The Lunchbox With a Cult Following

Guest post from Alina Joy Dubois

My children love lunch packed in a lunchbox!  To them it means, “We’re going somewhere!  Adventure!  Fun!”  Sometimes they’ll pack their dinner in a lunchbox and take it outside to eat just for fun!  Me?  I’m not so crazy about packing lunches.  To me it means figuring out, “What is yummy, healthy, allergy-friendly, inexpensive, easily portable, easy-for-little-hands-to-open, dishwasher safe AND easy to store in the cupboard when it’s not being used?”  “Fun and Easy” are not exactly the words that come to mind when I think about packing lunches!

Folks, packing lunches has gotten complicated for our generation!  I don’t think our mothers had it this tough!  Remember the days when we all had the same plastic box, just with different pictures on them?  (Mine was bright yellow with Cabbage Patch Kids on it!)  All our moms packed a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, some cookies, an apple, and a thermos of milk.  Easy-Peasy!  Just a few minutes of work and they were done!  Nowadays, there are so many “convenience foods” and so many “lunchbox systems” it’s really hard to know where to start!  Not to mention that now we have to be thinking about hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and all other manner of nasty ingredients that have snuck into our food supply!

Enter the EasyLunchbox community.  Have you heard of these lunchboxes?  They were created by Kelly Lester, a stay-at-home Mom who had the same lunch-packing dilemma I have!  But what happened next is the really neat part!  As people began using these lunchboxes, families found them so simple and easy to use that the lunchboxes developed a cult-following!  Imagine that!  A lunchbox with a cult following!  People all over the internet are going crazy making lunches with EasyLunchboxes… and that’s good news for you and me, because it means there is a lot of lunch-time inspiration out there!  And lunch-time inspiration means that this dreaded chore can actually be fun!

Feeling un-inspired?  Here are a few Lunch-packers for you to check out:

Lunches Fit for a Kid

Biting the Hand That Feeds You

Family Fresh Meals

Bent On Better Lunches

Some Lunch-packers are using fancy Bento supplies and making it really fancy… Fancier than I have energy to actually do first-thing-in-the-morning myself, but their lunches sure are fun to look at!  Here’s some serious eye-candy inspiration for y’all!

Bobbi’s Bento’s

Benficial Bento

Creative Food

MamaBelly Lunches With Love

Rachel’s Random Ramblings

Still not inspired?  Guess what!  MOMables is a lunch-menu planning service that will email a week-long lunch menu to you every Friday!  I know that for me, deciding what to pack for lunch is the hardest part and MOMables does that for you!  What a great concept!  Or if you prefer to have a real-live-hold-it-in-your-hands-book, the publishers behind the Cooking With Trader Joe’s Cookbook Series has joined the EasyLunchbox bandwagon, too!  They have gotten together with EasyLunchboxes and 32 Lunchtime Food Bloggers (including me!) and are publishing a cookbook all about making lunches with EasyLunchboxes.  It will be in bookstores in September 2012, but I got a sneak peak at the inside and it is full of fabulous recipes and fun inspirational food stories!  Y’all are going to just love it!

And if that doesn’t make you happy enough to sing and dance around your kitchen as you pack school lunches in the morning, perhaps these videos by Kelly Lester will!

Let’s Do Lunch With Barry Williams:  Kelly’s Lunchbox Crush Greg Brady!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRNSJbzmtM&w=560&h=315]

 

Let’s Do Lunch with Sam Harris:  Kelly’s Fantasy Silver Screen Movie Musical

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxpT5SgcHI&w=560&h=315]

 

You know, maybe this lunch packing thing isn’t so complicated after all…