As Promised, the Lame Lunch from Tuesday

A thermos of leftover soup, mango gelatin, corn flakes, mochi with red bean paste, cut-up watermelon.

It's true; despite your best efforts most of the time, some lunches are just lame. You don't plan ahead, or you overslept, or you barely slept at all because a kid crawled in next to you at 3am, or D, All of the Above. You wake up, look at the clock and say---well, no sense repeating it, you know what to say.

This lunch, for instance, has too much sugar and not enough fat. Sure, there is nutrition in the soup, and La Primera ate everything, but La Segunda ate the sweets and ditched the soup and came home crabby.

On the other hand, that story I told the other day is true: I really did visit the cafeteria and find the kids eating cold whole-wheat tortillas topped with cold grated cheese and chopped tomatoes, which they told me in all sincerity was "pizza." I mean, come on! Even without a name, the toppings were totally falling off--it was impossible to eat. Why not roll the fillings in the tortilla and call it a burrito? Then, even despite the cold ingredients, it would be easier to eat and they would not be lying to children. How can they lie to children about pizza? It's the ONE food all children can correctly identify, and the school, which is supposed to be the source of knowledge, pulls the rug right out from under them. Eloise thought she hated lasagne because she once tasted the cafeteria version, but Aunt Jenny's lasagne set her right again. The one thing school lunch has going for it is the human element. The cafeteria ladies are nice, and the food, though assembled from government-surplus ingredients, is at least handled with affection for the children, and that is something of value.

Unlike Lunchables. Lunchables make me cry. Everything about them is wrong and disgusting. On the physical plane you have the lack of nutrition and freshness and genuine deliciousness; on the spiritual plane, what message are you sending to a child when you send them to school with that? It makes me think of an awful moment in the Family Dollar last week when I heard a middle-school-aged boy say to his mother, "Is this my dinner?" and he was holding two packages of candy. She responded in the affirmative.  No, she was not joking. Yes, it was his dinner, and he wasn't very happy. Kids know.

Bento mom is on her soapbox, people. When I told my kids about the boy who got candy for dinner, first they thought he was joking, and then they said, Lucky! Because they do not have candy for dinner, or Lunchables. Sometimes as a treat we have ice cream for dinner and dinner for dessert, just to mix it up. The worst lunch they have had to have is the one pictured above, or, yes, apples and peanut butter. Or salsa mixed with refried beans and served with tortilla chips, with a cut-up organic apple on the side. Anything I can scrape together will be made of better-quality ingredients than cafeteria fare, and nothing in my cupboards is as nutritionally or emotionally dead as Lunchables.

If you keep decent-quality food in your house, you cannot pack a bad lunch. So just get over it. Your children are ambassadors of good food, and even though some kids tease them, other kids want a bite.

To conclude, I know you are curious about the watermelon, how it fits so perfectly in the container. Here is what you do: Find a lidded container with thin sides. Slice the watermelon as thick as the container is deep, or just a bit thinner. Press the container into the slice like a cookie cutter. Cut into sections. That way, the kid gets as much melon as possible, and the pieces don't get all bruised and watery from jostling around. Happy packing!