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Community Corner

Healthy Lunchbox Meals

Easy alternatives to a cafeteria lunch for your student.

As the new school year begins, I am wondering as I have in years past about whether I should insist on making more of my daughters’ school lunches. I let them purchase their lunch most days at school, but am disheartened to see that what they wind up eating is mostly unhealthy things like chicken nuggets, hamburgers and mac and cheese.

Of course, my daughters love buying lunch. I guess they are still at an age where that kind of food is very appetizing and fun to eat.

So, if I start insisting that they bring in a lunch more often, I would have to make their lunches more appealing to them – while still keeping the lunches healthy. So after some thinking, I’ve come up with these lunchbox creations:

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Hummus for dipping: Create a meal out of a dip, and you have a winning meal with one of my 8-year-olds. This lunch is quick to throw together: Put some store-bought hummus into a container, and add some pita bread pieces and some veggies that your child can dip into it, and you have a fun and satisfying meal.

Cold pasta salad: My daughters love this meal, which we also often serve for dinner. Add some Italian dressing to some corkscrew pasta and throw in chopped tomatoes, shredded cheese and either diced chicken or hard salami, and you have a tasty lunch.

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California rolls: This is for the more adventurous child, but my children love these. Packages of these Japanese morsels, which consist of rice, veggies and a light fish rolled in seaweed, are sold at ShopRite and run between $5 and $6 a package for about 12 California rolls – I find that about six rolls per child is more than enough for a meal.

Deviled eggs with veggie spears: My kids adore deviled eggs, which I make by mixing the yolks of hardboiled eggs with a little mayonnaise, mustard and relish. But there are many variations of the deviled egg, and you can tailor your recipe to fit your child’s tastes. (Versions include cheddar and bacon deviled eggs and Southwestern deviled eggs.) To make the eggs healthier, you can try using light or lower-fat mayonnaise. You can combine the eggs with a few slices of carrot of celery to add a veggie element to the lunch.

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