Friday, February 26, 2010

Did you brown bag it?

This probably isn't the most exciting post I'll ever write but it's a topic that comes up daily in the Hale household. When I was in school I would mostly eat hot lunch with the exception of the days when they were serving something disgusting like Johnny Rib (our school's knockoff McRib, which makes me gag just looking at it). But my son absolutely refuses to partake in hot lunch EVER! It makes me crazy! How can he not slobber over those delicious pizza squares they serve? I just feel bad because there are only so many ways you can fix PB & J. I try to mix it up so I'm not packing him the same thing everyday and I always include a cute picture of an animal everyday and a little treat as a surprise. His favorite is when I flattened a piece of bread and spread peanut butter and jelly on it then roll it up and cut it into pieces so it looks like sushi. Then I toss some chop sticks in his lunch box. I have to admit it is pretty cute.

When I was in school the lunch trays were made of hard plastic. There were a variety of colors. I remember we used to hold our breath until we saw what color tray our crush was carrying. Because everybody knew that if you and your crush were carrying the same color tray you were totally going to be together forever. These days they serve on styrofoam (don't ask me why they are going backwards greenwise!) so I can't even use that one. Not that I want my first grader to have a crush yet anyway!
(This was my favorite lunchbox!)


Did you eat hot lunch at school or did you brown bag it? And what was your favorite hot lunch?


xo,

Stephanie

10 comments:

Kim Harrington said...

I only bought hot lunch on Wednesdays--pasta day! I'm a bit of a pasta addict.

Brooke Reviews said...

I ended up buying hot lunch often at school. My favorite was pizza day. Which I think was a couple times a week lol.

My favorite lunch box was my Jem and the Holograms one :)

I love the PBJ Sushi! I want to make that for myself lol

Heather R. Holden said...

I've always been a brown-bagger. That ended up being a VERY convenient trait after I was diagnosed with diabetes--no way would I have been able to guess how many carbs the school lunches had! (And even if I could, it probably would've made my blood sugars go crazy, considering how junky their food tended to be.)

Rena Jones said...

I was so sheltered. My grade school didn't even have a cafeteria, so we had to brown bag it, or lunch box it. Towards the end they started serving pizza or hotdogs one day a week. Then I went to junior high and saw that schools served real food. Culture shock. Well, at least it looked real. I mostly bought sub sandwiches and those really huge chocolate chip cookies. Even in high school, I never got into the whole hot lunch deal.

TinaFerraro said...

How cute about the colored trays, Steph! That HAS to appear in one of your books some day!

I did a combo buy/bring. My favorite "buy" was on Fridays, because that was when Catholics couldn't eat meat on Fridays, so the caf had to go meatless with cheese pizza or fish sticks, both of which I loved.

I also have fond memories of warm chocolate chip cookies and these chocolate peanut butter bars!

Cara King said...

I usually got a hot lunch in grade school, and when I didn't, I packed my own lunch. (My mom figured that once we were six, we knew how to make a sandwich, so we did our own.) My favorite cafeteria lunch was grilled cheese! Yum. I also loved pizza and fish sticks.

I brought my lunch on the days they had food I hated: sloppy joes, and burritos. (They were revolting burritos, and to this day I don't know what was in them...)

Marley Gibson said...

The sushi PB&J is brilliant!!!! We didn't really have a cafeteria in school, but a lunch room. I did a little bit of everything...brown bagging, lunch boxing, and eating the fried filet o'the day from the lunch room.

Something my mother would do -- and you may want to try this, Steph -- was she would give me a thermos of tomato soup with a cooked hot dog in the thermos. I would take the hot dog out, put it on an accompanying bun and voila...ketchup! So, I'd have hot dog and soup. Genius, eh?

Anonymous said...

When I was younger we tended to eat the hot lunch at school unless it was something we didn't like. By the time I hit junior high I was pretty much buying my lunch everyday since our school brought in fast food. And in high school, once I was old enough to drive we'd head down the road to the supermarket and pick up something in the deli since we had an open campus.

I honestly think when I have kids, I'd probably make them lunches most of the time. I just don't trust that cafeteria food.

D.M.Cunningham said...

Star Wars lunch box - soup, PB&J (not the amazing Sushi style), some crackers for the soup. On occasion the peanut butter and celery with raisins - Ants on a Log! So good.

I still bring lunch to work with me. I wish I had a SW lunchbox for it. Sigh.

Celise said...

Forced to eat hot lunch until about junior yr...when we were finally able to go off campus and get some "real" food. LOL