For two terms I sent her to school with a lunch I would have been pleased to be given.
It came back. Not picked at — returned. The same three things, in the same box, having been to school and back in a bag on a peg, and then presented to me at the door at ten past three by a child who was, at that exact moment, asking for a snack.
It was not the food
This is the bit I got wrong for two terms. I kept changing what was in it and the problem was never what was in it.
Primary school lunch is short. Most of it is queuing and talking and looking at what somebody else has got. The actual eating window is maybe eleven minutes, in a hall, at a table, with nobody available to help.
So: anything that needs unwrapping properly doesn’t get eaten. Anything that needs two hands doesn’t get eaten. A whole apple came home every day for an entire term, and I took this as a comment on apples rather than a comment on the amount of time it takes a six-year-old to eat a whole apple in a room where her friends are leaving.
Cut it into a tub and it’s gone. Same apple.
Five small things
No main event. Five small things and none of them is the important one.
Usually: a plain wrap or a dry roll with something rolled in it, fruit already cut, something crunchy, something with a bit of protein in, and one thing she chose herself.
The chosen thing is the load-bearing item and it is often beige. I have made my peace with beige. On a day when she is tired and not that bothered, the chosen thing is why the box gets opened at all, and once the box is open the rest goes.
Sandwiches lost
I resisted this for a long time because a sandwich is what a packed lunch is.
Anything with moisture in it — tomato, cucumber, a wet filling — had gone soft by ten past ten. The bread was made in my kitchen at eight in the evening in a fridge and then spent four hours in a bag on a peg above a radiator, and I was judging it by the state it left in rather than the state it arrived in.
A wrap survives. A dry roll survives. It is less interesting and it gets eaten.
The flask
I tried a hot flask of pasta for about three weeks in January because it was cold and I felt guilty.
It was too hot at twelve, the lid needed two hands and a certain amount of grip, and on one occasion a member of staff had to open it, which Nell reported to me in the tone of someone describing a public humiliation. It cost eighteen pounds and it is in the cupboard.
For the record, the box we use now is an ordinary compartmented one from the supermarket, about six pounds, and nobody has paid us anything to mention any of this. It’s just the one that got used.
The night before
The whole box, made at eight in the evening, in the fridge, out with the coats.
Six minutes in the evening and six minutes in the morning are not the same six minutes. The morning version was done badly, at speed, while doing three other things, and it produced worse lunches — and, once a fortnight, no lunch, and a phone call.
Things people email to ask
- Why does my child bring their packed lunch home uneaten?
- Usually time and packaging rather than the food. Primary lunch is short, most of it is spent queuing and talking, and anything that needs unwrapping, cutting or two hands does not get eaten. When we switched to five small things that a six-year-old could open alone, the box started coming back empty without the food itself changing much.
- What should you put in a school packed lunch?
- Five small things rather than one main item and some extras. Ours is usually a plain wrap or a roll, fruit already cut into a tub, something crunchy, something with protein in it, and one thing she picked herself. The chosen thing matters more than it should — it is the reason the box gets opened at all on a bad day.
- Do sandwiches work in packed lunches?
- Not for us. Anything with a filling that involves moisture had gone soft by ten and came home in a condition I took personally. A plain wrap or a dry roll with something rolled inside survives four hours in a bag on a peg, which is the actual environment, rather than the fridge it was made in.
- Should you make packed lunches the night before?
- Yes, and it is the single highest-return change we made. Six minutes at eight in the evening is a different resource from six minutes at eight in the morning, and the evening version is better made. The whole box goes in the fridge overnight and comes out with the coats — no decisions are taken before school about food.
Where we checked
We are not experts in any of this. Where an entry touches something that has a proper answer, here is where the proper answer is.
- 01Healthier lunchbox ideas and swaps — NHS Healthier Families
Anna
Mid-thirties, former magazine copy editor, now works part-time from the kitchen table. Started this as a private record and only made it public because friends kept asking for the recipes.
If this was any use
Breakfast, for people who are not morning people
Four people, twenty minutes, and nobody in this house is at their best before about nine. What survived is three things on rotation, all of which can be eaten by somebody who is not fully awake.
The school run, worked backwards from the door
We were late four days out of five and I kept trying to fix it by getting up earlier, which is the one thing that doesn’t work. The fix was writing down what the door actually needs and moving all of it to the night before.
Feeding other people’s children
Nell started being invited places, and then people started being invited here, and I discovered I had no idea what I was doing — including a fairly frightening twenty minutes about a peanut that turned out not to be a peanut.
Comments
They’re open, but they go through me first — every one is read and approved by hand, which is slow and occasionally very slow. Email is the fastest route, and I answer most of them.
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