New To Primal: Kid-Friendly Snacks and Lunches? page 3

[Blackcatbone]

What about meatballs? Little ones that they can eat as finger food. With something to dip it in, like a spaghetti sauce.

[FamilyGrokumentarian]

Just wanted to say thanks to those who recommended Primal Kitchen as a resource. Lunchboxes are a perennial challenge for folks (me included...hard to avoid ruts!). Once my daughter's preschool wraps for the year soon, I'll probably start a series on packed lunches for my husband. Haven't found a great lunchbox for him yet; since he likes warming stuff in the microwave I may simply stick with our lidded Pyrex bowls for now.

...unless anybody has a microwave-friendly adult-sized lunchbox recommendation...?

[heartsamy]

@FamilyGrokumentarian-- These are really cheap at Target. The kids and I each just use one, the husband-person uses two with a big rubber band. We also use random small plastin containers inside for various "moist" things like cream cheese and peanut butter, etc. (Ugh, I hate the word "moist.")

[heartsamy]

plastic.

[shellyreid]

My kids love eating chicken salad with celery cause they get to eat their "spoon." They also love lettuce wraps. Just take a lettuce leaf and fill it with their favorite sandwich stuff and roll it up like a tortilla wrap. My kids favorite thing to eat these days is what they call "snack plate." Basically, I empty everything in the fridge that needs to get eaten (it all has to be eaten cold) and put it on the table. They get to pick and choose, but there are always lots of veggies and cheese cubes.

I don't know if kids would like this, but it was one of my favorite snacks when I was in high school. I'd take a slice of deli ham, spread some cream cheese on it and roll it around a baby dill pickle. Yum-o. If your little ones like pickles, it's worth a try. My kids won't touch pickles since, according to their father, they're cucumbers soaked in EVIL. Silly man, they're delicious!

[oliviascotland]

My daughter loves a tuna mayo (with home made mayonnaise), with strips of red pepper to scoop it up with, or slices of cold frittata, or home-made Scotch eggs (I occasionally make them with quails eggs - you hard boil an egg, cool, peel then wrap it in good quality or home-made sausage meat, dip in egg, then roll in almond flour to coat, and shallow fry until crispy all over and cooked through), or chicken kebabs also go down well. Other of her favourites are smoked salmon trimmings wrapped around steamed asparagus spears (only when I can get them on discount, mind you!), or a smoked salmon roulade which is really easy to make, too! I make her almond crackers to spread that on. For puddings, I give her fresh berries or apples, or do some Primal baking (she really loves banana walnut muffins).

[Heidi]

This is such a useful thread! And I can't wait to check out Primal Kitchen and Everyday Paleo. It's so easy to get stuck in a rut with cold lunches for the kids.

Anyone else besides me find that going primal with the kids means having a higher grocery bill? My kids are really into vegetables and fruits, which don't exactly compare to grain-based foods in the calorie department, so they eat more.

[oliviascotland]

This is such a useful thread! And I can't wait to check out Primal Kitchen and Everyday Paleo. It's so easy to get stuck in a rut with cold lunches for the kids.

Anyone else besides me find that going primal with the kids means having a higher grocery bill? My kids are really into vegetables and fruits, which don't exactly compare to grain-based foods in the calorie department, so they eat more.

To be honest, I've found that it's slightly cheaper! But two of my three children, as well as my husband, are coeliac, my husband is lactose intolerant, and one daughter is allergic to saccharine, sorbitol, aesculfame and aspartame - so we've been eating mostly non-processed food for years anyway - now I'm just cutting out the super-expensive gluten-free rubbish which is saving a fortune! We do get through loads of fruit and fresh vegetables, not to mention a heap more meat than we used to, but my butcher gives me fat to make lard for free, so now I'm not buying all that sunflower oil and margarine (for my husband), it balances out. And thanks to Mark's recipe links, I now make my own "lactose-free" fermented butter for my husband as well (not to mention creme fraiche and yoghurt).

[thatgirljj]

I'll go out on a limb here and say there's nothing wrong with being in a lunch rut if it's a healthy lunch rut. The problem is getting out of the unhealthy lunch rut and into a better one. I've found I don't really need more than 3-4 lunch ideas for my preschooler and then I cycle through a different one every week. I've just slowly been replacing my old ideas with newer ones.

My kiddo likes finger food, so I tend to focus on that. Meat/protein options are usually either a hardboiled egg, sliced up leftover BBQ tri-tip, meatballs or sausage chunks. Then I fill out his lunch container with veggies (carrots & sugar snap peas are a favorite, I'm also lucky to have a kid who will eat raw spinach), some dip, a few chunks of cheese and pack a piece of fruit on the side. I don't hesitate to sometimes pack him some roasted potato wedges, cooked beans, or primal-ish mini muffins especially if I know he's going through a growth spurt. Growing kids really do need the calories.

Snacks at home haven't been quite as successful, but he will eat nuts & fruit over fishie crackers some of the time. And I make healthier popsicles out of pureed fruit, yogurt, honey and a milk/egg custard. It can be hard to convince a preschooler to change their tastes though, so I try to take it very slowly.

-jj

[superal]

These are all great ideas, thank you so much. I'm brand new to primal and with school starting next week I was curious how I was slowly going to add primal lunches in for the kids. One thing I don't want to do is make things completely off limits. I grew up in a hippie household with no running water or electricity, molasses instead of chocolate, with homemade bread, farm animals killed for meats and veggies from the garden. Sounds great until I was in school and all my friends had junk food that I'd never seen or heard of. My mom was very strict about never letting us have these types of food so I began sneaking them... this was the foundation for 20+ years of binging and be overweight. I want my kids to love good healthy food and to enjoy "treats" once in a while.... just trying my best to provide a bit of balance!!!