Pre-making and freezing school lunches

[*MamaJen*]

Between work, grad school and single motherhood, my schedule is pretty busy. Getting out of the house on time in the morning can be a challenge. One thing that has helped me enormously is pre-making school lunches for DS and freezing them. His preschool has a fridge with a "warm-up tray" so I can send things that are still partially frozen, which helps. The sandwiches are totally defrosted by lunch time just sitting in the lunchbox (and if you make them right, they don't get soggy and totally taste fine.)

Basically, every morning I grab the main item out of the freezer (I pack them in wax paper bags, then store them in gallon ziplock slider top freezer bags, and the soups and stuff I put in individual sized tupperwares), and I also add a piece of fruit and another side (usually a vegetable like a tub of corn or carrots, a piece of cheese, some avocado, etc). Here are a few things I've been making lately. I'd love more ideas. 

--Peanut/almond butter and jelly sandwiches: I make an entire loaf of bread of these at a time. The trick is to spread the peanut butter or almond butter thinly on both sides of the bread, then put the jelly on the inside. I cut each sandwich and put it in a wax paper bag, then put them all back in the plastic bag that the bread came in, and freeze them. They're defrosted well before lunch time. 

--Bean and cheese taco: I get fresh corn tortillas and spread them with seasoned refried beans, and top with grated cheese (I like using queso fresco -- we're in Texas so this is all easily available). I freeze them in the wax paper bags -- his school has a microwave.

--Pizza bagels: Take whole wheat mini bagels, separate them, spread with pizza sauce, top with grated cheese, and sandwich them back together. I put them in wax paper bags, and then store the lot in gallon ziplock freezer bags. This is another that needs to get heated up before lunch.

--Lentil soup: DS loves this with fresh avocado. I make a lentil soup (super easy: saute an onion, garlic and celery if you have it. Add lentils, water, salt, pepper, thyme, basil and oregano. Sometimes I grate a carrot or chop a tomato and add that too. Cook 1 to 1.5 hours, check seasoning, and it's done. You could also do it in a crock pot, especially if you brown the seasoning on the stove first.) After I make it, I freeze a bunch of individual single-serving containers. I usually heat this up in the morning and put it in the thermos. If I'm super on top of it, I take the container out of the freezer the night before. 

--Hummus: I make my own hummus totally from scratch. I cook the dried chickpeas in the crock pot, and tahini is actually surprisingly  easy to make -- you just toast sesame seeds with a little olive oil and blend them. I use a hummus recipe I found on all recipes. I freeze individual containers of hummus and send it with crackers or carrots (I do this for my lunches too). This one usually needs to get defrosted the night before.   

--Pasta: Whenever I cook pasta, I always make a little bit extra and freeze it in individual serving sizes in plastic bags. Sometimes I'll also freeze individual size tubs of pasta and sauce and have that as a ready-to-go lunch (this also needs to get heated up at school, or go in a thermos.)

[Jenni1894]

Stuffed shells freeze well.   You could freeze them wrapped or on cookie sheets, then a freezer bag.  

I made a huge batch of chicken soup and froze some leftovers in muffin tins, lined w/foil.   The muffin cups are perfect.  I just popped out the soup, wrapped the foil around the rest of the soup and stuck them all in a freezer bag.   perfect kid size portion.  You could also do the same w/mashed taters.

I premake pancakes and waffles and freeze also.  Add some fresh fruit and instant lunch (or breakfast of course)!

Often I puree older fruits that aren't going to be eaten before they go bad.  I freeze them like I did baby food and they are great to add to applesauce or yogurt.  Or for smoothies!!