Thursday, November 8, 2012

School Lunches: To Begin

It took me this long in the children's school career to know what I have to say about packing school lunches.  I'm going to start posting on simple brown-bag tricks and menus that have been helping us along.  I've made a new label for these posts:  "tips and menus for packed lunches."  It's to remind us that packed lunches aren't just for school; we pack meals for picnics, car trips, adult lunch breaks at work, etc.

To begin, here is one trick that has been wonderfully helpful to us:


 
Stand an apple on a cutting board. Cut the whole apple in thirds, top to bottom, turn it 90 degrees, and cut it in thirds top to bottom again.  This makes the core in its own little square in the middle.  Keep the pieces together like a puzzle and put a rubber band around the whole apple.  There's a cored, sliced apple that will not brown until it's time to eat!  We like this so much better than using Fruit Fresh or lemon juice on apple slices.

Linking up with Eat, Make, Grow blog hop.

15 comments:

ChatterBlossom said...

This is genius!!!
-Jamie
http://chatterblossom.blogspot.com/

Sew Blessed Maw [Judy] said...

What a fantastic idea...

Dianna said...

I love this tip! We started doing it this year and it is so easy.

Jennifer Jo said...

You da bomb, gurlfreeyend!

Hazel said...

Brilliant! I rub apple slices with cinnamon, but sometimes my youngest wants apple without cinnamon and she does seem to eat more apple at lunchtime if it's sliced rather than biting round a whole fruit.

Beth said...

LOVE IT!!

Beth in the City said...

This is great! My daughter has been taking an apple every day.
Beth in Baltimore

Unknown said...

Cute! Our kids loved bagels for school lunches since they didn't squash like bread did...

Sarah Barry said...

that is the niftiest tip. i hate to bite into an apple. i much prefer that it's cut.

so delighted to know this.

Hazel said...

I've cut my daughter's break time apple like this this morning and she's very impressed! So was her 11 year old brother.
I told her I got the idea from you and 'Margo in America' has now been elevated to genius level in our house! I've a feeling her friends and teacher will be showed it in great detail...

Melanie said...

This is brilliant! And I'm *so* excited about your packed meal tips category - we need a boost for lunches in our house!

Meghan said...

My mind is blown. This is genius. Why can I never come up with these obvious and easy solutions on my own?

Anonymous said...

Love this apple idea! I usually just cut the apple in half vertically, then scoop out the core with a melon baller. It works wonderfully well, with virtually no waste, but I confess I want to try this method too....we'll see what kind of comments I get from my home lunch crew by prepping apples this way. :o)

Brenda

Unknown said...

Love it and definitely doing it for my loof tooofed kindergartener who loves apples!
Thanks for linking up to Eat Make Grow :)

Jenny said...

This is life changing! I've been looking through your old posts for recipes (this blog is a goldmine for me!), and here I stumble upon this. I can't wait to surprise my big boy.