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 It’s
time for school again! If you are a parent, you are quite
familiar with the hustle and bustle of trying to get school
shopping done, making sure all supplies are purchased and
marked with appropriate name tags, checking bus schedules,
and so forth. And if you are a parent of a gluten-free child
you are probably also starting to wonder what you are going
to send with your child for lunch. School lunches pose some
difficult challenges. What packs well? What will they actually
eat? What will not make them feel "different" from
the other kids? What we parents may perceive as a delicious,
well-balanced lunch box may seem boring, weird or strange
tasting to kids….especially when gluten-free products
get thrown into the bag. The challenge is to create lunches
that are not only nutritious, balanced but also palatable
and desired by your kids.
There are many recipes that you can prepare
ahead of time for you child’s sack lunch and we’ll
get into that later on in this article. However, first I wanted
to highlight some gluten-free products and brands that can
be purchased at the grocery store or natural foods store that
might help solve the sack lunch challenge.
Great gf products for sack lunches and/or
snacks:
- Glutenfreeda’s
Real Cookies (Chip Chip Hooray, Chocolate Minty Python,
Peanut Envy, Peanut, Paul & Mary)
- Chicken Nuggets — Ians, Well Shire
Kids
- Deli Meats — Black Bear, Boar’s
Head, Oscar Mayer, Thumans, Watson & Dietz
- Amy’s Frozen gf Mac-n-Cheese
- Chips — Frito-Lay, Kettle, Wise
Doritos, Utz
- Rice Cakes — Quaker (apple cinnamon,
caramel apple, caramel corn, strawberry crunch, caramel
chocolate chip), Hain, Health Valley, Organic Brown Rice
Cakes
- Pretzels — Glutino, EnerG
- Crackers — Nut Thins, Glutino, Schar
- Popcorn — Jiffy Pop, Newman’s,
Pop Secret
- Bars — Andi Bars, Lara Bars, Save
the Forest (Cranberry crunch, Banana chocolate nut, Raspberry
with yogurt), Envirokids
- Don Poncho GF Flour Tortilla Wraps
- (If you don’t want to make your
own bread) try Kinnikinnick’s breads or even better
Whole Foods fresh baked gf bread
Gluten free sack lunches do require some
creativity. Don’t be afraid to send in leftovers from
the previous nights dinner (especially if your child really
loved it!). Most schools have microwaves now, but if they
don’t, purchase small hot/cold containers that will hold
a single portion. These "thermos’" will hold
soup, mac-n-cheese, hot dogs, chili, rice and leftover meat,
pasta, etc.
To help with this year’s sack lunch
challenge we’ve provided one month’s of lunches
for your child. Of course, you don’t have to follow this
day to day, but it might help give you some ideas and get
you off and running!
Week 1:
Week 2:
Week 3:
Week 4:
 You
will notice that I shamelessly promoted our Glutenfreeda’s
Real Cookies. These cookies are a wonderful solution for
kid’s lunches. They are preformed gluten-free, frozen
cookie dough — so all you have to do is pop a couple
in the oven, either in the morning or the night before, and
in 20 minutes you have a fresh baked, awesome cookie that
tastes exactly like the real thing! The only problem is all
the other kids at school will want to trade…they really
are that good!
I also wanted to point out that this calendar
contains a lot of ideas. Obviously it would be tough to make
everything exactly as listed here. But it is meant to be a
guideline and a place to get ideas. I tried to not duplicate
many items to give you more things to work with. To save time,
I would suggest making a few things on the weekend (like the
pasta’s, chili’s, pork & beans, etc.) and either
freezing them or just keeping them in the fridge. You could
also make some of the quick breads or muffins on the weekend
and they should last a couple of days.
We hope your kids have a wonderful school
year! (Parents….enjoy the peace and quiet while you can!)
- Glutenfreeda
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