So after a brief summer hiatus, I'm back to blogging and hope to as regularly as I can! Starting with this one.

last packed lunch of the 2013-14 school year

So you may have heard some crickets over here at umommy over the past few weeks. I've been busy juggling my time here and here, in addition to chauffeuring the boys to all their never-ending after school activities, room parent duties, and making sure our house does not completely deteriorate. The one thing that is keeping my sanity is meal planning. Without it, I fear we'd be living off of cereal and takeout.

The one dish that consistently is rotation is a variation of Todd English's Couscous Carbonara with Country Ham. It sounds fancier than it really is. It's essentially any small-shaped pasta tossed in a spinach puree and diced ham. Not only do the boys cheer when we make it (I'm now doubling the recipe so they can have leftovers for lunch), but it takes less than 20 minutes to whip up. So when we're getting home after Karate and the boys are famished, I can whip this up and feel good that they are getting their veggies, some protein and whole grains.

Pasta Carbonara with Country Ham
Adapted from Todd English and Sally Sampson's The Figs Table 

INGREDIENTS

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 1/2 pound baby spinach
• 1/3 cup half and half
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups diced baked ham (we love Applegate Farms ham steak)
• 1 pound orzo 
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Go-To Weeknight Dish: Pasta with Rosemary, Sausage & Tomatoes

Tip: Fill a thermos container with hot water for at least 10 minutes before filling it with food. It will help keep the contents warmer longer. We spring a little extra for the vacuum insulated thermos food jars. They keep the food hot longer and never leak. 

Sliced apple trick from The Kitchn

Tip: Apple corer/slicer will be your best friend. Core and slice an apple and then assemble it back together and hold together with an elastic band. It will help keep the slices from browning!

Our favorite steel cut oatmeal brand (it's the uniformity of granulation!)

Tip: Soak steel cut oats the night before. You’ll have perfect oats the next morning when you are packing their lunches. Just add your mix-ins, reheat in the microwave and pack in a thermos container.

Easylunchbox compartments make it easy to pack lunch quickly

Tip: I save small condiment containers whenever we order takeout. They are perfect for holding dips/sauces, dressings and usually fit neatly right in the Easylunchbox.
 

Pizza from Pizzeria Bianco: not your everyday hot lunch (but sure wish it was)

Tip: Give yourself (and your kids) a break and let your kids buy hot lunch at school periodically. My son looks forward to Fridays when he can buy lunch (which happens to be Pizza Day at school).
 

Student enjoying white milk

Milk Day School Assembly

Harvard Vanguard doctors and students

Principal Kaplan watching students sign pledge

Students could not wait to sign pledge to drink white milk

We have had about two months of school and school lunches under our belt at our house. Here is what a typical week looks like:
Thankfully, my oldest almost always polishes whatever I pack in his lunchbox. It's 50/50 with my 3-year-old. Okay, who am I trying to kid? It's 25/75 with the little bugger. So we're already in a rut and it's only November. *Gulp*

So when I heard about a "Lunch Boot Camp: How to pack a lunch that will be eaten" with ChopChop Magazine held at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and hosted by Mommy Niri, I was giddy with excitement... like the day I got my first Hello Kitty Lunch box.

ChopChop Magazine
ChopChop is a quarterly food magazine and website for kids. ChopChop's mission is to educate kids to cook and empower them to make healthy choices. Think Cook's Illustrated meets Highlights Magazine. It is awesome. Here are some reasons why:

Recipes - simple and healthy recipes that are easy to follow with fun photos of kids making the dish. I love how, at a glance, you know how much adult help is suggested, kitchen gear, ingredients and prep time is needed.

The Sally Challenge - Kids challenge Sally to come up with a recipe that will get them to enjoy an ingredient they typically dislike. If Sally can turn Cate into an eggplant fan with her Roasted Eggplant Ratatouille, then maybe my boys will love it too.

