Lunchtime!

Sam came home with a note saying, in short, "Pack more food for this kid you moron!" I'd only packed a half dozen leftover Chinese chicken fingers with dipping sauce, grapes, applesauce, corn, milk, and a green tomato muffin. Only? Look at the size of his lunchbox! It holds more food than I eat during the hours he's at school! The sectioned box part was stuffed full of food.

He also has food reserves (a bunch of dried fruit) at school for hunger emergencies but apparently that's nearly all gone and we wouldn't want him to starve now would we? He came home, ate a bowl of pasta, drank orange juice, and turned up his nose at his salad (as usual), then ate three bowls of corn flakes and a banana.

He does seem to be packing on a couple of pounds in preparation for his next growth spurt but it seems as though he's eating his weight in food each day lately.

Each morning I struggle to fill his lunch with things that he likes and that we have in the house. I freeze things in lunch sized portions, sometimes buy stuff especially for his lunches, and our pantry is generally well stocked but it's still a struggle. I wish there was a hot lunch option at Sam's school but there isn't, kids bring their own lunches and snacks.

Still, I wouldn't want to subject him to the hot lunches served at our grade school. I have a hard time remembering specifics, probably too traumatic, but I do remember that it smelled the same every single day. How is that possible? Each day we got a foil hot tray and the lunch lady would plop a clear plastic cold section right on top of that so everything was lukewarm. Even worse, I remember that there were some days when I'd help the lunch lady prepare lunches which just meant putting the little foil pans trays in preparation for heating or plunking the cold section on top of the hot section. I also remember the teachers making us eat every single thing in our lunches and no, we could NOT shove the leftovers into our milk carton.

Sometimes we'd bring our lunches. At first we had lunch boxes with glass-lined thermoses that broke the first time they were used to whack another kid at the bus stop. I wish I could remember what was on my lunch box. After awhile, brown bags were the container of choice. Most days it would contain a peanut butter and jam sandwich, an apple, and either potato chips or cookies.

In middle school, there was a cafeteria with trays, and a lunch line and reasonably good food! But after seventh grade we moved and it was back to a grade school for me and for some reason I can't remember anything about lunches, perhaps it was because that was when my neurotic lunch eating, or not eating, began. My mom's attitude on lunches at that point was that I was old enough to deal with it myself but I don't remember packing lunches and I don't remember a hot lunch program. I do remember that once a week, on Friday, they would sell healthy snacks (pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds come to mind) and I'd always get those. I think there was always some sort of fundraiser going on too so that would mean chocolate bars!

In high school there was a lunch program and I had babysitting money so I had options. I could get hot lunch, and I did when they served pizza, but my most frequent lunch selection was a chocolate shake and a small bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. It appears that nutrition was not my primary concern. The school also had vending machines selling healthy snacks so I had the choice of various granola bars, miscellaneous nuts and seeds, and some sort of sugar-free hard candy that upset my stomach. Again, these options were often supplemented with fund-raiser food such as donuts in the morning and chocolate bars on a near constant basis. I'm lucky I don't weigh three hundred pounds given my eating habits as a teen.

I hope Sam makes better food choices as a kid than I did but I suspect he wont. The lure of junk food beckons, cheap, easily available and really really tasty. I don't know if the schools here sell candy and such but I do know that there is a push to use local and organic foods in the hot lunches which bodes well...as long as he'll eat it!