Special Packed Lunches with Pippa from A Mothers Ramblings

Howdy. I've been so busy recently I've not had time to blog quite as much as I'd hoped to so I've asked a few friends to help me out.  

Today I am featuring a guest post from fellow blogger Pippa.  PippaD blogs at A Mothers Ramblings and Pippa World and you can find her on Twitter too. Her favourite meal of the week is the Sunday Roast and she says that being kissed by Dick Strawbridge  (The Celebrity Masterchef runner up 2010) after she won the Good Food Show Masterchef Invention Test was tickly but lovely.  

Without further ado, I hand you over to Pippa who is talking about packed lunches. Remember, a packed lunch isn't just for school...

When I started making Special Packed Lunches for Top Ender and blogging about them on A Mothers Ramblings and my Facebook page, I didn't think that they would become as important to us as they have. I envisaged Tops having her Friday and celebration lunches and that being the end of it, but it wasn't as simple as that. I quickly realised that everyday deserved a special lunch and that how I presented the food in the lunch box made a huge difference to what got eaten and in what quantity. My daughter, who was never really picky about food but preferred to eat her favourite foods, suddenly became interested in different tastes, textures and flavours.

The lunches that I make are sometimes packed full of fruit and vegetables

Sandwich Sushi

Or sometimes they look more full of treats than they do of the healthy stuff

Treat Packed Lunch

The thing is that these lunches offer Tops a variety of tastes and flavours and making these different lunches takes no longer than making a so called ordinary packed lunch. I make them when I come home from the gym (Come see me at Pippa World for more about my new Gym membership!) and Tops loves finding out at lunch along with her classmates (and a few teachers) what her lunchtime surprise is. The only downside is that some of the other playground Mums now hate me, as their own children are complaining that they don't get special lunches like Top Ender does...

Ladybird Burger Bun Bento

This September Big Boy will be joining Top Ender at School, so I will be making two lunches in the morning (and annoying twice as many Mums!). I'm really excited about it and I know that whilst the lunches that I make aren't always perfectly balanced, they balance out with the rest of their diets. And that's what I think is important, it's okay to give a little extra treat here and there as long as the good stuff is eaten too. The packed lunches I make are fun, the right size for my children and more importantly they get eaten, I don’t think that is something every parent could say.

What do you think? Are the lunches something that you would make and eat?

I love Pippa's lunches, don't you? I'm a fan of spicing up their lunch-boxes - my two have gone to school today with dinosaur and butterfly shaped ham sandwiches and I have been known to occasionally stick a bunny shaped hard-boiled egg in there too!  Who cares if it is going overboard? They're only little once!

Thanks for sharing your great ideas Pippa!