza. But calzones were new to them. I loved these veggie calzones for their individual portions and portability. Plus they’re basically a pocket to fill with vegetables. Lots of kids have trouble eating veggies at dinner, partially because that’s the only time of…
apple & grape turtles
PERFECT FOR AN AT-HOME SNACK or even an “UN-BAKE SALE” (you know, a more nutritious option for fundraising than cakes and cookies), we’ve been dying to make these turtles for a while now. Here’s the review: They’re pretty awesome. They took about 1 minute each. The kids squealed. Difficulty level (1-5): 2 the teeny tiny eyes…
Pickle Roll-Ups
FILE THIS ONE UNDER “EASY SCHOOL LUNCH IDEAS“. Desperate to break out of our sandwich rut this week, I grabbed that deli ham (the one with no nitrates), folded each piece in half and rolled it around a mini dill pickle. I just repeated twice and threaded all three onto an extra long toothpick. These happened…