School Lunches

[mama2two]

we are new to the gluten-free diet and i have gotten so many ideas from this site! thanks for sharing. I have been compiling a list of foods that I can fix for her lunch for school and would appreciate any ideas. I am also creating a list to give to family members so they know what my daughter and my husband can have, there are always so many temptations at others homes. Thanks!!

[Nic]

Hi, we are not new to the diet as my son was diagnosed 2 years ago at 4 years old but this coming school year will be the first time I have to pack a school lunch for him so I feel very nervous about it too. Here is what I have come up with so far:

tuna on Ener G foods light tapioca bread

peanut butter and jelly on the above bread

taylor ham sandwich

hotdogs (can be kept warm in a thermos)

chicken nuggets (Ian's are allergen free)

hard boiled eggs

rolled up thumann's bologna or ham

gluten free/diary free pizza (still not sure how to keep that warm)

macaroni in a thermos

fruit cup

fruit snacks

fresh fruit

chips

gluten free cookies

So far this is all I got but it is enough to give him something different everyday if thats what he wants. If you have any other ideas please pass them on.

Nicole

[Darn210]

My daughter does not like any of the breads that I have tried or made. ($$$$ Ughhh $$$$$). She has switched to rice cakes. I send it in its own container (tupperware or snaplock) so that it doesn't fall apart in the lunch box. Then I send a very small cup of peanut butter and a plastic knife and she "assembles" it herself at school. She was never a jelly eater so we don't have to deal with that part of the equation.

The rice cakes would also work well with a tuna or chicken salad (if your child will eat them). I saw on here somewhere else where their child eats tuna salad with the Tostitos Scoops. That would work for a "breadless" lunch, too. I was going to try it this summer to see if the Scoops would entice her to try chicken salad. She likes ranch dressing so I think I'll try some sort of ranch version.

She also would take a couple of slices of ham (she never ate that on bread before either) and a cheese stick.

I was looking for small unflavored rice cakes but could never find any - soy crisps were the closest thing I found. You could use those with little round pieces of ham and slices of cheese and make it look kind of like a lunchable.

The rest of her lunch is the same as before . . . carrots or apple sauce, pudding or jello, etc

A friend of mine actually went to her school district and worked with someone in the lunch program at her daughter's school and they researched what her daughter could buy at school - she actually bought her lunch 2-3 times a week. She wouldn't get everything that everyone else got and somedays she would have to bring a little to supplement. I don't know if I'm that trusting - at least not yet because I'm pretty new to this, too.

Kids don't need the same kind of variety as adults do. At this point in her life, my daughter would be happy with peanut butter and rice cakes every day. If I ask her what she wants for lunch - that's her response - every day - even when school is out.

[2Boys4Me]

I still can't believe Americans can take peanut butter to school . Our school "discourages" peanuts. If there are not epi-pen peanut allergic kids in a class then students can take peanut butter but are supposed to wash hands really well afterward, and their desks also. The kids eat at their desks in the classroom and sometimes if it's a split class, say grades 3 & 4, then sometimes the grade 3s go next door and the grade 4s from next door come in and the desks have to be clean in case one of them is allergic.

It would make my life a he!! of a lot easier if I could send pb sandwiches.

Meanwhile, my gluten-free son usually takes the same boring things:

2 or 3 slices banana bread (from Incredible Edible Gluten Free Food for Kids)

a couple of ham roll ups with grated cheese inside (sometimes rolled in rice paper, sometimes plain)

hard boiled egg

cheese strings

egg salad bunwich (on a bun made from Roben Ryberg's Egg Loaf in the Gluten Free Kitchen cookbook)

almonds

cashews

grapes

School ends here on Wednesday, and I dread the summer because I find lunch is the hardest thing to make gluten-free.

For those of you who haven't found a decent bread yet, try Lorka150's flax bread. There's a huge thread about it in the recipe section.

