Lunches. It's always the lunches.

After multiple trips to big-box-store-land, Miss B has everything she needs for school. All in all, the trips weren't that bad. We managed to get almost all the actual supplies at The Zellers Where Nobody Goes, which has always been our preferred alternative to The Staples Where Angry Frantic Moms Will Eat You. We did have to stop in at Staples for a scrapbook and a pencil box, but it was a quick trip and we exited unscathed. I have also, through unrelenting brainwashery, managed to get Miss B to go in for another year of back-to-school wardrobe shopping at Value Village. My line is: we have x amount of money budgeted for your back-to-school clothes. We can go to one of the stores in the mall and get one outfit, or go to Value Village and get pretty much whatever you want. Her acquisitive nature wins out, and I don't have to endure the smell of chemicals that hits me like a ton of bricks at the mall stores. Not that ValVil doesn't have its own smell, but it doesn't give me a headache like new-clothes stores, which fill my head like formaldehyde. Shudder.

Yesterday I returned to big-box-land to buy a crapload of lunch containers. Because this year I am going to ROCK lunch. Now, I know there are people whose lives are dedicated to making insanely cute bento-box lunches for their offspring, and I say that those people can keep it up. I have no such ambitions. I just want to make lunches my child will eat. And I don't want to come off as some type-A competitive weirdo supermom who engages in lunch wars with the other moms. First of all, I don't care in the least what the other parents feed their children, unless they have amazing ideas I can incorporate into my own lunch-building routine. Second, I don't think any of the other parents care what I feed my kid, unless I have awesome ideas they can incorporate into their lunch-building routines. I think we're all sisters (and some brothers, I expect) in the struggle here. Let's help each other out.

I am in the terribly luxurious position, of course, of being a stay-at-home-mom, with nowhere to be in the morning other than in my kitchen sipping tea (whilst desperately trying to get one kid out the door and keep the other two in, mind you). I can afford the time to make Miss B a decent lunch without having to rely on too many pre-packaged lunchy-thingies. But I don't have all the time in the world, so I do have to, as they say, streamline things a little. Over the last two years, I've clocked a lot of time making lunches in the mornings, and it's not always been a very efficient system. So this year I have some plans. But first, my parameters:

• I won't know until the first week of school which foods are banned due to allergies, but it's a safe bet I won't be allowed to send peanuts (last year I couldn't send peanuts, shellfish/seafood, or almonds),
• Miss B doesn't have access to a microwave at school, so if something is to be eaten hot, it has to be sent hot,
• we don't have a microwave here either, so if I want to heat something up in the morning it has to be something I can do on the stove, because heating things through in the oven takes too long, and
• since Miss B isn't really a morning person and doesn't eat a lot of breakfast, there has to be a substantial "recess" component.

Also, if the pictures all over the internet of kids' lunches in tiny boxes are any indication, my daughter eats an enormous amount of food - way more than I do in the run of a day. So whatever I pack, there has to be a lot of it. 

My plans for streamlining include:

• making lunches for Miss B that can double as lunches for Hubby C or for the boys (or all of the above),
• tactical use of the panini press (for delightful wraps filled with leftovers), and the slow cooker (for all my soupy and stewy needs),
• keeping muffins, breakfast cookies, home-made granola bars and the like in the freezer for quick additions to the lunch bag,
• OMG actually prepping things like yogurt'n'berries, smoothies, fruit cups, and juice containers AT NIGHT like you are supposed to (I have been trying this for years, but with no luck at all... how hard can it be?),
• possibly, if I can at all arrange it, designating an area of the fridge (a basket, or one of the crisper drawers) as a lunch-makings zone, and kicking out all non-lunch-making residents,
• AND HERE'S ANOTHER OMG actually doing the washing-up at night so I am not trying to make lunch first thing in the morning amid last night's supper mess. 

I know it's a tall order. But I have confidence. In part this confidence comes from the conviction that, once school starts, we'll be eating at 5:30 like we were last year, which will give me plenty of time in the evening to tackle things like dishes and yogurt-spooning. 

For the last couple years, we've had a handful of staple lunches: rice and chickpea pilaf with currants (the ultimate standby), chicken noodle soup, pizzas made from whatever bread-type things I have had in the house (naan, English muffins, Greek pita), ham sandwiches, cinnamon-raisin bagels with cream cheese. Not bad, but I think we've both grown tired of the same-old. Mind you, Miss B has requested the rice and chickpea pilaf for her first day back, so the tedium can't be too dreadful. 

I would like to do some kind of series where I log what I packed for lunch vs what of it was eaten. This is the part the fancy lunch box blogs never feature: how much of it came home, half-eaten, bruised, bashed, smashed, poked, licked, squashed, and/or spilled. I suppose that kind of knowledge would just be too tragic. Maybe I'm the person who has to get it out there. Maybe. 

Anyway, it's late and I've been obsessing over lunches for way too long. The light in my house isn't good enough for a photo of my temple of plastic locking-lid lunch containers, so you'll just have to use your imaginations. Actually, if you're using your imaginations, picture some stylish, stainless-steel tiffin containers instead. Thanks. 

This is not the last you'll hear on the topic of lunches. Oh, no.