Since Chicago Public schools changed their food provider to Aramark about 4 years ago, I’ve been packing school lunch for my kids at home every single school day. Their school food is not only unhealthy but also unappetizing due to the fact that their school doesn’t have its own kitchen so the food is prepared and heated up at another school’s kitchen, transferred to their school, and wait until being served. My son who would eat fast food 3 meals a day every day if provided, refuses to eat any school lunch including his favorite, pizza, at school. This is really sad because there are many kids who have no other option but to eat that school lunch.
Preparing school lunch every single morning is not easy. I don’t want them to eat bland, cold sandwiches, or munch on raw veggie pieces every day either. I purchased 2 types of thermos containers (Thermos Funtainer, 10 Ounce Food Jar, and LunchBots Thermal 16-ounce Stainless Steel Insulated Food Container) to be able to pack hot lunches. I really like these containers.
- I can just heat the leftovers from the previous night and pack for school lunch.
- I can pack warm sandwiches or burgers.
- They can eat their vegetables at lunch too.
- I don’t have to come up with 5 types of small things to pack a bento style lunch box every day. 1 or 2 entrees are enough.
- They are big enough to hold sufficient food to feed a very hungry pre-teen boy. 🙂
Here is a list of ideas to pack in thermos containers for school lunch:
Sandwiches
With thermos containers, you can pack any type of warm sandwiches and burgers for lunch. The trick is to keep the bread or the buns dry and prevent them from getting soggy.
1. Chicken Sandwich: I toast the buns and grill the chicken breast. I heat the containers as explained in this post and place the warm buns and chicken in the container. I pack all the garnish separately so that buns won’t get soggy. Kids add the lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers in the sandwich at lunchtime at school.
2. Hot Dogs: I cook the links and put them in the containers. Kids put the links in the buns at school. There are garnish and sauces to top at school if they want them.
3. Meatballs (kefta) in pita pocket: I place grilled kefta patties and place them in warmed up thermos containers. I spread hummus in pita and place them in plastic containers so that they don’t get dry and hard. Kids put the keftas in pitas at lunch time. They don’t want me to add rice, lettuce or tomatoes as they serve these pita sandwiches at restaurants but you definitely could.
4. Pesto chicken in pita pocket: This is one of my kids’ favorite. I grill chickens and place them in thermos containers. I spread pesto sauce inside pita halves and pack them in plastic containers to keep them soft. Kids put the chicken pieces inside pita halves at lunch time at school.
INSULATED LUNCH CONTAINERS WE USE
Stew Dishes
You can pack any type of stew or casserole dishes with vegetables and/or meat. You have to have it ready the night before. Then the only thing you need to do in the morning is to warm them up and put them in thermos containers. You can serve them layered on top of carbs such as rice, bulgur, or pasta.
5. Great northern bean stew: We love northern beans, pinto beans, red beans, any type of beans. Here is how to prep dried beans for last-minute use.
6. Chickpea stew: Chickpeas can be cooked with or without meat. My favorite meatless recipe is to simmer chickpeas and cauliflower with canned Indian simmer sauces. It’s a great simple meatless recipe.
7. Green beans: Green beans are one of our favorites, especially if they are from our vegetable garden. On this day, I included rice and topped it with green beans.
8. Any type of mixed vegetable stew or casserole: At this point, you can tell that you can cook any type of veggie stew or casserole for thermos containers. This are peas and potatoes (which are hidden at the bottom).
9. Ratatouille: This is one of the few times I went above and beyond out of my usual cooking style, which is “visually appealing” on top of delicious. I’m usually focused on nutritious value and taste and ignore the looks and visual appeal. I’m not sure how it looked at lunch time after traveling from home to school in lunch boxes, but at least I tried to make it look nice in the morning.
LUNCH BOXES AND BAGS
Meat & Carbs
If you don’t have time for complicated recipes, plain grilled protein and carbs are the way to go.
10. Salmon and rice: In order to simplify my menu planning, we eat seafood once a week. That means the next day, kids are eating seafood at lunch.
11. Salmon and pesto spaghetti: The salmon above is with rice. This time it’s spaghetti with pesto sauce.
12. Pasta: {Ground beef filled jumbo shells}: This is one of my favorite 5-minute recipes. I usually have cooked ground beef {like homemade hamburger helper} ready in the freezer. I defrost them. Fill cooked jumbo shells with meat. Lay them on a mini oven tray and sprinkle them with shredded cheese. Voila! You get kids looking forward to the lunch break.
13. Homemade pies: Homemade pies are great both as an entree as well as sides. The one pictured here is pie (Borek) stuffed with potatoes. You can also go for meat or spinach.
Dine-out leftovers
Restaurant leftovers are the best when you have no idea what to pack for school lunch on Monday morning.
