Healthy Lunch {made simple}

As a general rule, I don't find it overtaxing to feed my family a Feingold-friendly, real-food diet. Breakfast is very simple: oats, scrambled eggs, smoothies. Supper has been an on-going process of eliminating recipes with ingredients that contain artificial flavorings and colors. I have always been a cook-from-scratch girl anyway, so it wasn't a big leap. There has been, however, one continual headache in my meal repertoire.........lunch! 

I couldn't break out of the sandwich"mentality and it began to be much too time-consuming to keep up with the amount of homemade bread we needed for sandwiches everyday. 

A few months ago, I read this post from Ami @ Walking by the Way (an amazing blog~one of my absolute favorites!) and lunch has never been the same since!


She shared the brilliant idea of serving lunch in a relish tray! (read her original post here.) The tray can be filled ahead of time (just pull out of the fridge and your ready to go!) and the leftovers placed back into the fridge for the next day's lunch. Just refill any empty compartments and serve! Not only has this fixed my "sandwich problem", but it has saved me a huge amount of time and energy! It has also eliminated complaints about what is being served that day and the typical, "How many more bites do I have to eat?" I set out the lunch tray and then allow my children to decide what to eat and how much. ( I told them it's kind of like an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.) My only rule is that they eat enough to hold them over until the next meal.


I don't like the stress of deciding from day to day what to serve for lunch, so I came up with "lunch tray" themes. I plan to print these onto card stock and laminate, then give my 10 year old the responsibility of filling the trays and serving lunch. (I will make egg salad, dip, etc. ahead of time.) Here are some of our favorites! I hope you find some inspiration here to simplify your lunchtime as well!

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~A Wise Woman Builds Her Home~Our Simple Farm~Comfy in the Kitchen~
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