Fun & Games - (my son's favorite part of ChopChop) mazes, word finds, puzzles and other games are peppered (pun intended) throughout each issue. It keeps kids engaged about nutrition and exercise while having fun.

Kids love it too! My boys get excited to try the recipes in a given issue. And they love having a magazine geared to them.

Lunch Boot Camp
I had the good fortune of joining a handful of other local bloggers at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts to hear Sally Sampson, Founder and President of ChopChop, bestow pearls of wisdom on how to pack a lunch that will get eaten. We got more tips from Chef Instructor Dot Jacobson as she gave us a cooking demo on how to make a carrot & apple soup and pasta salad. And lunch boot camp could not be complete without a luncheon.

Founder and President of ChopChop sharing lunch-packing strategies

CSCA Instructor Dot Jacobson giving a cooking demo with Laura Reid, Kim Grenon, Julia Magnusson, Sheri Gurock, and Sally Sampson looking on.

Sandwich and yogurt bar = perfect lunch!

Delicious penne and roasted veggies

Check out the recipes for the Penne and Vegetables with Lemon Dressing and Carrot Apple Soup - perfect for your kids or your own lunch box.

How to pack a lunch that will get eaten

• Involve your kids: Not only should you ask your kids to choose what they want for lunch, but have them help shop, prepare and pack it. The more you involve your kids, the more invested they will be and likely to try new foods.
• Pair new ingredients with favorites: Does your kid hate peas but love tomato sauce? Try adding peas to tomato sauce. Even if they don't gobble up every pea for example, there's a good chance they are trying a few and will slowly realize peas aren't so bad. 
• Texture is key: Kids' palates are not as mature as adults, and textures can make or break a dish in their mind. My boys will gag if you try to give them anything mushy like overcooked vegetables. Dice or puree and combine with other ingredients. My knife skills have never been better!
  
• Make it personal: Most kids love to make it about them. A personal-sized pizza, mini pot pies, kebabs. It's the right size and they get to control what goes in it. 
• Don't give up: Experts say it could take up to 15 tries for a child to get used to and even like a new ingredient. I try to expose my kids to one new ingredient or dish a week. They might not like bitter melon right now, but at least they can pick one out now and remind you it's not their favorite.

Thanks Mommy Niri for organizing Lunch Boot Camp!

Thanks to ChopChop, Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and Mommy Niri for hosting a great event. Packing lunch has never looked so appealing!

When I started this blog, nutrition and eating wholesome foods has always been a given, but has never has been my focus for choosing what to write about or where to dine. You probably won't see me blog about deep-fried oreos or review a meal at a national fast-food chain. You also won't find a post about the latest food pyramid (now a plate??) and reading nutrition labels - I'll leave that to the experts like Joy Bauer or Oprah's Dr. Katz. But if you watch this video and you have kids, it's hard to ignore the fact that kids are just getting too much sugar these days.

So when a fellow parent in my son's kindergarten class asked if anyone was interested in tapping into Jamie Oliver's campaign to eliminate sugary flavored milk from our schools, I said "me!" If you aren't familiar with Jamie Oliver's latest campaign:

"It's not just soda that's full of sugar. Kids are getting it from the chocolate and strawberry milk they drink at school too. Flavored milk also has other ingredients you won't find in the plain stuff - colors, flavors, artificial sweeteners - which don't make it more nutritious.
Add your name to support this campaign asking schools to choose plain milk, and make the sweetened varieties an occasional treat." - Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution website

Lead by fellow parent Amy Vachon, a handful of parents and I wanted to go beyond signing an online petition and get our schools to consider eliminating flavored milk - or at the very least encourage kids to choose the white stuff.

Cut to Thursday, June 9th, 2011: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution's National Flavored Milk Day of Action - the first-ever coordinated, grassroots action on this issue. Over 300 individuals from all over the country organized student activities, demonstrations, and conversations with school officials to urge their communities to eliminate flavored milk.