[kbtoyssni]

I still can't believe Americans can take peanut butter to school . Our school "discourages" peanuts. If there are not epi-pen peanut allergic kids in a class then students can take peanut butter but are supposed to wash hands really well afterward, and their desks also. The kids eat at their desks in the classroom and sometimes if it's a split class, say grades 3 & 4, then sometimes the grade 3s go next door and the grade 4s from next door come in and the desks have to be clean in case one of them is allergic.

It would make my life a he!! of a lot easier if I could send pb sandwiches.

School ends here on Wednesday, and I dread the summer because I find lunch is the hardest thing to make gluten-free.

Have you tried sunflower seed butter? It tastes almost the same as PB (I can't tell the difference when it's in a sandwich) and I can get it at the local grocery store.

I love summer lunches. We eat tortillas a lot (melt cheese on a corn tortilla and top with lettuce, tomato, salsa, etc) and beans on toast (heated baked beans on toast) or hotdogs.

[EmmaQ]

I TA that most breads on the market are gross and costly. WholeFood GlutenFree BakeHouse is one that is pretty good. Our 2nd to buy bread is Kinni sandwich. But I usually make my own from Sorghum flour and it is fantastic, millet is as well. I highly recommend reading Bette Hagman's books,start with freebies in the library and then purchase. I purchased gluten-free Gourmet Bakes Bread, really wonderful b/c it gets away from all that high glycemic index white rice and tapioca bread stuffs.

We will be enbarking on gluten-free lunches this coming year and I am so not looking forward to it. Kindy is 1/2 day and I'd prefer he ate at home. Knowing how strongly I feel about this, I will likely either pick him up early or take him in late daily, the school can just deal with it. I know my son is not prepared to handle someone touching his food or being near other's with gluten, if gluten is served in our home, it's on the other side of the table from where he eats. He would be in melt down city if what happened to his brother happened to him.

I had my oldest on a gluten-free trial last year and some kid in his class laid his sandwich on top of my son's and laughed, these were 3rd graders. I was livid. My son ended up not eating lunch that day and was miserable. At least he knew enough not to eat it, but he didn't know enough to tell someone. I would have come to school with more food for him. That is an expensive sandwich to have to throw out b/c it became cross contaminated by a bully who thought it was freaking funny - not!

I don't know who not to be mad about that situation. And I don't know how to go about preventing it from happening to my other son. Some kids are just down and out rude and mean. And my experience thus far is the school is helpless to control it from happening. My oldest was also verbally threatened this year by another student in his class, the child threatened to poison him to death during lunch. The teacher caught it and called me. WHY am I sending another off to an institution of "higher" learning...

Anyway, I got off a bit, I do that, I'm so sorry...

Em

[Juliebove]

My daughter has additional allergies, peanuts being one of them. She likes sunflower seed butter, pumpkin seed butter and more recently, cashew butter. She will eat pretty much any of the breads I've bought for her. But her favorite one comes frozen and has seeds and fruit in it. She also loves the zucchini bread I make. Recipe is on this site. I often make it in the form of muffins.

She has a couple of little containers like this:

Open Original Shared Link

In the middle I will put hummus, salsa, nacho chreese (you could use cheese sauce but she's allergic), or refried beans. The outer portion will hold raw veggies, small chips, breadsticks, pretzels, etc. I've even sent in cold (but cooked) Ians chicken nuggets with some ketchup or honey mustard.

She has another container that holds milk and cereal. She has to have rice milk, but sometimes she opts for breakfast for lunch! The part of the container that holds the milk goes in the freezer to keep it cold.

She loves various bars such as boomi bars, raw pumpkin seed bars and some macrobiotic cashew butter bars. These are great if I'm running late and haven't really got time to fix her lunch. I'll just throw one of these in along with an apple or a tube of organic applesauce. Other quick things are fruit leather, boxes of raisins, Shelton's turkey sticks and certain kinds of beef jerky. It's hard to find beef jerky that is soy and gluten free but I can find it sometimes. She also likes little cans of Vienna sausages or fruit such as fruit cocktail or pears. Pretty much anything that comes in an individual package is something she will like.

She gets a lot of leftovers in her lunch. I try to make a little extra of whatever we had for dinner so I can send some in a thermos for her lunch. She also likes the little cans of Orgran Spaghetti, Shelton's chicken and wild rice soup, black bean soup, chili, or tomato soup. And from time to time she will eat cold pizza. I use the Namaste brand mix for the crust. Since she can't have dairy, I use some Chreese sauce, tomato sauce and pepperoni. I make little mini pizzas.

Other things she likes are Snappea crisps, and various Justtomatoes products such as the strawberries, blueberries and peas. I put those in a plastic bag. Also Tings (like Cheetos but no cheese), potato chips, Fritos and Tortilla chips.

I also buy the 2 packs of Enjoy Life cookies and the snack bars. Yes, they're expensive but so easy to toss in a lunch bag. And I find that while the boxes of cookies are cheaper, they tend to go stale before we can eat them all.

More recently she has been liking salad. We go to Central Market and she picks out some things from the salad bar for herself. She also likes the Falafel patties with tomato slices, but we do have to be careful with those because they can be c.c. by the pita bread.

[janelyb]

my son also has a dairy intollerence so we eat a lot of:

taquitos

rice

home made tortilla (out of rice and potato flours) sometimes used as bread too

waffles/pancakes

fruit/veggies w /dips

pbj or just jelly sandwhich on the enerG bread (I think it is yuk but he likes it)

tunafish (I limit this due to mercury- maybe like 2x a month)

cereal Gorilla munch

chicken

Gluten-free Casein-free chicken nuggets

corn or rice pastas

and ofcorse all Gluten-free Casein-free sweets like cakes, cookies, etc.... typically homemade

Larabars

wholefood has some bars that are nuts and fruits

Gluten-free Casein-free pizza

chips mostly corn chips

[mama2two]

Hi, we are not new to the diet as my son was diagnosed 2 years ago at 4 years old but this coming school year will be the first time I have to pack a school lunch for him so I feel very nervous about it too. Here is what I have come up with so far:

tuna on Ener G foods light tapioca bread

peanut butter and jelly on the above bread

taylor ham sandwich

hotdogs (can be kept warm in a thermos)

chicken nuggets (Ian's are allergen free)

hard boiled eggs

rolled up thumann's bologna or ham

gluten free/diary free pizza (still not sure how to keep that warm)

macaroni in a thermos

fruit cup

fruit snacks

fresh fruit

chips

gluten free cookies

So far this is all I got but it is enough to give him something different everyday if thats what he wants. If you have any other ideas please pass them on.

Nicole

Thanks for sharing your ideas with me. I really wish there was a support group that she and i could attend, i've researched this, the nearest one if 2hrs away. i wish that my daughter could meet other children who have to be on a special diet too, so she doesn't feel like she is the only one. I have thought of some of the same as you. but also:

tyson all natural grilled chicken strips

thai noodle soup

marshmellows (real nutritious, I know)

baked sweet potatoe with cinamin (my daughter loves cinamin)

yogurt

raisins

tyson all natural ham

hope some of these are helpful. I don't know if they will let me sent PB to school b/c so many with allergy to this so i have started giving her almond butter, if there will be no Pb i'll send this, it's makes a good sandwhich, but I don't know how it will be with apples. Good luck.

[Cheri A]

Oh, I love those little containers from The Container Store! I'm going to order a couple of those and a salad bowl for next year! Thank you!!

Sorry for those of you that are wishing you could send PB and cannot. But, as a mom of a peanut-allergic child, thank you for abiding by it. Definitely try the sun-butter. My son loves it.

I send many of the same things as you all do for lunches. Lots of leftovers in the thermos, tinkyada pasta with sauce and salads. Her favorite thing at the end of the school year was oil and vinegar to dip and cut up veggies. Sometimes she would ask for meat wrapped around celery sticks. Occasionally I'd send a slice of pizza warmed up and in foil that she said was pretty good.