Plenty of cooking books, TV shows and newspaper articles about kids school lunches and recipes. This is more of a laymen lazy dad guide for a repetitive 5 day schedule of school lunches that I use, because if I have to do more than 5 different lunch recipes a week I will burn out faster than a meteor.

So my 7 year old (at the time of writing this) gets two snack times and one lunch period, and for all three he need something to stuff his face. To keep him interested I like to use two different kinds of breads and one non-bread day so it goes something like this (keep in mind we can’t give him sweets more than twice a week).

Monday

• A fruit granola bar
• A tuna salad sandwich on toast or rye (Tuna, mayonnaise and a little mustard)
• Fruit Juice box

Tuesday

• Baby carrots
• Toasted Bagel with cream cheese
• Brownie

Wednesday

• Sliced apples (sometimes with a sprinkle of cinnamon)
• Chicken nuggets with a plum sauce or ketchup to dip
• 4 Crackers

Thursday

• A cookie
• Turkey cold cut on bagel (or the leftover tuna salad from Monday)
• Cucumber sticks

Friday

• 4 Crackers
• Fried egg on toast or rye bread (or a bun)
• A full banana

Then rinse and repeat each week, I may switch tuna salad with egg salad, give him whatever leftovers from my own lunch that he can bare to eat instead of the fried egg sandwich, or fish sticks instead of chicken nuggets.

The idea is that it covers all the basic food groups (proteins in eggs, chicken, meat, and tuna), fruits and veggies (albeit in snack form as a side show but I take what I can get), some odd sweet treats and of course, wonderful carbs ingredients are more or less there.

If we have more leftovers than usual (that he is willing to eat) that makes its way too, but if not this is an easy mindless system for me with readily available ingredients and enough variety not to get him to revolt. All these with a good size bottle of water should keep them satisfied until supper…..ugh.

Have any easy ones you want to share or add to the list?