Sandwiches are great…until they get wet in the lunch box, or worse-crushed by a piece of fruit or a book.
If you or your child is afraid to return to class with a simple sandwich this fall, it’s time to get rid of the old lunch-making habits.
No, we do not recommend buying lunch every day, unless your school has a delicious (and cheap) lunch plan. A delicious and relatively nutritious lunch can be made for only a few dollars a day.
Try these 10 cheap lunch recipes-each is around $5, and they offer enough variety to satisfy even the picky eaters in your family.
10 cheap school lunch ideas
Get ready: these lunch ideas will make you hungry.
1. Lunch box kebabs
Christina Hitchcock’s lunch box kebab is the perfect substitute for a tired sandwich, and the recipe she shared on her blog This is a goalkeeper It’s super simple.
Choose your junior’s favorite sandwich ingredients, such as meat, cheese, and vegetables, and glue them to short skewers in a plastic container. These ingredients will stay fresh, and you can add a small container of dipping sauce to the meal-mustard is my choice.
what do you need
- Black Forest Ham
- Cheddar Cheese Slices
- Grape tomatoes
- Skewers
- Yellow mustard
2. Cool Apple Tortillas
For kids who can’t get enough cheese but honestly need more food groups a day, these grilled and refrigerated quesadillas from Laura Fuentes mothers Is perfect.
They need a few minutes of preparation time, but it is worth it. Although designed for cold lunches, you can indeed cook quesadillas on the stove as you would during dinner time. That cheese has to be coagulated.
Fuentes put apples and cheese slices on thin slices, then grilled between 8-inch tortillas. There is plenty of room for ingredients—consider switching to whole-wheat tortillas or changing the cheese selection for new flavor combinations.
what do you need
- Flour tortillas
- Cheese slices
- Granny Smith Apple
3. Dot Pizza Big Dipper
Your resident pizza lover will ask for this simple, cheap lunch day after day. This is perfectly feasible because you can prepare a whole batch in advance and freeze them until you need to pack some pizza spoons.
Just follow the instructions in the recipe on Coupons.com to divide the refrigerated cookie dough good stuff Blog, put a little sauce and a slice of pepperoni on it. They are baked into flakes and you can season them.
what do you need
- Frozen cookie dough
- Pizza Sauce
- Pepperoni
4. No Bake Banana Burrito
This is a healthy lunch that requires zero cooking. promise!
This is a sweet twist of the typical PB&J: PB&J Banana Burrito.
Spread peanut butter and jelly on the tortilla, roll up a (peeled, of course) banana in the middle, and send it to school. Banana burritos!
If your child goes to a peanut-free school, it is easy to switch PB to another spread, such as sunscreen.
Feeling bowel movements from a whole day of parenting? Even younger students can prepare their own lunch.
what do you need
- Yellow banana
- peanut butter
- Strawberry preserves
- Flour tortillas
5. The Ultimate Bento Box
If your child prefers to eat grass, don’t worry about packing a meal, but pack a bunch of snacks that they will be excited to eat at lunchtime. Choose a reusable container that can contain four to six different sizes of snacks.
This is also a good way to compromise with a kid who loves sweets but doesn’t like eating vegetables: Of course, pack a sweet, but add healthy enough options around it so that it will all be eaten.
what do you need
Nike running a blog Choose to flourish, I like to make her kid’s bento box look like Lunchables. But this is what I put in the ideal box:
- Cookie round
- Cheddar Cheese Slices
- Green Paper
- Grape tomatoes
The fresh ingredients in this box are more expensive, but remember that this is one of the more customizable lunch options. You can substitute other ingredients such as citrus, pretzel sticks, apple slices, a handful of almonds, a hard-boiled egg and even some cookies.
It is also easy to adjust the portion size according to the student’s appetite.
6. Waffle Sandwich
Lanao, l. This cool recipe is provided and requires you to put the sandwich components into the waffle maker to fry some deliciousness. I said: Let’s not work so hard.
To make a simpler waffle sandwich, bake a frozen waffle, cut it in half, and spread ham and cheese. Then, either heat these amazing sandwich sticks in the microwave or bake them in a pan for a few minutes.
If you are a good parent, add a small cup of maple syrup and eat it. If you don’t care about your child’s happiness (and want to stay on the good side of the school guardian), skip it. Frozen waffles are sweet enough by themselves.
You can make a batch of these and freeze them so that they can be defrosted for the primary at lunchtime.
what do you need
- Frozen waffles
- Maple sugar
- Black Forest Ham
- Cheddar Cheese Slices
7. Perfect Yogurt
If one Perfect yogurt Seems to be the best treat in summer, it’s time to reconsider your way of school lunch. You can combine this nutritious yogurt, fruit and granola in a few minutes, and you can prepare a few at a time for a few days’ lunch.
what do you need
- Vanilla yogurt
- Strawberry
- blackberries
- Almond Butter Granola
8. Simple Mac and Cheese Bites
Children like macaroni and cheese, but this hot dish can’t fit well in a lunch box. Instead, grill some macaroni and cheese cubes, which you can store in the refrigerator to take with you.
Pinterest is full of “homemade” macaroni and cheese recipes for these foods, but let’s be realistic. This is not a Sunday dinner. It was a Monday morning, when you were sleepy, someone screamed like a banshee because she couldn’t find her other shoe.
So here is a super simple recipe to try:
To make these delicious foods, just follow the instructions to prepare your favorite boxed macaroni and cheese. When you are done, add some extra ingredients of your choice to the pot: chopped broccoli or spinach can easily be mixed into lunch.
Mix well, pour it all into a mini muffin tin (you may need to grease the pan first), put Parmesan cheese on top, and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Adjust to the crispness you want.
Freeze one batch and take out several at a time. Send a small container of ketchup to the school to soak.
This recipe can make about 12 in a mini muffin pan-but you may leave some as snacks!
what do you need
- Macaroni and cheese
- 2% milk
- Grated parmesan cheese
- Frozen cauliflower
- ketchup
9. Ants on wood
It’s time for some nostalgia from the early 90s, because you may have forgotten the ants on the logs, right? This is a seriously underrated snack, but if you eat enough, it can be counted as lunch.
There are many variations on the traditional combination of celery, peanut butter, and raisins, so use what your child is most likely to eat. Dry goods! Buttercream! crazy.
what do you need
- celery
- peanut butter
- raisin
10. Corn Dog Muffins
If you have a child who just wants to eat hot dogs, here is a way to send them to school without having to persuade the PTA to prepare grills for the cafeteria.
Stir some cornbread muffin mixture, pour it into that convenient mini muffin pan, put a slice of hot dog in the center of each muffin, and bake according to this Simple recipe From a fashionable mother. Freeze the zipper bags of the fruits of your labor, and then take some to make lunch boxes.
If you feel particularly good, you can put a small container of ketchup or mustard.
what do you need
- Corn muffin mix
- hot dog
- 2% milk
- Brown eggs
Lisa Rowan is the former writer of The Penny Hoarder.
