Back To School Lunches for Kids & Adults

I can almost hear the collective groans of parents all around the country as they gear up for another school year of packing lunches for back-to-school. I know how annoying making my own lunch or breakfast the night before can be so I can only imagine what it’s like packing lunch for a kid who probably only likes to eat 7 things.

One thing is for sure, whether you are a kid at school, or an adult at work, packing your lunch is certainly much more cost-effective than buying, and gives you what more control over what you eat making it a whole lot easier to eat healthy on a budget. But brown bagging it just feels so sad, it’s time to toss the brown bag and beautify lunch!

I don’t know about you, but having a pretty container to put my lunch in makes carrying my food with me so cooler right from the word go. I recently picked up these awesome Bento Boxes from Tupperware that come in fun bright colours, but there are lots of fun lunch box options out there even if you don’t want to go the Tupperware route. Invest a little bit in some high quality durable containers for yourself that are microwave safe, and possibly some less expensive ones for your kids if they tend to lose every container you send them to school with. 😉

Once you have some cute containers, the next question is – what the heck do I put in them?? I like sandwiches, they can be super delicious, but I’ve never enjoyed a sandwich that has been sitting around for hours waiting to be eaten. I like mine fresh. Which means sandwiches are not my first choice for a packed lunch. Instead I’ve been really enjoying all of the options you have with rice, especially the Minute Rice microwavable cups. If you have a microwave at work you can take it with you still in the cup, and heat it when you’re ready for lunch, but I’ve recently discovered that cold rice is actually pretty good too. Who knew? Probably everyone with a child. 😉

Anyway, back to packing your lunch. Ideally your meal should be about 1/2 veggies, 1/4 protein, and 1/4 grain/starch, which is another reason these Bento Boxes are so great, they make portion sizes easy to figure out with the pre-sectioned compartments!

Below I’ve put together four lunch combos (two for kids and two for the adults). Because a lot of people (including most kids) like their rice plain, I left three of the lunches with a plain rice, and created a Sun-dried Tomato & Herb Rice Salad for the more adventurous lunch packer!

The printable recipe is below, but I did want to make a special note that when making this salad I did pre-heat the rice to help the flavours incorporate a bit more.

I really enjoyed this salad, and it would certainly be something I would enjoy eating in my lunch. If you don’t have the Minute Rice microwave cups you could use any rice you have on hand. The cups just make it that much faster and easier.

Coupled with a salad and ham, you’re getting your veggies, protein and a grain all in one. I would also pack some greek yogurt and a few snacks to go along with this (and the other ideas listed below) to get a full work day’s worth of food.

Now we’re off to the plain rice options – if fancy rice salad isn’t your thing you can try this plain-jane rice side with almonds and salad instead. In this case I would probably leave the rice in the microwavable cup so you can heat it up when lunch time rolls around, and fill the last section with fruit, another serving of veggies or an extra protein depending on how hungry you usually are at lunch.

Speaking of plain jane, let’s move onto some more kid-friendly options. Here I’ve made a cute little rice fish (with a cranberry eye) using a fish-shaped cookie cutter. I simply pressed the warm cooked rice into the cookie cutter and let it sit for a minute before removing the cutter. Both the rice and carrot sticks are on a bed of lettuce (whether or not anyone actually eats the lettuce is a different story, but at least it’s there), and I finished it off with cherry tomatoes and a couple of slices of shaved roast beef. Add a couple of snacks and a water bottle to the lunch bag and you’re ready to go!

The second lunch is even more simple, with the rice added to the box, this time paired with cheese cubes, red pepper sticks, zucchini sticks and plain rice.

Kids can be pretty particular, so try to go with what they already like. You want to try to get two veggies in them, so find the veggies they like the most, and if they want some dip or dressing to gov with them, send that in its own container so it doesn’t touch anything it’s not suppose to touch. 😉 Putting the food on a bed of lettuce doubles as a liner for easy clean-up, and it will help keep the rice from getting too dry while it sits in their lunch bag.

Of course another great method for packing lunches is by using left overs. I make a lovely mushroom risotto using Minute Rice® Premium Long Grain White Rice that would be a great lunch especially during the chillier autumn months that are right around the corner.

Minute Rice Canada has lots of other wonderful recipes and meal ideas right on their website minuterice.ca and you can “like” them on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/minutericecanada) where they share lots of great meal ideas, photos and time-saving tips.

Disclosure: This post has been generously sponsored by Minute Rice Canada. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.