School Lunch

"School Lunch" by our friend John Henry, sometime in the '70s

I work from home, so lunch isn't my forte. Work-from-homers tend to just grab leftovers out of the fridge, or a quick snack.  Now that the kids are out of school because of the virus, I've become keenly aware of how ill-prepared I am to cook/create lunch for my girl here at home.

Our school district serves both breakfast and lunch.  The meals are free to ALL kids.  It's not based on parents' income; it's available to all.  Again, since we're all confined to home, the district has set up drive through stations for us to pick up meals for our kids. Each kid receives a package that contains breakfast and lunch for FIVE days.  Can you believe that?  I was so curious, I had to check it out.

On Monday, we went over to one of the elementary schools here in our neighborhood.  We drove up and the ladies placed the packages in our backseat and off we went.  I thought they were going to be packaging up meals from the district's central kitchens.  I was very skeptical because the school "bag lunches" have never impressed. Let's face it: school lunch has never been a fan favorite, right?  As we began investigating the contents, I became amazed. Look at this:

No central kitchen bag lunch here!  The items pictured are from a company called "Bake Crafters." In a nutshell, the kids did in fact receive all the provisions for 5 days of breakfast and lunch. Some examples are: turkey sub, turkey & cheese croissant, ham sub, chicken biscuit, waffle sandwich with chicken sausage, fresh cucumber, grape tomatoes, broccoli, squash and carrots, each with a packet of ranch; yogurt, juice, cinnamon roll, chicken sausage egg croissant...just to name a few.  They also included a day-by-day sample menu plan with instructions for heating particular items.

For their handling of this situation, I must give hearty applause to Richland School District 1. They found a healthy, convenient and (actually) tasty way to give our kids an alternative to what they would normally be eating during their school day.  Now, if we could just iron out the bugs with our "e-Learning" system...