School Lunch Ideas

I've been packing lunches for Simran to eat at school for a year and a half now, but this will be the first year she'll be eating them five days a week.  I need some new options to give her.  I previously packed cheese or cheese/veggie meat sandwiches and gave her a couple of sides like baby carrots, fruit, and whatever random snacky things we had on hand, such as various crackers.  She has reached the point where the cheese comes home in the container and so does most of the veggie meat and sometimes the bread, so I'd like to come up with some healthier vegan options to try.

Peanuts and tree nuts are strictly forbidden in our school district.  Anything that requires cooking or being served hot or particularly cold won't work either since they lack access to a refrigerator or microwave the way all school children do, which is limiting.  I'd like to come up with one new dish for her to try out in her lunch every week or even once a month.  Since she tends to eat the same things over and over again once she finds things she likes, I don't need to mix things up too extensively.  Here are some ideas:

Homemade Lunchables

Sim loves veggie pepperoni.  I could give her some slices, either store-bought if I ever find them again or homemade (which I've made with some success), alongside Wheat Thins, again either store-bought or homemade, and maybe a few cheese slices since I can't think what else would go in there.  Maybe someone has already done an extensive blog post on healthy homemade lunchables.  Seems likely.  I'll have to look.

Pasta Salad

This doesn't have to be kept colder than your standard thermal lunch box, and she eats most of the ingredients, especially when there are olives.

Veggie Sushi

I'm not sure I could get her to eat this, but I love veggie sushi, and I'd love to come up with some variation she would eat too.

Veggie Kabobs

I saw this on another site (linking to yet another site, so I'm not even going to go down the rabbit hole far enough to figure out who started it) with grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and tortellini.  I like the tortellini idea, and I would use veggies she likes better and try to avoid adding more cheese since that is often what's in vegetarian tortellini anyway.  I'm not sure what I'd put in this kabob.

Breakfast for Lunch

Veggie sausages or veggie bacon, homemade French toast sticks (from Ezekiel 4:9 Cinnamon Raisin toast), syrup or fruit compote for dipping.  

Pinwheels

This is mostly a spread-based recipe.  I think hummus or cream cheese or some kind of vegan-yet-somehow-not-nut-based creamy spread mixed with minced vegetables/herbs would work well, spread on wraps or tortillas and then filled with olives and julienne cut vegetables would work well.  Again, I have to find vegetables Sim will eat.  She likes carrots, broccoli, and celery, but actively avoids most leafy greens.

Quesadillas

Sim has finally started willingly eating beans, so a quesadilla or pinwheel with refried beans and a little cheese would probably get eaten.

Something with raw tofu, because she will inexplicably eat that stuff straight

Something with raw vegetables cut into tiny stars and flowers, because that looks appealing on blogs

She loves whole wheat rotini, so variations on pasta salad could work well here as long as the sauce isn't too obtrusive.  Maybe with cubed raw tofu because she likes that better than whole beans.

Rainbow Sandwiches

Someone did this online, and it doesn't look appetizing or like things my daughter would eat (e.g., red cabbage) but she does love rainbows.  It would also look pretty in a star-cut kabob form.  I do have lots of mini skewers on hand.  I think I might already have vegetable cutters for making stars and flowers too, but I have to check.  

...Nope.  I considered buying them when I bought pancake/egg molds in flower shapes in an effort to make more foods that look like they would exist in "My Little Pony," but I apparently did not buy the vegetable cutters.  Will do that today.

Veggie Hotdogs

This seems easy enough, either served cold or cooked and wrapped in foil, with a side of ketchup.

Pizza Sandwich

Simran's favorite school lunch from last year was my effort to use up some hamburger buns.  I toasted them with butter and garlic powder and veggie pepperoni and provolone or whatever Italian cheese blend I had on hand.  Then I wrapped the finished sandwich foil and put it in her thermal lunch box.  I'm not sure how warm it was when lunchtime rolled around, but the presence of butter and the fact that the sandwich wasn't much beyond garlic bread ensured it got eaten every time.  I tried using marinara sauce in place of the garlic butter for a dramatically healthier pizza sandwich, but she was not impressed.

Tofutti allegedly makes vegan soy cheese.  I'm noting it here to check out later.  I've enjoyed their ice cream sandwiches in the past, and I think a lot of other vegan cheeses are nut-based, though I could be wrong.  Some are just bad tasting.

Baked Tempeh Nuggets from the No Meat Athlete cookbook

Strawberry Shortcake Rice Bites also from No Meat Athlete cookbook
These are basically sweetened rice with vanilla, strawberries, and a sprinkling of chia seeds, rolled into sushi form.  I'm mostly hoping I can make sushi look good to her by getting her to like a non-vegetable sweet version.