Healthy & Fun School Lunch Ideas with Kroger!

We love coming up with new and fun ways to serve the kids food! You have to keep it interesting or they get bored and try to protest! We have done lunch packing challenges in the past and we thought it would be nice to give you some ideas for healthy and FUN kid lunches just in time for back to school using fresh healthy ingredients from your local Kroger!

A great way to engage your kids to eat their healthy lunch is to pick a theme and run with it. You can do this with their favorite book or movie. I didn’t have a cookie cutter here so please no judgements as I had to free hand cut this! Yes, it is a butterfly :) I took some edible pens I had (which you can get from Michaels) and added some eyes, the body and a little color to make it more believable! I love the Boars Head lunch meat at Kroger because it is free of Nitrates and many other artificial junk that so many other lunchmeats have in them. I added some salami and cheese to the sandwich and then just threw in some produce that went with the book. The greens, pickles, strawberries and watermelon are all things that the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate through. I took a straw and poked holes in each piece of food to make it look like the book…. the kids LOVED IT! See, you don’t have to make it look perfect, because the kids don’t care! They just love the variety and if it looks fun it must taste great right?!! Total estimated cost: $2.50

Luke is into ALL things Star Wars so I tried to get creative and ended up using our Star Wards pancake molds for this sandwich! There are also cookie cutters that would have worked great so by all means look in your cupboards and try to use things as double duty with what you already have! It is a simple PB & J, which is Luke’s favorite using almond butter and homemade strawberry jam from the strawberries we picked this Spring. Then I added produce from Kroger: organic strawberries and blueberries, kiwi, orange cherry tomatoes from our garden and a carrot stick for the light saber! It was really quick and easy – maybe 5 minutes to put this together! Total estimated cost: $3.00

It’s easy to look at all these lunches and think…”Who has time to think of all this stuff?!” Some days I feel lucky to get food on the table at all! If this isn’t up your alley you could even do something special for your kids lunches every once and a while or when they are having a bad week to cheer them up or on test day, etc. I also want to emphasize goals here, if it is your goal to make fun and healthy school lunches for your kids every day I feel like it’s more difficult when you are not organized! I recently came across a great blog called This Lunch Rox. She does all her weekend prep ahead of time and it makes for an easy week of preparing school lunches for her kids. Just take a look at her fridge organization! I have loved reading how important reading is with her kids and she had some really fun back to school traditions that are very inspirational.

In keeping with the topic of saving time, here is another great school lunch idea…LEFTOVERS! You can do something quick and easy, but still make it look fun and appetizing by using leftovers from dinner! We have filled our favorite lunchboxes, Easy Lunchboxes, with some leftovers that include fresh veggies and fruit (pick out your kids favorite fruit from Kroger and turn it into a fruit salad at the beginning of the week which makes it new and different)! Hummus is always a good one for veggie dips or to spread on sandwiches and Kroger has a TON of flavors and brands for you to try (Emma’s new favorite is Lemon Hummus!). Throw a few craisins or raisins on top of it to make it a little sweet and fun to look at! Hard boiled eggs are always a favorite of mine. It makes a quick and easy snack or a great protein addition to any meal! (If you don’t want to spend your time over a boiling pot, try them in the oven! Bake them in muffin tins at 350 for 30 minutes and they come out great!) We’ve also added a small piece of fried chicken, a great leftover for kids lunches and if you’re already prepping for a veggie stir fry for dinner be sure to set some aside in the fridge so you are only having to prep once and save yourself some time! This is one example of great leftovers but this is SO easy, all you have to do is prep a little extra while you are doing dinner! Total estimated cost: $4.50

So regardless of your creativity or the amount of time you have, you CAN create a delicious and healthy lunch for your kids and Kroger carries everything you might need to get started! Think outside the “lunch” box and give that boring PB&J chips and a juice box lunch some pizazz! Be sure to check out fabulous Kroger digital coupons you can load right onto your card! Don’t forget that Kroger extended the weekend 2x fuel points until September 1st BUT you need to download the digital coupon.

Check out this post for more snack and lunch ideas!

To get you started on your way to healthy school lunches with Kroger, we are giving away a $25 Kroger Gift Card! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment here telling us that you re-pinned our post on Pinterest! We are entered into a contest with other bloggers so we REALLY appreciate the re-pin and please be sure to re-pin the original pin otherwise it won’t count if you create a new pin.

We will run the giveaway for one week and will draw a winner on 8/16/13. Good Luck!