i have extremely little to offer for today’s NaBloPoMo prompt, “What is/was your favourite thing to pack for school lunch?”
as a child, i mostly ate school lunches. until i got to high school, when i mostly bought a Diet Coke, chewed some gum and saved my lunch money for cigarettes and Chanel lipsticks. it was the 80s when you could still buy a Diet Coke in a school vending machine, y’all.
as a mom, i see a homemade lunch as a treat. once or twice a week, Miss Girl gets a completely unfancy ham and swiss sandwich on a multi-grain Sandwich Thin and some combination of yogurt, grapes, strawberries, applesauce, fruit snacks, ice water in her Minions thermos (partly because she should drink more water and partly because i don’t trust the ice packs to keep everything cold) and maybe a cookie. it is not cute, y’all. it is all in Ziplocks and random Tupperware. the best thing i do for my daughter’s lunch is draw on her napkin. today, just for the snack she carries, i drew Beethoven in Sharpie and i’m totally pissed i didn’t think to take a picture because it actually kind of rocked!
anyway, all that said, there was a brief moment in time when i had a fantasy that i could be that mom who made precious bento boxes for school lunches. i would have multiple sets of nesting, divided BPA-free containers. i would have themes and characters. i would Instagram every adorable creation. and then i remembered who i am: the mom that can barely get up and get her out the door in the morning with a non-gourmet, non-grass-fed ham (do they even grass feed pigs? that’s how much i don’t even know!) sandwich in a Ziplock bag. i’ve read several articles about the pressure to perform in this area over the past couple years. and while i’m glad i’m not alone, i’m also so over caring. and guess what. Miss Girl certainly doesn’t.
so instead of my favorite, boring thing to pack for lunch, may i present a selection of ridiculous items i will never be packing for lunch. (and obvs, “ridiculous” is code for “omg, i am so totally jealous and have the utmost respect for anybody who actually makes these things!”) see the full collection here and even more here. what is your favorite school lunch?
1. Winnie the Pooh Bento
see image above. really? if you link through to the Mothering Corner post, you’ll see words like “Kuromi” and “15 minutes preparation time”. it’s all Japanese to me . . .
2. Little Olympians Bento
i mean. 10 for effort and 10 for execution! also probably like 10 hours of my life i would never get back if i even attempted something this elaborate. sigh.
3. Hello Kitty Bento
oh, it’s only a pizzawich disguised as a perfect Hello Kitty. with flowers and fruit atop broccolini bushes. pure evil. clearly.
4. Circus Animal Bento
aka “6 elephants in my box” or, um . . . anyway, this one actually includes pre-bought elephant toothpicks. i totally always have those on hand. not.
5. Old McDonald Bento
sheep and chickens and pigs, oh my! so many accoutrements here, y’all. maaaaaayyybe if i had stuff left over from a party, but come on.
Peaches & Poppycock 
So I guess you won’t be packing this one either?
It’s amazing what people can do with enough application. I don’t usually care what my food looks like as long as it tastes good, but some presentation efforts can go a long way. Only issue: I don’t think I would be able to eat the Olympians or the kitty I linked to – I wouldn’t want to destroy a cook’s work of art even if it were meant to be eaten!
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OMG, that kitty is amazing! totally could not make OR eat that one, you’re right!! 🙂
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I don’t have school going children yet but I doubt I would ever willingly try to attempt anything so elaborate for a lunch box! I’d never manage to make it look this pretty, I’d end up getting frustrated, which would lead to feelings of inadequacy and guilt which would basically result in a mini existential crisis every morning before I’m even fully awake (probably). If you manage to give your kid a home made lunch at all, than I call that a win!
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i know. i’d have to get up at like 3:00 in the morning and would be in full-on breakdown mode by the time the bus came. i couldn’t afford the therapy 😉
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Hahaha! Same here :p
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Back in the day when my daughter was in grade school, she had one of the following in her lunch bag: pb&j (which is no longer allowed in most schools due to other children’s severe peanut allergy which I find totally absurd), tuna (which she swears to this day cannot be duplicated in its deliciousness), baloney (yes I am a bad mother), and her absolute fav…. chix nuggets (I would heat them up before school and they would still be lukewarm by lunchtime along with a ketchup dipping sauce). Creativity, as these photos reveal, was not my strong suit in the lunch department, but had no complaints.
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I am so down with the basics–those all sound like perfect lunches!
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Who are these people that can budget that sort of time in the morning to pack these creative lunches? They should give some sort of lesson on time management and productivity!
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I know, right? they definitely know something I don’t! (as I write this, the bust just drive by. Miss Girl is still in bed. and she’ll be lucky to get to the carpool line with breakfast in her belly and lunch money in her pocket!) 😉
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