Lunch for Children – part 2

When you’re making lunch for children, you can always use more ideas – so here they are!

Tortilla wraps – I like these much better when packing a lunch.  These are a welcome treat for those of us that hate to pack lunches and eat packed lunches.  You just take a tortilla or burritto shell and fill it with whatever you would put on a regular sandwich like lunch meat, cheese, lettuce, peanut butter and jelly, or leftover beans and rice.  Just wrap it up in plastic wrap and you have a nice variation to the plain old sandwich.

Waffles or pancakes – This one is a little more involved, but you can make a large batch and have extras for breakfasts for a few days.  Just mix up your favorite batter and cook as many as you can.  Sometimes it’s fun to have a traditional breakfast meal for lunch or dinner.

Sandwich variations – Instead of just lunch meat and cheese or peanut butter and jelly you could make egg salad, chicken salad or tuna salad.   You could also make applesauce sandwiches or tomato or cucumber sandwiches.  These are best with just one piece of bread eaten open faced.

Nachos – If you have leftover meat or beans you can spread out some tortilla chips on a baking pan and spoon the leftover meat over them.  If the meat is plain you can add cumin and chili powder to spice it up a little before you spoon it over the chips.  Then you can top your creation with salsa (optional) and cheese and bake for about 10 minutes.

Homemade chicken noodle soup – This is a favorite at our house.  Fill a saucepan about 1/2 full with water and cook on high.  Once the water starts boiling turn the heat to medium and add noodles, 1 teaspoon sea salt, and about 1 tablespoon powdered chicken flavoring.  Make sure it doesn’t have MSG or autolyzed yeast extract in it.  These are chemicals you don’t want your children eating.  You can also add some cut up carrots or celery or whatever else you like in your soup.  When the noodles and vegetables are almost cooked add a 5-9 ounce (depending on the size of your pan) can of cooked chicken.  You can certainly use leftover chicken here too.  Then just heat the chicken and you have homemade chicken soup.  This way if your family likes more or less noodles or more or less seasoning, you can make it the way they like it.  Plus you won’t be adding the chemicals that can be found in many store bought soups.

I hope you enjoyed these ideas for lunch for children. Let me know if you have any ideas I can post here too.