What Is It With Boys? Lunch box Basics

What is it with boys?

I have to say it. My boys are being extremely difficult and particularly fussy when it comes to lunchboxes at the moment. One is just too busy, no time for lunch; the other just plain fussy. Perhaps you have one of these in your household too?

So we've gone right back to basics with the lunch box.

Lunch Box Basics

We're trying to remember all the rules:

1 We eat with our eyes - make it look nice
2 Variety is the spice of life - Not bread again PLEASE!
3 Try and keep the sugar down, opt for healthy snacks
4 Make sure the lunch still looks nice and is safe to eat at lunch time - keep it cool
5 Keep them hydrated so they can concentrate until the end of the day - key water facts
6 Remember the Eat Well Plate
7 Eating little and often is better than not at all - huge portions can overwhelm
8 Smell is such a powerful sense - how to combat fussy eaters
9 Lunch is an important meal of the day - keep it healthy
10 Make sure the lunch box and lunch bag are still looking nice - see our range

For more lunch box tips, this article might help

And for lots of juicy recipe ideas, do take a look at the recipe section!

Now if this is all too much, why not book mark the page so you can keep coming back, or sign up to the newsletter to receive regular lunch box inspiration!
You can also keep in touch with us @lunchboxworld on twitter and you can like our facebook page over here

So we worked through the list today. I've been buying up alternative options to bread: finger rolls, pitta bread, crumpets, and baguette. I try and freeze whatever I can so there is always a handy supply in the freezer.
The menu today was:

finger roll with honey roast ham, cucumber and tomato with pepper
flapjack
pack of oatcakes for breaktime
pot of grapes
water

So do you have troublesome boys or girls at home? And I don't just mean the little people!
The Lunch Box Lady x

Cinco De Mayo Celebration Lunch: Family FUN with Discovery Foods

Mexican Celebration Lunch on Cinco De Mayo!

The Bank Holiday weekend was just great wasn't it? I mean the weather... Well, we couldn't have asked for better, could we?
I hope it was good wherever you are? It was the kind of Bank Holiday you just imagine it's going to be like. Blue skies, sun shining, leaves rustling in the breeze and a fun lunch outside using the garden furniture on the Sunday... Just the perfect setting for some family FUN and at lunch...

Hubbie dutifully assembled the wooden garden table on the Saturday, ready for our Cinco De Mayo celebration, (that's 5th May to you and me) on the Sunday. I had it all planned, and I am slowly realising that the more you plan, the better the day, although admittedly the higher the expectations too!

What was the plan then?

I was rustling up a special Mexican celebration lunch thanks to Discovery Foods, and for our family Sunday lunch too! I gathered up all our Mexican memorabilia - the turtle, the mug, the Mexican flag, the maracas, and even the party poppers, and decorated our table hoping I'd create that sense of occasion we so often need, to break up the routine and highlight the day as special in our minds. Who knows hopefully I've helped create lots of memories...

We were kindly sent the Discovery Perfect Fajita Kit to try, along with the delicious Garlic and Herb Soured Cream, which in my mind is essential for cooling down that mexican kick you get when you bite into your fajita. But maybe that's just me? (I was told by Gannet and Parrot at the Chinese Cookery Masterclass recently that I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to hot spices, and chilli in particular...) So perhaps I need more of the soured cream than others?!

So as I was aiming for a special Mexican Celebration lunch.  I nipped out to the shop and added in some extra ingredients, including the red and green peppers, guacamole, some lambs lettuce (our favourite salad leaf) and also purchased the Discovery Complete Nachos Kit, as that would be perfect as our starter. (This comes complete with tortilla chips, cheese sauce, salsa and can be warmed up in the microwave in minutes!)  Spike very kindly created our favourite tropical smoothies, along with the essential jug of iced water - always handy!

Our Cinco de Mayo Mexican Celebration Lunch became:

Starter
Nachos drizzled with melted cheese sauce, salsa, dipped in soured cream and guacamole

Main
Chicken fajitas, with red and green pepper, red onion, topped with guacamole, salsa and soured cream with lambs lettuce in french dressing on the side

Dessert
polished off with delicious Cornish vanilla ice cream in a cone, to help cool down our tingling tongues after all those taste sensations!

So to our Succulent Chicken Fajita Recipe:

Ingredients we used

500g chicken breast, carefully sliced for extra tenderness
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 green pepper, finely sliced into slivers
1 red pepper, finely sliced
olive oil for frying
fajita mix, mixed with vegetable oil for the marinade

Fajita Kit included the 8 tortilla wraps, salsa sauce, fajita spice mix

Method:

Make up the marinade mix first, and slice up the chicken so this can be marinading. Best to allow 15 minutes for it to marinade.
Meawnwhile prepare all the vegetables ready for stir frying.

As it says on the pack, don't be shy of the pan being hot! Allow the pan to get really hot before adding the oil and then nimbly toss the chicken for 2-3 minutes until browned, then add in the red onion and green and red pepper (we used these colours to replicate the Mexican flag!) and cook for a further 2-3 minutes.
Warm the tortilla wraps in the microwave. We opted for the stack on a plate for 45 seconds on 650W power in the microwave.