The event was well-organized and gained momentum as the days progressed. The Food Revolution team equipped groups with a 12-page "playbook," fact sheets, templates, calculators, and a Facebook page as a way for groups to connect with each other. They held "office hours" and live chats on the days leading up to the 9th. If only more businesses and organizations were this well-organized!

So what happened at our school? Check it:

Handed out free white milk and wristbands to every student, funded by Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates

Cafeteria was decorated with student-created "milk art"

Created and distributed flyers with milk facts to students

And it worked! Kids were choosing white milk!

Kids wore the wristbands proudly

I realize we have a long way to go in changing policy and eating habits. In fact, we were met with some resistance by several parents who felt "it was their God given right to have freedom of choice."Another argument we heard was if we eliminated flavored milk, then how will kids learn to make healthy choices?

Food services and the Dairy Council fear that by eliminating flavored milk, milk sales would plummet. Maybe. But I was inspired by what I saw that day and don't feel this is totally true. For example, one student asked if she could get chocolate milk for free and we had to explain to her we were only paying for white milk. She explained she didn't like the taste of white milk and was ready to walk away empty handed. Then turned around and grabbed a white milk.

I'd like to think we made a positive impression. Not only with the kids, but the cafeteria staff and school leaders. Change can happen if we're all in it together. 

So here we are, almost halfway through the school year, and I can confidently say packing lunch for my boys is going pretty well. We are definitely in a routine and our thermos, lunchboxes and canteens are being put through their paces. I won't lie - Fridays are particularly nice since we let our oldest buy lunch at school (pizza). I get in a lunch-rut like so many others. Until our Easy Lunchboxes finally arrived the other day.

I would describe an Easy Lunchbox as a Lazy Man's (or woman's) bento box - perfect for someone like me who is 1) lazy and 2) intimidated by bento boxes. It has three good-sized compartments with a single-lid. My oldest gets less than 30 minutes to eat lunch, so having one container to open does save time. It's surprisingly super durable (unlike the flimsy take-and-toss food containers you get at the supermarket), space-saving (nesting), BPA-free and eco-friendly.

apple & maple chicken sausage, roasted red potatoes w/ketchup, green beans, grapes and Joe Joe

It is pretty affordable compared to other "systems" out there (a set of four containers is $13.95). The only drawback is finding the right-sized cooler bag. I've found that the cooler bags from LL Bean work well, except there is no room for anything else. You can purchase the cooler bag from Easy Lunchboxes (we actually got one for free as a way of saying thank you since they were on back order when I placed my order), but they are sort of bulky for me.

just the right size - and fits in my kid's backpack

Overall, we love them! And from reading some of the other reviews by other parents out there, I think you will be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't like them.

What are some time-saving strategies for packing lunch? What is your kid's favorite lunch?

One of my all-time favorite commercials is the classic "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" from Staples. I love how giddy the father is for back-to-school shopping and how miserable the kids look. The voice over is perfect too - exuding over-the-top enthusiasm. This commercial always comes to mind at the start of every school year (maybe that's the geeky advertising side of me).



Except for the first time, I've become empathetic with the kids. I am dreading the chore of packing lunch for my Kindergartner... and for the next 17 years?! He's not a terribly picky eater, so I'm not worried that he'll go hungry because he didn't like what I packed for lunch. But because I'm the one packing his lunch, I want it to be enjoyable and satisfying. And hopefully that will carry-over to the food when my kid opens his lunchbox.

I'm sure there will be days he'll ask to buy lunch. Being a new mom and someone who truly values wholesome food, I am leery of the processed foods that is being served in our public schools. Thanks to organizations like Whole Foods and its Great American Salad Bar Project and Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, there is a push to bring fresh food into local schools. Until significant progress is made, I'll be packing lunch most days of the week.

So I've done some homework and found some great sites and blogs that truly inspire when it comes to lunch ideas. I don't have any delusions of creating mini works of art with bento boxes (if only I had the time). Here are some sites I will be coming back to often: