It’s that time of year…fall is almost here and the kids are back to school, which will prompt the inevitable push and pull of what goes in the proverbial brown bag for lunch. You want to give them a piece of fruit….and they want the tiny bag of cookies with their favorite cartoon character emblazoned across the package. But maybe both sides can have their way, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Courtesy of Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross, Be Thrifty offers up kid-tested tricks for packing economical school lunches that will be the envy of the cafeteria.
Cheap Lunch 101
- Create a budget target, and do the math. First determine what you think is a reasonable per-day amount to spend on a school lunch. Use the shelf labels in the supermarket to help you compute the per-unit cost of prepackaged foods and snacks. Figure out how much meat, cheese, fruit, bread and peanut butter you’ll use in a given week, then divide the total by five to see what each day’s lunch costs.
- Invest in an insulated thermos. They are perfect for keeping soup and leftovers hot and yogurt, Jell-O, and fruit salad cold.
- Ask for feedback about what your kids are and aren’t eating in lunches packed from home. There’s no reason to send apples at 50 to 60 cents each if they’ll be thrown out.
- Kids love small cups and tubes of food, but unfortunately, these items are the most expensive way to buy food. Take small, reusable plastic snack cups and fill with applesauce, peaches, pineapple and raisins.
- Look for reusable drink cups that don’t leak and are sold with a built-in straw. Add juice from a large bottle to the cute cup for an individual serving that costs pennies.
- If you need to send plastic spoons and forks to school, buy heavy-duty utensils and ask your kids not to throw them away. They can go through the dishwasher and then be reused.
Check back tomorrow–we’ll be posting recipes for a build-a-lunch system that will satisfy all your picky eaters, and work for grown-up lunches too!
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