Serve the chicken mix with the warmed tortilla, salsa dressing, guacamole dip, soured cream and the salad below. Feel free to grate cheese of your fajita before slowly rolling up your fajita! Enjoy!

For the Lambs lettuce Salad:
150g Lambs Lettuce
Good squeeze Lemon Juice
Glug Olive Oil
Pinch Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Pinch Oregano

All tossed together in a salad bowl to get a good coating of the French Dressing

It was a special celebration and it didn't take a lot of time. The Nachos are ready in the microwave in a minute per plate. The fajitas took maybe 15-20 minutes tops, including the prep time. So it is not a marathon in terms of cooking in the kitchen.
But what I am also chuffed about is I sneekily managed to get EVERY member of the family involved:
King Julien is always keen to help set the table, and Spike loves making up the fruit smoothies. Tuna helped prepare the chopped and diced ingredients, ready for tossing in the hot pan.  Me? Well I was doing the Nacho's, getting all the side dishes ready for King Julien to then rush to the table, as well as handling the hot pan...
And Hubbie? well, he assembled the table and demonstrated how we need to wrap our fajita's!

So how did you spend the Bank Holiday? Have you tried Discovery Fajita's yet?

The Lunchbox Lady and her trusted team of reviewers! x

Note: The Fajita Kit and Garlic and Herb Soured Cream were kindly sent from Discovery for us to review on the Cinco De Mayo. We are grateful the weather was kind! Our opinions are honest and our own.

Lunchbox Fun For A Cheeky Monkey!

Lunchbox Fun For A Cheeky Monkey!

We all love our kids dearly, but at times, they can be a cheeky monkey can't they?
Particularly when it comes to food and their lunch box. We are all trying to give them a healthy balanced diet, but they do resist at times and sometimes that lunch box comes home with food uneaten...
As a mum we're all trying to avoid this, as we know hungry kids means disgruntled kids...

27% UK Kids Get No Wholegrain in their Diet

Eating wholegrain should be part of our balanced diet, but following research found in British Journal of Nutrition, some kids in the UK get NO wholegrain in their diet at all! 27% don't get any!
So with this in mind, Walkers have launched their new FUN snack, Baked Hoops and Crosses, which are packed with 56% wholegrain. Available in 3 flavours: salt and vinegar, beef or prawn cocktail and I believe they come in a multi-pack too, so you can economise.

We were lucky to receive our own cheeky monkey holding the beef flavour:

We promptly sat down to lunch and that's when the fun started!

The kids shared out the pack and being the weekend, we made time for a few rounds of Noughts and Crosses.

I could see them tiring of this game, so to pick up the pace, we created a "two second" rule. You have to put your next piece (nought or cross) within 2 seconds of your opponent. The excitement grew rapidly as the tension mounted! Silly mistakes and blundering errors followed as the kids rushed to put down their next piece! So you see, quick fire rounds mixed with laughter all from a bag of snacks!

So whatever you're age, it's good to have FUN with your lunch!
Thanks Walkers!
Our favourite flavour has to be the BEEF.

Now if you need new lunch boxes, drinking bottles or a new lunch bag, do check out our great range over on the Lunchbox World Shop.

So what fun do you have at lunchtime? Do you play any games?

The Lunchbox Lady x

Note: The product was sent for review purposes. Our opinions are honest and our own.

Chinese Cooking Is Amoy-zing!

Chinese Cooking is Amoy-zing!
Quite literally it is amazing.
I have not, dare I say it, cooked any chinese for years. Whether it can be blamed on the kids, I don't know, but the wok has been hidden away in the dark depths of the cupboard, gathering dust... I recall many an evening as a young up-and-coming exec rustling up a stir fry in moments after a long hard pressurised day at the office... But that is not a recent memory...

It was not until I attended the Central Street Cookery School for the Amoy Event, the launch of the brand new Special Selection Soy Sauce, that I remembered again, quite how good chinese cookery could be.  Thanks to the passionately energetic teacher for the day, Hannah Hayes of China Feast, we spent an afternoon cooking up five dishes.
Following demo's in quick succession, to replicating same dishes ourselves, to writing notes and taking photos, the challenge was simply to keep up! The pressure increased and the complexity of the dishes with it, as the day progressed.
For me, it simply demonstrates what can be done, if you put your mind to it. So much is down to smell and learning at what point to add the next ingredient or move on to the next stage. It is also having the right ingredients and techniques. On reflection, very little equipment is required really. Just a good wok and great ingredients!

Top Tips For Chinese Cookery
The key tips I came away with from the day are:

Egg Fried Rice is simple, quick and really tasty. Plus the kids all love it!
For guaranteed success when making Egg Fried Rice, just make sure you have a clean sturdy food plastic bag to firstly crush up the raw egg, then make sure every grain of cooked rice is coated before adding to the wok.

