Bagging the boring
Author: By AMY RIDGEWAY

A new school year is here, and that means new crayons and unsharpened pencils, clean sneakers, unstained T-shirts - and the finest offerings from school cafeterias. Are the menus not to your child’s liking? Want to make sure they’ll eat?
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking outside the brown bag. There is more to lunch than peanut butter on white bread.

* Most important is food safety. Lunch bags will be sitting around in a backpack or on a shelf for several hours before their contents will be eaten. Consider buying an insulated lunch sack and tucking in something to keep things cool until lunch. Juice boxes can be frozen upon purchase and will keep things chilled and safe to eat. Put applesauce in plastic containers that you can reuse or toss. Freeze a bunch of them for lunches and you get dessert and food safety in one neat package. Plus, it costs a lot less to buy a big jar and freeze its contents in smaller packages than to purchase packaged, vacuum-sealed individual servings. Other fruits can be frozen, too - find a combination that your child likes and freeze it in abundance.

* If you’re getting tired of making the same old sandwiches every morning, chances are, your child is getting tired of eating them. So, why not shake things up a bit? Buy a pack of tortillas and make wraps - even peanut butter tastes better swirled together and packaged differently. Use a cookie cutter to cut bread into fun shapes. Get pitas and fill them with almost anything. Think whole-grain bread products here for fiber and vitamins in abundance.
If your child is not a big bread eater, layer a slice of deli meat with a slice of cheese, place a pickle spear on one end and roll it all up.
For the vegetarian child or the calorie-conscious teen, pack a small container of hummus or bean spread with a pita bread cut in triangles, along with an assortment of vegetables to dunk. Send along a salad in a container to ensure that your child’s lunch is full of the good nutrients they’ll be learning about and that their bodies need.
Salads can be as simple as a few lettuce leaves and carrot slices with a good dressing, or as elaborate as pasta tossed with broccoli, cheese and vinaigrette.
Think first about what your child likes. You want to encourage him to eat it, not trade it for the Twinkie that the kid next to him brought.
A bagged lunch is probably not the place to try the tofu-tastes-just-like-egg-salad recipe you saw in that new cookbook. Introduce new foods at home on the weekend so you can see firsthand how much will end up in the child and how much will land in the trash can.
Weekends are good times to plan ahead, too. Make some sandwiches, combine some salads, package some crackers or cheese, and store them in the refrigerator or freezer so lunch can be quickly put together in the morning.

* If your child insists on eating something crunchy, opt for healthful munchies rather than potato chips. Pop a bunch of popcorn, add a bit of salt and package it in small bags. Air- popped popcorn is a healthy choice. Corn made in other poppers is a bit more healthful than microwaved popcorn, which can be high in fat and salt, and it tends to be less expensive than microwave varieties, too. Whole-grain crackers are another good choice.

* You can let your child start making her own lunch if all the ingredients are within easy reach. In “Loving and Letting Go,” Carol Kuykendall suggests setting aside a shelf in the freezer, refrigerator and cabinet to store plenty of good choices for lunch. Then, make your kids a deal. Figure out the weekly cost of buying school lunch and tell your kids that they can have that amount each week, either for buying lunch or for themselves if they pack. Set up the rules for what constitutes a good lunch, and then you can sit back with a cup of coffee while they do all the work. Cleaning up after themselves is part of the deal here - messy counters lead to no money. She might even make your lunch while she’s at it.

* What lunch would be complete without a treat? Even dessert can be good for them. Oatmeal cookies are a healthier choice than chocolate chip, since they have fewer calories and less fat. Make them from scratch and you can squeeze in a few walnuts for heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, always a good feature in a cookie. A few carbohydrates and a fat gram or two can get your children geared up for tag and jump rope during recess.

When considering lunch, think healthful and good-tasting, and make lunch something good for everyone. Tuck in a small note to send your children off with food for the souls, too.

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