lunch box ideas...

[rebecuna]

...for the kid who turns up his nose at everything, and throws anything in the trash that he's not sure he likes. I ask him what he wants, and he says, "Chipotle, or pizza". When I send a burrito in a thermos, he complains that it is soggy. Two years ago he was pretty happy with scrambled eggs, pre-cooked sausages, hummus and veggies, mac & cheese, pb&j, and DIY tacos. This year he says he hates all of that. But he doesn't really offer me alternatives. I'm so frustrated! It feels like he's just being contrary. He needs to eat something, and it's super wasteful for him to throw his lunch out every day. He complains about being starving, but refuses to eat the food offered to him (even when I say he can pick it out, so I don't think it's just a control thing).

He will eat: dried seaweed, canned mandarin oranges or cuties, jello (which I won't give him bc he has issues with food dye), individual applesauce cups (which I refuse to buy bc they're so expensive-- he won't eat my homemade applesauce or even store-bought applesauce doled out from a bigger container), and occasional fruit. No cheese, no protein of any kind, really.

Help?

[esperanza]

Super quick, but check out the 100 days of real food blog. She has tons of lunch ideas. I hope you can find something he will eat! Also good tips on how she packages food.

[charla]

Having a picky eater can be so difficult sometimes.

I wonder what would happen if you gave him a choice between two things you know he likes. I know sometimes my children, and I for that matter, get overwhelmed with lots of choices. It may help to narrow the choices a bit perhaps. Another idea would be if he really liked supper the night before to send it the next day for lunch. I wasn't overly picky as a child, but I would go on jags where I'd have the same thing in my lunch box every single day for the whole year and I was happy with it. If you find something he likes maybe you could stick with that for awhile. If your budgets allows, it might be useful at this point to buy the applesauce cups to get something in him that's relatively healthy.

[Aerynne]

Have you tried making pizza rolls like cinnamon rolls? You just use pizza dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings, roll it up, slice it with a piece of dental floss, sprinkle cheese on the rolls, and bake.

Also you can totally make your own jello out of just 100% juice and Knox gelatin. Works just as well as regular jello and it's good.

You could put the burrito filling in the thermos and send him with the tortilla separately and let him make it himself at lunch time. Or maybe he'd eat a Chipotle burrito bowl- just rice, meat, beans, and salsas in the thermos. All of that ought to work well and not get soggy. Or some kind of Chipotle-tasting soup with tortilla chips.

Will he eat edamame? That packs well in a lunch and is filling and yummy.

You really don't need to worry about protein deficiency. It is largely a myth, even among vegans, as long as someone is getting enough calories. Exceptions are people who subsist on cassava root, people who live on fruit alone, and people who live on junk food (junk food like twinkies and coke, not junk food like frozen pizza). So don't feel the need to include a protein source. Grains and vegetables have protein, too.