1 CommentHere it is, time to get the kids ready to go back to school. Besides new clothes and school supplies, you’ll have to deal with the five-day-a-week question of what to pack for lunches and snacks.
“You wind up e-mailing your friends to see what they’re packing,” says West University Place’s Bettina Siegel. “Because you run out of ideas.”
A former attorney and a mother of two, Siegel had a nutrition-minded mom herself and wants to feed her kids right. “But there are those lazy days when you’re like ‘Here’s your peanut butter crackers and yogurt, deal with it!’” she says, laughing.
But mostly she relies on thermoses of black bean soup and leftover turkey chili. Her daughter once ate brown rice and edamame (green soybeans) with soy sauce every day, until she tired of that.
There are a lot of students, like Siegel’s kids, who think school lunches “are gross.” Which is why Siegel found herself on HISD’s Food Services Parent Advisory Committee and the writer of a new blog, TheLunchTray.com, that features lively conversation on how to fix the lunch system and topics like whether it’s OK to bring birthday cupcakes to school and the incessant snacking to which kids are exposed. And, she’s hoping to start a “lunch box exchange” on the site where parents can swap ideas for sack lunches.
Calling them sack lunches may be a misnomer. Teens and ‘tweens today are into designer and eco-friendly bags and even bento boxes (Japanese-style, partitioned containers), a far cry from Power Ranger lunch boxes with matching thermoses.
Even plastic bags, in fact, seem to be preferred over the old brown bag. For years Claudia Freels used one-gallon Ziploc bags to pack her sons’ school lunches.
“Teenage boys want quantity,” says the event planner for CityCentre One. “I’d throw in anything I could find, carrots, cheese sticks, grapes, two waters and two sandwiches.” Luckily for her food budget, both boys are now off to Texas A&M University.
“Yeah!” Freels says. “Packing lunches is, like, the most dreaded thing. I’ve been doing it almost 20 years.” This year, she’s down to just one lunch, for 16-year-old Carly, who’s more interested in quality over quantity.
“She won’t eat a sandwich, so I roll up turkey and cheese for her,” she says. “And she likes carrots with individual packets of ranch dressing, maybe some yogurt-covered raisins. And I can fit her lunch into a regular-size bag.”
Mara Van Nostrand’s twin 13-year-old girls take lunch in insulated lunch bags. “We have these plastic salad containers,” she says, “that keep the dressing separate so they can toss the salad at lunchtime.” Caesar salad is a hit, as is sushi, fresh fruit, pita chips and home-baked goods. Van Nostrand would love not to pack lunches every day, but, she says, “the school lunches are not even remotely healthy.”
But not every parent can be creative. As one says, “Every single day, I pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chips, string cheese, cookies and a fruit. They get sick of it, and I’m sick of making it, but they won’t eat anything else.”
Childhood obesity is on the rise. But with nonprofits such as Houston’ own Recipe For Success, recently feted at the White House for educating school children on food choices, maybe more children will forego chips for sweet potatoes. At least some of the time.
Chef Randy Evans’ Sweet Potato Ginger Muffins
(created for Recipe for Success)
Dry ingredients:
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1⁄2 cup unbleached flour
1⁄3 cup light brown sugar
1 1⁄2 tsps. ground cinnamon
2 tsps. ground ginger
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1⁄8 tsp. salt
Wet ingredients:
1 large sweet potato
½ cup natural applesauce
1⁄3 cup molasses
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1⁄4 cup natural apple juice
2⁄3 cup plain non-fat yogurt
Fill a sauce pot with water and bring to a boil. Peel and chop sweet potato and put in boiling water. Cook until soft, about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. Mash cooked potato with a fork. Measure 1 cup of mashed potato and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients with a spoon in a medium bowl. In another bowl, mix together mashed sweet potato and wet ingredients. Add half of the dry ingredients mixture with wet ingredients and stir to combine. Add remaining dry ingredients and stir thoroughly. Place paper muffin cups in mini-muffin pan. Fill each muffin cup with about 1 tablespoon of batter. Bake 8-10 minutes.
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