Keeping lunch simple

My kids love breakfast, they love snacking and they eat a pretty good dinner, but I could never get them to eat a good lunch. They would usually take one or two bites then be done, but then they were starving by 3:00. I tried everything to try and get them to eat but it wouldn't work. That went on for about a year or so. It wasn't until my oldest daughter started pre-K that she started eating more lunch, but she still wasn't all that hungry. I didn't really pay much attention to what I was feeding them. We ate a lot of corn dogs, pizza rolls, mac n cheese, I would also give them fruit with their meals(kinda hoping the healthy fruit would counteract the bad of the corndog.  haha Yeeeah, it doesn't work that way)

As time went on and I started getting into eating more healthy, I decided to change up the way we ate during the day, and to try implamenting a eating schedule. I did a trial run first and started with assigning a snack time everyday. So everyday they would wake up from their nap and we would have snack time at 3:00(right at the time they were usually starving). That went over very well. It only took two days and they were waking up from their naps and asking what snack could they have that day.

 So from there I decided to have their breakfast ready at 7:30am everyday as well. Again, no problem and it actually made our morning run smoother. I wasn't scrambling around and then just handing them a sugary pop tart as we ran out the door. I would plan the night before what we would have and set everything out, making it simple in the morning.( if you are a organized person you could even make a breakfast plan for a whole week at a time, but I'm not quite that organized so I do the night before). a few samples of our weekday breakfast would be organic honey nut Cheerios, bananas, toast with organic blueberries spread, fruit smoothies with a bagel, scrambled eggs or a egg sandwich etc. I started noticing they were eating better and even asking for second helpings sometimes.

Lastly I changed lunch time. Lunch is at noon everyday. I also changed the portions and what I was fixing. Instead of corndogs and pizza rolls I make my own "lunchable" size portion of fruit, cheese and crackers, carrots sticks, turkey sausages, just different things that are light, more healthy but still appealing for them to eat. I was amazed when they both were making "happy plates". Some of their lunches I can make ahead and place in the fridge for the next day. This is also the time I let them have juice. So here is what we had for lunch today, simple and easy!



Organic baby carrot sticks, organic mozzarella string cheese, organic apples, and organic Annie's whole wheat cracker bunnies(good alternative to goldfish, I'm working on making my own cheese crackers today though) 1 organic pear juice box.


My daughter ate two plates and my son ate all of his! In the future I will post some different things we eat for lunch including my lunches, also my alternatives to sandwiches and why I don't buy lunch meat anymore, and yummy healthy pizzas!