I’ve been pinning them for months. Years even. Those school lunch ideas where people put all kinds of delicious, nutritious items in little Bento boxes and tupperwares. I’ve even tried a few at times for the girls — when I was feeling ambitious and productive. But, I’ve never prepped lunches for myself, preferring instead to bring leftovers from dinner. This week, I decided to finally take the plunge and try to prep all five school/work lunches in one sitting. The “recipe” from Ziploc said it would take one hour. Here is how it really went down.
First of all, it’s kind of a large grocery list when you’re talking about a few unique items in a lunchbox for a whole week. The kids and I tackled it with our normal grocery shopping and we noticed we purchased a lot more fruit and veggies, which made us all feel impressed with ourselves! We were going to be healthy!
When we got home from Wegmans, we left all the lunch ingredients on the side counter since we knew we would get to them shortly and it made no sense putting it all away. Then, after a quick crockpot prep for dinner (chicken and dumplings), we ate lunch and got started. I followed the recipe from the beginning, prepping each item in the order they were listed. While I did that, one of my daughters helped with the prepping and the other opened all the containers we had to buy to in which to fit all these cool concoctions!
Then we got started putting it all together. My daughters helped prepare and stuff the containers so it went a bit faster than if I was on my own but, boy, did we make a mess of the kitchen! Still, we managed to find an appropriate container for everything and packed it all up. There were a few hiccups along the way. For example, we realized we need more small containers for dips and dressings. When Thursday night comes, we’ll remember that when we pack Friday’s lunch (we decided we’d have small containers left from earlier in the week by then and could finish packing at that point).
We packed Monday’s lunches into a lunchbags right away and put them in the fridge. Then, we stacked everything else, Friday on the bottom, into the fridge for the week. Cleanup didn’t take as long as it looked like it should have, which was good. All in all, the prep took an hour and 10 minutes plus cleanup so the Ziploc recipe was close! Maybe once we do it a few times it will come together more quickly.
I was way too busy with the assemblyline of putting all the lunches together to even think about opening a wine. But, now as I write this (while eating leftover hummus and crackers), I’m thinking about an easy drinking white or red, depending on what’s in the fridge! I think virtually anything goes when you’re making a huge mess in the kitchen with the kids. In fact, I almost cracked open a beer because it was taking up precious space in the fridge for where we needed lunches to go!
Would I do this kind of lunch prep in the future? Maybe! It wasn’t the worst thing but I guess it all depends on if we enjoy the fruits of our labor. We’ll let you know!