Making Lunches Easy

For me lunch is that odd man out for meals. Breakfast food is a big favorite around here, and we have lots of supper favorites, but lunch was getting ignored. It was hard to get worked up about it. But with the start of officially homeschooling now I knew I had to get my act more together and I had to make it easy and nutritious.

So I thought I would share my kitchen tip with you for making lunches easier.

First I have have a handful of super easy meals that I can get together in 10 minutes or less, start to on the table. They include such favorites as:

1. grilled cheese sandwiches (with a bit of cream cheese in addition to regular cheese) and fruit
2. poached eggs, toast and fruit
3. cold sandwiches and fruit, although I try to make sure the sandwiches have protein in them
   
4. leftovers
5. Snacking lunch of fruit, cheese, crackers
   

But my new secret weapon for making lunches easier is the 2 day plan. I plan a meal, usually a casserole of some type, a skillet meal, or a pasta that will be good for 2 meals, and plan them staggered. This, of course, adheres to my favorite kitchen rule of "why do one when you can do two!" which truly helps me so much!

So my menu for lunches often looks like this:

Monday - Pasta Meal
Tuesday - Casserole
Wednesday - Pasta meal again
Thursday - Casserole again
Friday - easy meal

The beauty of it is that it means for at least 2 days of the week there is minimal kitchen prep for lunch, almost no clean up, and nothing hot turned on! This makes it easier for me to have nutritious meals at lunch and still spend lots of time with my girls outside the kitchen!

Although this helps me a lot, I would still love to hear what else you do to make lunches easier! With two littles and one starting homeschooling in the mornings I would love some more ideas!