As school finishes for the year, I can hear parents around Australia letting out a sigh of relief – no more lunchboxes for 6 weeks. At the same time, I can also hear school kids on holidays saying “Mum, I’m staaarrrving”, “Mum, I’m hungry”, “what can I have to eat”, or words to that effect. And, they are usually said in a long and protracted whiny voice – the sort that after just a few days really starts to grate on your blissed out state of being lunchbox free.
Whilst I’ve shared previously my 5 Reasons to Pack School Holiday Lunchboxes, I totally get the need to just take a break from the routine. The key is being prepared, so have some ready made snacks on hand. You can do this by creating
a) a healthy snack tub in your fridge
Fill individual snack bags with prepared snacks, and store them in a healthy snack tub in your fridge. This is particularly good if you have younger kids. Have a similar tub in the pantry too.
b) multiple containers
Fill each tub with a different prepared snack (eg. one for carrot sticks, one for celery sticks, one for cherry tomatoes etc). This is better for children who are older or more independent. Have similar tubs in the pantry too.
And you can even use this as a way of training your kids to pack their own lunchboxes because it shows them how to help themselves to real food snacks.
So if you want to save your sanity and bliss, here’s 5 Ways To Stop The School Holiday Whining of “I’m Starving”.
These are all foods you can prepare ahead, and some you can freeze too.
1. Sweet Snacks
Mother nature provides so much sweetness in fruit. Cater to their sweet tastes with fresh fruit rather than packaged biscuits, lollies and the like.
- Make a big fruit salad – this can be simply different coloured in season fruit and vegetables cut and plopped into a container or you could jazz it up a bit like this recipe by Jamie Oliver.
- Frozen Fruit – kids love frozen fruit, especially at this time of year. Grab some oranges and cut them into 8th’s (mouth guard size). Peel a banana and cut them into 3-5cm chunks, freeze them on a flat tray and baking paper, when frozen, place 2-3 pieces in individual bags. Berries make great frozen treats too.
- Yoghurt and Fruit – prepare little tubs of natural yoghurt and stir through some cut up fruit or some raspberry chia jam, or even homemade muesli with nuts/seeds. Freeze as ice cubes too as a different treat.
- Home made Banana Ice Cream (frozen banana’s blended in food processor), add some nuts to make sweet and crunchy
- Fruit & Veg Bread cut into slices and sandwiched together with a little butter. Freezable.
- Pikelets or pancakes – watch this video to learn about making pikelets 6 ways. Freezable.
- Raspberry Swirl Chocolate Cake – make into mini muffin size. Freezable
- Muffins, slices, bliss balls. Most muffins and slices can be frozen too.
2. Savoury Snacks
- Cut up cubes or squares of cheese and put into little snack bags so they can be easily grabbed and had with crackers (watch out for additives and preservatives in crackers)
- Dip bowls – make a few different dips and store them in small containers so they are ready to grab with the vegetable crudites or crackers. Try these 3 simple dips
- Olives and Feta
- Quinoa Crackers
- Mountain bread toasts – serve with the dips
- Edamame – keep a bag in the freezer
- Egg and Bacon pies
- Mini Pizza’s
3. Crunchy Snacks
- Vegetable crudites – wash and cut into sticks or rounds. You can stop them from drying out by wrapping them in a moist paper towel. Store them separately, or mix them up in little bags so they just grab a bag and go. Try carrots, celery, capsicum, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, green beans, broccoli. Had dip bowls to go with these.
- Popcorn – popped at home in coconut oil, serve with a mix of nuts. Watch this video to make Popcorn 3 ways.
- Rice cakes – have nut butter, dip bowls, or sliced cheese to go with these
- Celery sticks with nut butter, cream cheese, or avocado
- Fruit in season with mixed nuts
- Mixed Nuts
- Roasted Pepitas or chickpeas
4. Drinks
- Fruit Smoothies – you can make this in advance and freeze them or make the night before so it’s ready for the next day. You can even get some veggies in with this – just follow the rule of thumb of 60% fruit and 40% veg, and it should be sweet enough to appeal to your kids. Freezable
- Flavoured Water – make a jug of filtered water, add some fruit slices to it and allow it to sit for a few hours to flavour it. Strawberries, lime, lemon and a bit of mint is a favourite. Freezable.
- Freshly squeezed Orange Juice – this is also good frozen in reusable pouches such as Little Mashies or in ice cubes.
5. Real Food Fun Games
Ok, these really aren’t prepared ahead, but they are fun games you can have with real food. They are worth the effort to set up and some games will require your supervision.
- Apple Bobbing – you may remember this is a party game (possibly from years gone by). You can either play this the old fashion way of having a tub full of water and putting the apples in and the kids having to literally put their face in the water to grab out an apple with their teeth. This would be great on a hot day. Or you could go the safer path of tying a string to the top of the core and attach the other end to a clothes line. Line all the apples up, have the kids put their hands behind their back and then they have to try and eat the apple.
- Carrot or Cucumber Stick Jenga – Cut your carrots or cucumbers into 10 cm long sticks about 3 cm wide. You’ll need about 30 sticks, then stack 2 on the bottom, then stack 2 on top in the opposite directions. Keep doing this until you’ve used all sticks up. Then each player has to attempt to pull a stick out without the tower collapsing. Each player gets to keep the sticks they pull out as their snack to have with a pre-prepared dip. When the tower collapses, they all have to try and grab as many as they can to collect more snacks.
- Build Your Own Salad or Smoothie – this game was our daughter Indrani’s idea. Simply cut up a whole host of different salad or smoothie ingredients, lay them out and let the kids build their own salad or smoothie. Obviously if you’re doing the smoothie, you’ll need to have a blender on hand too. Then they need to name what they have created before being able to devour it.
- Blindfold Taste Test – cut up a whole lot of different fruits, vegetables, crackers, cheese (you can use ideas from the sweet, savoury, crunch and drink sections of this post). Then blindfold the participants, and get them to taste and try and guess the different foods.
My Tip For You.
This weekend, with your kids, choose at least one item from each heading and prepare it. This way you’ll be ready stop the whining in its tracks. Good luck! Happy Holidays!
Be sure to leave comments of what you’ve chosen to inspire others.