When did school lunch boxes become gourmet dining experiences?
Like most things, school lunch boxes can teach kids some pretty valuable life lessons. Or at least, that was the case until they became works of pop-up restaurant art, writes Darren Levin.
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Half a punnet of cherry tomatoes.
Three apples. Two bananas. An entire cucumber. Three muesli bars. Two sandwiches. Two mini-muffins. A trio of processed cheese sticks. A pack of carrots. Two nectarines. Grapes and a small box of nuts.
That’s not a full week’s worth of shopping or the rider of the world’s most boring rock band. It’s also the packed lunch of a Victorian high school student, and it’s sent the Aldi Mums Facebook group into an absolute tizz.
“If I could fit more in I would,” said the mum, describing my week but also her very active and sporty son’s jumbo lunch. “He NEVER stops eating.”
As a former teenage boy myself, I can confirm eating vast amounts of food is something teenage boys do.
But isn’t the school lunch box the only place parents can wrest back some modicum of control? You can’t really padlock the pantry or hide the fridge, but packing a lunch that fits into a normal sized school bag? Well, who’s going to stop you? If they want more, they can get a job at a supermarket or sharpen their knife skills. If they’re still hungry after devouring it all during first recess, they will learn important life lessons: rationing, discipline, pacing yourself, time management, and bartering with peers.
Meanwhile over on the rival Mums Who Budget and Save Facebook page, another parent has taken school lunch prep to an entirely different extreme. Sick of making it all from scratch every few days, she spent an afternoon prepping an entire term’s worth of meals. All up there were 250 items loaded into the freezer, including 66 sausage rolls, 36 meatballs, sandwiches shaped as spring rolls and dumplings, 16 chicken and cheese pita pockets, 19 mini croissants, 10 cheeseburger sliders, and 23 ham-and-cheese pizza pinwheels.
I’ve been to weddings with fewer canapes that that, but this mum of two (or is it two hundred?) says her kids really need the variety.
“I’ll take one to three items from this cook up per day and pop them in the lunch box with plenty of fresh produce, some dairy and extra protein such as a boiled egg,” she told Kidspot.
As much as I love pizza pinwheels, school lunches feel like they’re getting completely out of hand.
Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned mono lunch consisting of a crustless vegemite sandwich, a box of sultanas, two serves each of fruit and veg, and a bag of popcorn, roasted fava beans, macrobiotic pepitas, or whatever else substitutes for Samboys BBQ chips these days?
If my kids want variety, I’ll gladly substitute the vegemite for cream cheese, avocado or jam, but not Nutella. Never Nutella. That’s just dessert masquerading as sandwich spread.
As a dad of three growing and endlessly hungry daughters, I refuse to spend more than three minutes of thinking time – let alone an entire Sunday – on school lunch prep.
That’s not to say I don’t care about their health and wellbeing. I just can’t think of a worse way to spend an afternoon than batch baking pumpkin frittatas, rolling coconut dusted bliss balls, or watching YouTube tutorials on how to correctly spiral Zoodles or boil sushi rice.
Being a parent can often feel like being a line cook at a hotel buffet, which is why I choose to limit my culinary expression to one meal per day. For dinner it’s an ever evolving and culturally diverse smorgasbord, but the best school lunches are made unconsciously, efficiently and from whatever’s left over in the fridge.
Parents of Australia – it’s time to embrace the mono lunch and get your Sundays back.