14. Leftovers from a dine out: Indian butter chicken and Vietnamese dish
15. Leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner: Turkey and sweet potatoes
Soups
You can prepare filling soups and pack it as an entree for lunch. Here are 5 great soup recipe ideas for a hot lunch.
16. Minestrone Soup by Mixed Greens Blog
17. Healthy Chicken Tortilla Soup Slow Cooker Recipe by must Have Mom
18. Cheesy Chicken and Vegetable Soup by This Silly Girl’s Kitchen
19. Chicken Pot Pie Soup by Gimme some Oven
20. Pasta e Fagioli Soup by Cooking Classy
Containers I use and highly recommend {amazon affiliate}
I saw this on Pinterest and these are great ideas for us mom’s that have to pack a daily lunch. Thanks!
Im surprised to see “burek” mentioned in your post. Love burek /sirnica
🙂 One of our favorite salty pastries.
Thanks for sharing! What a great treat for kids during the week!
Thank you very much for your kind words. They are using their brains all day to learn things and I think they need to get proper nutrition to help with that.
Do you use thermos funtainers and Lunchbots for the thermos? How do both do with keeping things until lunch? or longer
Yes, I alternate between those and bigger insulated containers I purchased recently since kids got bigger and need more food for lunch. I prep the lunches around 6:30 am at home. They have their lunch breaks around 11:30 am at school. They both say their lunches stay warm. As a matter of fact, just last week, I put turkey chili in the insulated containers for both kids but my son told me he didn’t need lunch because they were having a pizza party. I got lazy to empty it and kept the container as is on the countertop until 12:00 pm and ate the chili myself for lunch. It was nicely warm and the taste was normal.
Where can I find the wide thermos for sandwiches. The round ones
We just started to do this for my son, it makes such a difference for lunch on cold days. Well cold in San Diego 🙂
To be honest, your meals look no better than CPS. Your meals barely have veggies, all highly processed, and are all carbs. Why not save yourself the trouble in that case? Hot dogs and hamburgers aren’t doing them that much different then the meals the school provides.
Retired RN working as a sub.,the school lunches are discusting. Anything would be better. Please try noy to be so rude
Miss Jasmine
I feel like you need to give this nice lady a break. Its not your kid and its not your business. she is just sharing what she knows and what her kids will eat. Everyone is different. If you want to feed your kid something else it’s fine. Where is your ideas/page that we can go to and insult you for trying to make a difference. I bet your kids eat fast food.
Jasmine,
I appreciate your comment. There are two things that I’d like to clear up.
First, it’s not only me complaining about CPS school lunches, it’s mainly my kids. There’ll be mornings where I’d kindly ask (beg) them to eat school lunch that day either because we’re running late or like you said we don’t have anything particularly “healthier” at home. They’ll ask me to put a slice of cheese between two slices of bread and they’d prefer to eat that than the school lunch. Not all schools have kitchens so the meals are heated at another school and get transported. They get soggy and mushy when they are served at the final destination.
Second, yes, there are hot dogs and burgers on my list which I pack maybe few times a month. In addition, I pay attention to the source and content of my ingredients. I buy organic hot dogs without nitrates and organic ground beef or burger patties. We’ve recently got hooked on Aldi’s veggie burger patties in addition to burger patties. In my mind, that’s better than eating the hot dogs, corn dogs and nachos, which I have no idea what type of meat they use, every single week. My kids eat pizza every Friday as a part of our family tradition. I make and bake it from scratch. When I pack hot dogs for lunch that day, they’ll have veggies for dinner. It’s all about balance.
Both my boys , 15 &16 yrs old have been eating home lunches in school because school lunch is horrible. I’ve always made them sandwiches but now I’ve been making hotdogs, quesadillas, burgers … you name it , it goes in the thermos and stays warm till lunch . I’ve noticed their attitude is better after school also since both are not eating cold sandwiches…will be stocking up on different sizes of thermos !
Hi there for the hot dogs or any other food choice. Do you heat the thermo? For the hot dogs do you include the hot water?
Thanks
I tried to send chicken noodle soup yesterday with my son and he wouldn’t touch it. On the other hand everyone else had double servings because it was so good. Any ideas on how to curb my sons pickiness while at school? I even told him if he ate his food he could have a cookie. He didn’t eat anything. At home we have him try two bites first.
What a great idea! How do the lunch boys fit in their lunch boxes or do they take the bots separately and that’s all they have for lunch? Do you have a pic of how the bot and rest of their lunch all fit in their lunch boxes? Would love to see the type of lunch box and size that would accommodate, thankyou!!
My question is how does soup not get mushy the noodles
Christy, Which meal or recipe are you referring to?