A Rainbow of Lunches

This week the school is asking parents to send foods in their child's lunch with certain colors - in an effort to encourage a diversity of fruit and vegetable items that kids eat.

Monday - ok, I spaced. I didn't make time to hit the grocery store like I planned, and had ZERO items with Monday's color, Purple.

Tuesday was a little better - White. I sent E into school with cheese and crackers for a snack, and, cheese, mushrooms, and grilled chicken, and a piece of seafood (I'm guessing crab?). She didn't do so hot and ate just a bit of everything, but at least she ate all the grilled chicken and even mentioned she wanted that again.

Today was Red day - since we had gone to the salad bar at the grocery store I had quite a variety of items. Since I was half asleep this morning I started preparing the Green lunch, but then I was reminded it wasn't green day, it was in fact Red. So I started re-making lunch. Her snack was a juice box, strawberries and watermelon chunks. Her lunch was turkey rolled up, a babybel cheese (it comes in a red wrapper!) sliced red apple, and red (pink) goldfish crackers.

If I don't get a chance to post later - this is the plan for the rest of the week:

Thursday (Yellow/Orange) - snack: melon chunks, goldfish (orange colored!) and lemonade (juice box from rader Joes!). Lunch: Mac & Cheese, carrots and ranch, and a peeled orange. I also may send in some Yellow apple slices to share with her class.

Friday (Green) - Snack: Green apple slices, celery sticklets, and juice (green juice box). Lunch: Cucumbers, broccoli, goldfish (green!), and some sort of meat...just not sure what :).


I have to admit - while this has been alot of fun - its been a pain to have to shop so specifically for these different items!! I'm glad I had a thought to go to the salad bar, because at least I could just buy a small amount of all of these different colorful foods. I'm probably going to do that once a week now just so she can get a better variety of fresh fruit and veggies, and most of the prepwork will be done for me, and it will really be a matter of proportioning the foods out over the week.

Bento on!