Grilled Chicken Salad – Cheap Packed School Lunch Idea

Salads are great to send for school lunches. You can switch the vegetables around easily to whatever your child is likely to eat. If you want to add salad dressing, it’s best to have that off to the side if you have a small container your child can manage to open without spilling everywhere.

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, grilled and sliced
8 cups lettuce, torn (Spinach or romaine are good, not all kids will eat them. Iceberg lettuce may be safer.)
2 peeled, segmented and chopped oranges
1 sliced cucumber
1 sliced red bell pepper
1 sliced carrot

Combine all ingredients in salad bowl. Separate into lunch servings for each child or day.

Recipe Books You May Enjoy

Healthy Eating for Kids
Lunch Boxes and Snacks
The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go

Mess Around With the Basic Sandwich – Cheap Packed School Lunch Idea

Your basic sandwich can be a very affordable school lunch idea, but they get boring quickly. It’s important to switch things around so your kids don’t get too tired of eating the same thing over and over again.

This doesn’t have to be difficult. Something as simple as switching from your usual bread to pita bread, a bagel, or wrapping the ingredients in a tortilla changes things a lot.

You can also change the cheese. Don’t just stick to cheddar or American cheese. Mozzarella or provolone can work well, some kids love Swiss cheese, even a sprinkling of feta if the other ingredients will hold it in well enough will work.

You can go outside the usual ingredients too. It doesn’t have to all be lunch meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato, or peanut butter and jelly. Think about all the options you get at sandwich shops such as Subway and have a little more fun making sandwiches while keeping the price reasonable.

If your kids are old enough and the ingredients aren’t too hard to manage, you can even keep the bread and other ingredients separate to ensure that the bread doesn’t get soggy before lunch. This can make a big difference in how the sandwich tastes.

The most important thing is to not get stuck completely in a rut with your child’s lunches. Little switches make a big difference.

Recipe Books You May Enjoy

Healthy Eating for Kids
Lunch Boxes and Snacks
The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go

Pasta Salad – Cheap Packed School Lunch Idea

The nice thing about sending your child to school with a pasta salad is that you can have the vegetables and main dish in one. I’ll share a basic pasta salad recipe here, but it can be easily changed to suit what’s available to you at the time.

Basic Pasta Salad

1 package pasta, prepared according to package directions
3/4 cup Italian salad dressing
1 cup broccoli florets, lightly steamed
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
1/4 cup sliced black or green olives
1/4 to 1/2 cup preferred cheese (cheddar, mozzarella, feta, etc.)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir to combine and coat with the salad dressing.

You can switch out most of the ingredients as you like. Go for favorite vegetables when you can, and be sure you don’t overcook them. Nuts may work for some extra protein.

This recipe makes a good number of servings, so can be used for several lunches or as a part of dinner with leftovers for lunches.

Recipe Books You May Enjoy

Healthy Eating for Kids
Lunch Boxes and Snacks
The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches – Cheap Packed School Lunch Idea

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are both a classic and a meal to avoid if your school has a peanut ban. You’ll have to check before making this lunch.

They are cheap, although the decisions you make when buying supplies will greatly impact the cost. A loaf of bread can be bought at the store for $2-4, and I suggest you go for some sort of whole grain. My kids aren’t into white bread because they’ve always had whole grain bread of one sort or another. If your kids have the white bread habit, find a way to break it. This may take time, but it’s worth it.

The cost of your peanut butter and jelly will vary quite a bit, but both are really quite cheap per ounce.  You may choose to spend a bit extra for an organic or natural peanut butter, same for the jelly. I usually go a bit light on jelly because there’s a lot of sugar in many of them. Better types may have less sugar.

I’m not going to explain how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich here. Please. I think this is something most of us can handle from a very young age. My 6 year old can do this, although I did have to explain once that you don’t lick the knife between dips into the jar. Ewww!

I have not tried this personally, but I understand that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches freeze and defrost well. That’s nice to know, so that you can have a school lunch to grab on those hurried, running behind mornings. Stack them up in a container, freeze them, then take what you need and put it into your sandwich box. No need to serve them every day if you have enough freezer space.

While they may not freeze as nicely, you can have fun with peanut butter sandwiches. Try banana slices, raisins or apple slices rather than jelly. Many fresh fruits go quite well with peanut butter.

Don’t forget the fresh fruit and vegetables. Your child needs a complete lunch every day.

Recipe Books You May Enjoy

Healthy Eating for Kids
Lunch Boxes and Snacks
The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go

Sand and Shells – Cheap Packed School Lunch Idea

As one of the challenges of making school lunches for your child is beating the price of buying lunch at school, I’m going to post some recipes over the next few days that are cheap to make, healthy, and hopefully popular with the kids.

My focus will be on main dishes for lunch. Fresh fruits and vegetables work pretty nicely as side dishes. Figure out what your kids will eat and that don’t take too much preparation. Vegetables are usually chopped when you pack them for school lunches, but most fruits really don’t need that kind of preparation, although younger kids may need a start on peeling oranges or tangerines. Rice, especially brown rice if your kids will eat it, makes a good addition to a school lunch.

Sand and Shells

2 tbsp olive oil
1 diced onion
1 cup cracked wheat
1 egg, beaten
2 cups water
12 oz. seashell pasta, cooked according to package directions
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in large frying pan. Saute onions, then remove and set onions aside.

Mix cracked wheat into beaten egg and mix until coated. Pour into frying pan and cook until egg is done. Pour in water, add onions, salt and pepper and allow to simmer on low heat.

When the water has been absorbed, add in the sea shell pasta and butter. Mix and serve.

Your cost here will vary by the quality of ingredients you buy. If I go cheap, I can get a bag of pasta for $0.25 – $0.33. If I want something better, say a whole grain pasta, it’s going to be more. Free range eggs from a store will cost more than regular eggs, but if you have backyard chickens, you may not consider the cost to be much at all, depending on how you calculate that cost. That said, this recipe comes up pretty cheap anyhow.

I won’t try to get all the nutrition facts, but 1/4 cup of cracked wheat has 5 grams of protein, which is only about 10% of the daily value. Obviously, this dish is high in carbohydrates, so don’t bother with any others.

This recipe makes a lot. I usually serve it for dinner one night, and have leftovers for 2-4 lunches, depending on appetites.

Recipe Books You May Enjoy

Healthy Eating for Kids
Lunch Boxes and Snacks
The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches to Go