Back in the summer, my two lovely children, Peanut and Pumpkin went to camp. It was a lovely camp. Fresh air, sunshine, bugs, mud, snakes, fish, turtles, swamp, fields, forests, creek, canoes, all the things a camp should have. As part of the camp’s environmental education and out-reach program, they encourage litterless lunches.
The no-garbage lunch was my initial goal. It wasn’t hard. No juice boxes, no plastic wrap or baggies. They both have stainless steel water bottles. Sandwiches could be packed in reusable containers. Ta-da!
Pretty soon (end of day one) the girls complained about sandwiches.
They had taken them all school year long, and wanted a break. But what to do? What else goes in a lunch box? Surely someone somewhere has had to take a lunch? Someone perhaps that doesn’t ‘do’ sandwiches. And not Cornish pasties or empanadas.
While delicious, I did not want to get into the habit of making them. Besides, mine are nowhere near as tasty as Gabriel’s wife’s empanadas are. Never will be. And I’m fine with that. Because if they were? I’d make them more. And eat them more. Not good for the waistline.
[whistful sigh] but they are so very tasty….
Wibble.
Ahem.
Google search to the rescue! Innerwebbs powers unite! Form of…..ummm….huh.
Lunch?
About 262,000,000 results (0.10 seconds)
Uh-huh. Narrow it down. Let’s see. What else? It can’t have eggs or peanuts or nuts of any kind. And it can’t have waste.
Lunch no waste
About 366,000 results (0.14 seconds)
Most of the top links were to sellers of things like Laptop Lunches. There are an awful lot of things like that on the market. I looked at them and ruled them out pretty fast. While they fit the ‘no waste’ bill, that was still a lot of plastic. It didn’t look like the contents would travel that well unless the container was kept flat and horizontal. How difficult would they be for little hands to open and close? And how do you keep them cold? Yes, I live in Canada, but in the summer it gets hot and humid. And did I mention the swamp?
More poking around led to Bento Boxes, and some lovely, lovely blogs. I didn’t really want to order something online and have it arrive well after camp was over, so I improvised with containers I had on hand, and tried to follow the bento philosophy.
Filling them to be healthy and litterless was my primary goal. Yes, it would be nice to make cute food, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. The girls liked the lunches. They were tasty and looked good. And they weren’t sandwiches. They asked me to take pictures of them and ‘send them to the internet people’. I took pictures, but didn’t submit. Until recently!
I try to send a bento-ish lunch with them at least once per week. At the beginning of the school year, they drew lots of attention from some other students. And the teachers, too!
The other kids think they look ‘neat’ and ‘different, but in a good way’. Because we eat with our eyes before our stomachs, I try to get lots of colour into them. Which means lots of fruit and veg. Which makes reaching for 5-10 a day and eating the rainbow way easier.
:-)
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