Hello everybody!  I hope you guys are well and safe.  The trains and buses are semi running here in New York City.  It’s great to see everyone working hard and together to get this city back on track.  All the best to those currently working outside, safe travels to and from your destinations and may you all recover swiftly.

Before my daughter started Kindergarten, my husband and I decided to take her to eat lunch a few days at her future school.  They offered free lunch to children during the summer.  I wanted her to get acquainted with the cafeteria and I also wanted to see if she liked the food that they served.  Some days, she ate well (hamburgers and sandwiches were a hit), but the day she was given pasta and meat sauce separately, she took a small sampling of the meat and left it completely.  She did it eat some of the pasta, and I tried to convince her to eat more of the sauce, but she wasn’t having it.  Of course, she had no complaints with the desserts they offered.  Neither with the plain or chocolate milk and fruits, but the main dishes and even the vegetables were mostly a miss.  I knew then that I would be making her lunches for school.  At first, I was nervous because I wasn’t sure what to pack in her lunch.  I’ve never done this before so I searched online for ideas.  I saw so many wonderful pictures of lunches packed by fabulous parents!  They were educational and inspiring.  Also, her school has implemented a healthy eating program.  It was one of her first projects.  They wanted her to draw or cut out pictures of healthy food and glue them onto a piece of paper resembling a plate like this:

Go to www.choosemyplate.gov for more great information

We all learned a lot with this project!  Now, I consult this clip art, which I made into a mini poster and placed it on my kitchen wall,  in order to send my daughter with a healthy portion from each group.  I went to Wal-Mart and bought small food containers and I place everything into my daughter’s lunch bag sort of like a bento box.  Also, in order to remember what she ate Monday through Friday, my husband placed a big dry/erase white board, which he found outside a while back, in the kitchen for me to jot down all the foods per day and keep a list of foods to pick from.

This is what keeps me sane!  I’m a visual person so this helps me out a lot.  FYI: If you spy the word KRAVE under Monday’s menu this is Kellogg’s new cereal that we’re totally addicted to.  It’s so delicious.  It doesn’t last two days in the house, because of me! 🙂

The board looks different this week because I’ve written “school closed” for the whole week and at the bottom there’s a short hand version of her lunch for each day.  It’s the norm now so I just keep it up.  Many thanks to all those moms and dads who post pictures of their children’s lunches.

Stay alert, stay alive.  Until next time…