10 hot meal ideas for lunchboxes
School lunches can be nutritious, simple and tasty and there’s a shift happening in homes from the plain sandwich with ‘plastic’ cheese and a bag of crisps, to kids devouring foods that are more picnic-like, nutrient dense and colourful.
The science has been in for years now, and the link between diet and children’s cognitive function, academic performance, energy, immunity levels, emotional regulation and mental wellness are inextricably linked. It’s no longer a ‘myth’ that ‘sugar is the new tobacco’ as this addictive substance present in some 70 per cent of supermarket foodstuffs.
Knowledge is usually the starting point for parents leaning-in to providing the most nutrient dense lunches they can when they can. Knowledge that, unfortunately, Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Gov don’t proactively teach.
One reason, constant allergies, illness, sickness or disease within a child that leads to the parent or guardian proactively educating themselves and realising how important a role diet plays. Or, as I know occurs time and time again, a child and parent will make a ‘Hail Mary’ booking with a great integrative naturopath or nutritionist, or integrative Dr. and move forward from there.
Another is the proactive approach to self-care and self-education on health and food for an individual before they have kids they’re cooking for. Either way, knowledge is key and this will often - if not always - involve re-learning falsehoods we have been taught for a long time.
With parents now becoming informed, expanding food knowledge, culinary skill and preference for trying new things, kids are now reaping the rewards in many cases.
Ain’t no-one got time for guilt.
I am aware of there is still a lot of ‘parent-guilt’ that can come up in some households. Whether this is one where the time is so strapped that lunches are pre-packaged foods thrown into the lunchbox each day, homes that must work as financially frugally as they can and feel tense with the investment in organic foods or ‘health-foods’ that may have a higher price tag, or simply because they don’t know where to start.
I hope we can give any household some options, and starting points and reasons to breathe-deep and do what we can with the knowledge and means we have, at any given time.
Think outside the box
Many of us aren’t aware of the history of the industrial revolution and what this has meant for our food supply (and increased diet-related ill health). Breakfast ‘cereal’ as a standard offering upon waking, was a money-making conditioning tool by Big Grain and Kelloggs. Cheap to mono-crop, easy to hook people on, and offer big in profit for Big Grain (and the Gov who subsidise them).
Grain based meals like most breakfast cereals, most breads, biscuits, bars and slices that fill the inner supermarket shelves, tend to be nutrient poor, higher in preservatives and pesticides, genetically modified, and not far removed from cardboard in the quality stakes. Highly inflammatory, they can exacerbate small tummy’s and digestive systems, leading to emotion/mood swings, attention disorders, aggressive behaviour, fatigue and restlessness, and other auto-immune conditions.
While we are conditioned to see breakfasts and lunches one way… it’s time to think outside the box.
Serving kids up a hot dish (in a Thermos), is a great way to offer variety, more nutrient dense, nourishing meals, warmth on cold days, and the chance to batch cook dinners and lunch offerings at the same time. AND this type of meal gives plenty of chances to hide added nutrients in them without the little tacker tasting it.
Purchasing a Thermos
Thermos’ are sold in camping stores, Big W, target, Kmart, and through many online sellers, If stretching to purchase a Thermos for your child or children will cause financial strain, make sure you’re checking out thrift stores regularly. We have bought many a thermos from op-shops for $2-3 each.
Hot meals our kids love that keep well in a thermos-type of container:
Soup - a great way to use floppy veg or off-cuts in the fridge. Blend it if your child doesn’t like chunky soup. We have also found that our kids love the flavour of ‘minced garlic’ from a jar. And so we use sourdough bread, spread with ghee, minced garlic, sea salt and mixed herbs, and toast it to dip in the soup at lunch. We don’t worry about keeping the garlic bread warm. Add some parmesan cheese for extra flavour and grill if you like.
Spaghetti bolognese (with Smug Mummy sauce of course)
Lasagne (with Smug Mummy sauce of course)
Shepherds pie (recipe in this free book for a lentil version).
‘Healthy’ 2 minute noodles - made with broth or miso
Pesto pasta - aim to find a pesto made with olive oil, not vegetable oil, or make your own.
Indian Curry - This one may surprise you, but many kids love a plain Indian curry, and they are SO simple to make on a tight budget. Recipe below that is amped with veg.
Steamed/boiled potatoes - sweet or white - with some grated cheese and sea salt on top
Miso rice - We cook rice via absorption method with broth paste and some turmeric powder (1 cup rice to 1.5 cups water or broth, bring to simmer. Place lid on and turn down as low as possible. Cook for exactly 12 mins do not remove lid until that time. Turn off heat, remove lid, fluff with fork and lid back on for a couple of mins).
Add hot rice to the thermos with 1/2 cup miso soup. (one of Holly’s faves!)Sweet chicken strips on rice - Kids love the sweetness of some raw honey and Tamari sauce marinated chicken strips. Serve on rice. This is a great one you can make for dinner and then save some for school lunches.
2 minute noodles
We make these 2 minute noodles with organic spelt noodles. You can also purchase wheat noodles from Changs brand that are not organic but don’t have MSG, and harmful flavours on them and are made of only 4 ingredients: Wheat Flour, Water, Salt.
The Bio Organics brand is $7.50 for four adult serves (So you can split these across 6 serves for kids)
The Changs brand are $1.40 for four adult serves.
I use 1 tsp of bone broth paste in 1.5 cups water and cook the noodles in them. You could do this or adopt the cheapest way of doing this and use homemade chicken broth at only ‘cents’ per serve.
You can also cook in water and add 1 tsp of miso paste when they’re cooked and stir through.
Add 1/2 tsp collagen to the water for added digestive and immune health benefits.
Drizzle Tamari and sesame oil on top for added flavour if your kids love the taste like mine do.
Simple Indian Curry
This is one of the girls FAVE curries. It’s a simple Indian curry that the girls would eat every couple of nights if I made it. They call it a potato curry but really… it’s a veggie curry + smugness because it’s amped with broth, carrots, and pumpkin. I’d also add a capsule of the Heal range beef liver from @gelproaustralia .
You can watch the video on how to make this curry here.
4 white potatoes diced into chunks
2 tbs coconut oil
1 tbs curry powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 capsule of beef liver (open cap in hot dish)
1 tin coconut milk
1.5 cups chicken broth (or water)
2-3 carrots
1.5 cups diced pumpkin
Method:
Simmer the carrots, pumpkin and broth together until veg is tender. Blend.
Fry the onion, garlic and curry powders until fragrant in coconut oil.
Add the coconut milk, mushroom powder/beef liver cap and potatoes and stir + simmer.
Add blended veg and broth and simmer on low until potatoes are tender.
Serve on rice with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon.
