Quick and Easy School Lunch Ideas

It is that time again, kids are going back to school (or already in school like mine) and with it comes the need to make school lunches.  Over a year ago I showed you some of our Easy school lunch ideas, which is actually my most popular post ever, and now I have even more Quick and Easy School Lunch Ideas to Share.

My Guide and Tips for Making Lunch

--Balance-
  I believe in my kids eating a balanced meal over the entire day- meaning if lunch is fruit heavy, than dinner will feature more vegetables.  While in the ideal world every meal would be perfectly balanced, I know my kids and what they will and won't eat and so do my best for the entire day.  My son, for example, does not like that many raw vegetables, he will eat lots of cooked vegetables though.  So his lunches do not usually have too many vegetables as let's be honest, cooked vegetables in the morning will be yucky cold vegetables by lunch.

--EASY is Best
  We have all seen those lunches with everything cut into a cute shapes and gold fish crackers "swimming" in blue jello; but my question is what do those lunches look/taste like by the time they are shoved into a backpack, transported to school and sitting there until lunch?  Yes, I want something my kids will enjoy but I also want it to survive the trip.  Plus I am just not going to take the time to make lunches like that.

--The Lunch Box
  I use a divided Ziploc Container to put the lunches in, so I had to find a lunch box big enough to fit it.

 I found both of these lunch boxes at Target both of which are Embark brand.  In my son's lunchbox the container is able to sit in it flat where as my daughter's it is turned sideways; but we have not had any food leakage problems with the Ziploc Containers even sideways.

The container fits in nicely and then I place a couple of ice packs and the drink box on top of the container.  I have packed lunches this way for two years now and my son has never complained of warm or mushed food.

I bought the Ziploc Divided Rectangular Container at Target, they come in a 2 pack.

Image from here

I bought about 6 of them and have used the same 6 for two years now and am only now starting to get a few cracks in some of the lids; so they work great and are very inexpensive.

Now what you have all been waiting for-

The Lunches: 

To make the rolls- spread cream cheese on tortilla, place ham/lunch meat down, roll up then cut into 1-inch pieces.
I cooked that Ramen that morning, I boil the noodles without the seasoning, drain the water then add just some of the seasoning packet and a little butter.  The noodles were not hot by the time school came around but he said he absolutely loved it.  (Make sure to include silverware)  The Ramen is inside a smaller Tupperware to keep everything a little more separate.
Something about eating food on a stick is just so fun; these mini kabobs are made on toothpicks!
Carrots are one of the few vegetables my son likes raw, so it is a repeated choice for our lunches. Feel free to mix it up with whatever vegetables your kids like.  I also love using cupcake wrappers to give each food it's own section.
Wraps are a great alternative to a sandwich and the veggie sticks sort of count as  vegetable right?
I will hard boil the eggs the night before (most of my lunch preparation is done the morning of... if I were smart I would do it all the night before!)

To help this post not be too incredibly long you can click through 22 more lunch ideas below; just click on the lunch you want to see and it will enlarge, you can then scroll through.
What is your favorite thing for lunch?

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I am linking this post up at the following crafting blogs

Since it is Tuesday I am linking up with some other great Tuesday meme's.  IA and Shawn's Talk to Us Tuesday and Stacy Uncorked's Random Tuesday