It may feel like only yesterday your children were celebrating the end of the school year but sorry to be the bearer of bad news, they will be back to school again very soon.
The Back To School checklist covers school uniform, shoes, sports equipment, bus passes and stationery but have you added packed lunches to the list?
The routine of making packed lunches will soon start with a vengeance and the daily challenge of what to put in them that the children will like, the school approve of and give them the nutrition they need for energy and concentration, begins again.
We all try to add a piece of fruit to their lunch and a Jaffa Sweet Easy Peeler is an ideal choice. They are, well, easy to peel, juicy, and very tasty. In fact, if they have more of an appetite you could pack 2 easy peelers and you are ticking off one of their five a day.
If your children are younger, the thin skins of easy peelers give them independence to manage their lunch by themselves with no tricky packaging to handle.
A Jaffa Easy Peeler in their lunch box will certainly earn you brownie points but here are a couple of other lunchbox hacks for you to try too.
Kids love yogurt in their packed lunches but after a couple of hours out of the fridge they are warm and less delicious. If you freeze the yogurts that come in a tube and pop one in the lunchbox in the morning, by lunchtime it has helped keep everything cool and fresh (mini ice block anyone!) and has defrosted to a lovely cool temperature and is still good to eat. Genius!
If you have a fussy eater you could consider getting a sectioned lunch box (like a Bento box) so that foods are kept separate (in case foods mixed together are a problem) and gives you space to cut sandwiches up into bite sized triangles, cut up pittas or carrots to dip into hummus or cream cheese.
Silicone cake cases are brilliant for keeping small portions of food such as cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes or grapes, separate from the rest of the food inside your child’s lunchbox. And as an added bonus you can also use them to make these “hidden vegetable” Carrot Cake Muffins, sneaking something healthy into their diet without them even noticing.
We have been inspired by some extremely creative parents out there who are setting the lunch box bar very high but realistically we don’t all have enough time to prepare lunches to the same level. However, with a couple of little tricks we can all make sure that their lunches are delicious and healthy and importantly quick to prepare.
Find more delicious Jaffa recipes for their lunchboxes here and please tag us on Facebook or Instagram with your lunchbox hacks too.