Lunch Recipes For School Kids and Other Lunch Related Questions

[babeak]

I am just starting to look into preschool and schools for DD. I am appalled at what is served in school lunches. I am looking in the Seattle area, which is pretty progressive, but I guess I am out of touch with mainstream having been a vegan for so long.

In any case, anyone sending routine raw lunches with kids? How do other kids react to seeing raw foods? What have been the best hits for raw lunches? We have nut allergies and I imagine that some schools have limitations on those as well.

I am wondering what we will do so as to make DD not seem so alien when others are having pancake and sausage on a stick....seriously??? Okay hopefully she won't be having breakfast at school. I can totally picture some days making food to look like the entree being served. Zucchini noodles with sauce when the school is serving spaghetti, but I know that it will never be exactly the same.

Thanks for suggestions and reassurances. What are your kids taking to lunch?

[somelikeitraw]

My daughter is not raw (also in HS now) but does take some raw things to school. She really likes GoRaw Sprouted and dried sunflower seeds. She also enjoys raw trail mixes. She tends to take things that do not require refrigeration. I will never forget the time she took edamame in her lunch when she was in pre-school. They were in the pods and she ate all of the beans out of the pods. The teacher wasn't familiar with edamame and made my poor sweetie sit there and eat the pods! It was a long time before she would take edamame to school again. Sadly, when she did the other kids made so much fun of her that she not only never took them to school again but stopped eating them altogether! Thankfully, as the years went by she decided to try them again, but they still aren't on her list of favs and she never asks me to buy them. Given that experience, I would strongly recommend sending only relatively "normal" foods to school. Like the carrot sticks, celery sticks, celery with raw almond butter inside dotted with raisins, etc. Save the "weird" stuff for home. I'll keep looking for ideas for you.

[babeak]

OMG!!! I can not believe that she made her eat those! Poor thing! How traumatizing!

Thanks for keeping your eye out.

[imaquillen]

Check out the raising raw kids further down this site. There are some amazing threads about this topic with lots of recipes and pics. You'll need to search for them, though. Good luck!