No need to wait for the frozen peas to defrost, simply put peas into a mug of boiled water and leave for a few moments, whilst stir frying other ingredients. They'll be de-frosted in a jiffy!

The importance of the way you cut your meat dictates how tender it will be. What I mean by this, is with chicken or white meat, you MUST cut the meat with the grain. Then cut across the grain if you need the meat in cubes. But the key thing is to cut the breast of chicken lengthways first.

With red meat, however you cut AGAINST the grain, ie across the grain first, then cube up.
It is amazing the difference that tip has made. I no longer have to sit at the dinner table, waiting for the kids to chew their meat endlessly. Suddenly they have found a new found love for meat, "It's so tender!" they tell me! And that is just in the way you cut the meat up!

If you watch this quick video Hannah explains further! 



Creating a marinade for meat is really quick and easy and it is all a mindset really. It's all about trying out new dishes, new flavours and exposing the kids to different things. You just have to plan the meal and go for it! It's so easy to stick to recipes that one knows and has done many a time. But you know, it's good to experiment and try out new things too. And my kids are definitely of an age where they're receptive to new textures, flavours and tastes...

At Lunchbox World, we are always looking out for more ways with lunchboxes, and what better dish to pop in a lunch box than a chicken skewer on a bed of egg fried rice.
Just be sure to pop in an icepack to keep the lunch safe and chilled until lunchtime.

I have since become a master chef of egg fried rice and these delicious soy honey and mustard chicken skewers are just perfect on a BBQ. Only King Julien likes to pick off the mustard seeds before biting off the skewer!

So you see, Chinese Cooking is quite amazing! We have already been cooking up lots of chinese since this event. So one definite converted family!

I was also lucky to meet the following foodie loving bloggers :
Best and Beyond
The View From the Table
Gannet and Parrot
Utterly Scrummy
Domestic Goddesque

so hop on over and see what they thought of the Amoy Event!

The Lunchbox Lady x

The Parcel Has Arrived! Now we can PLAY!

We could not believe it and I have been bursting to share this, but had to wait until the parcel arrived!
And the parcel, our prize arrived this week! Eeek! So now we can PLAY!

 

You might be able to guess what's in it from the shape! It looks like a giant boot!

We entered the PLAY competition for some funding with Actimel to help us play as a family more. As the kids get older, hitting their teens means a certain reluctance to do things. Now we are trying to minimise this, but it can be difficult to do things together with the family. We all love the outdoors and we're all keen to be fit, active and healthy, combined with eating healthy food too.

Put this together with hubbie working away from home alot, I just wanted us all to do something healthy, all together this summer.
So I came up with a goal:  to hike around a lake all together, and as a family. 
But not just a tiny lake, no this one is about 40 km in total all the way around, plus it's not all flat either.
Now the funding we needed to complete this challenge was some hiking boots so the whole family would be kitted out. The older two kids have boots already, as they hike for Scouts and Explorers and you may have read about it here.

So can you believe it! Our wish has been granted and thanks to Actimel, we were one of the lucky families to be chosen!
So you know what this means!? I have to do the hike. And it will be this summer!

Now where is it you may well ask we'll be hiking? I'll pop a link in but don't wander off!
It's a hike around Lake Annecy, in Annecy, France, just 35 mins from Geneva. So it's incredibly picturesque and as we've visited before, we know how amazing the place is. We plan to head off as soon as the kids break up for the summer, and have a mix between camping and staying in gites, (I have to think of my back and creature comforts you know!)
I think we'll do 20 km a day, as our youngest is 10 and we don't want to exhaust him on the first day!
We're just finalising the logistics but think we'll do the lake over 2 days and then spend the rest of the time roller blading part round it, scootering/skate boarding another section where it's flat, and on that part, it is the best surface if you want to glide(!) OK I am not a natural when it comes to roller blading.
Then we'll finish off with a couple of mountain hikes to savour some of the local cheeses and inhale that fresh mountain air!

On one level I can't wait, but obviously on the other, it means we need to start hiking now. And I mean now. The most I walk is to school and back, and that is a mere 20 minutes each way, so that's what 2 km maybe? 3km at a push? And that's not every day either.
So you can see how anxious one could become at the thought of doing 20km a day! It is already May and we'll need to get our skates on, I mean boots on!
We managed a 12 km hike the other day, so 6km each way, but the ultimate will be over 3 times this! (Gulps nervously!)

Now the competition is still running, each month it's a slightly different theme, but it's all organised by Actimel who launched their Family Wellbeing Index.
I did suggest they provide moi, the Lunchbox Lady with a supply of the yogurt drinks to help us keep hydrated on our route around... Instead we've been lucky in trying out their amazing smoothie recipes, perfect for lunch boxes or picnic fun with the family.

So hurry on over and check out the Actimel Funding details if you're a blogger and let us know what family fun idea you'd be up for, if a bit of funding were provided to help you achieve your goal.
The next category is CONNECT.

The must-get-fit Lunchbox Lady x