Nuts are another good choice in small quantities, as are chocolate chips. You can even throw them together with some dried cherries or cranberries for a tasty treat.

A cup of flavored yogurt or plain yogurt with granola makes a filling dessert with the right amount of sweetness. Making your own homemade granola is an even better choice. Start with oat clusters and add whatever you like from there.

Muffins are a great choice too, or their sweeter cousin, the cupcake. Also, why not pack more than one sandwich, cut into squares or strips, for a snack later. Peanut butter lasts all day without spoiling, as do many vegetarian pates.

Packed lunches don’t have to be boring. You actually have more choices than you are given with store-bought products for kids and adults alike.

And you want to keep your kids eating YOUR food, not being tempted by fast food, or tempted to swap things in their lunch box, and make bad choices.

With a bit of clever planning, everyone will want what you and your kids have in their lunchbox, and no one will ever want to trade!

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Most prepackaged lunches come with drinks, and homemade ones should too. Most come with soda or another sugary drink that is not healthy for anyone. Choose twelve ounce water bottles and drink crystal sticks instead. These offer no calories but lots of taste.

The invisible Koolaid is also a good choice, because kids really don’t need a ton of artificial cooring and preservatives. I had a student once who I eventually figured out was acting out depending on whether or not he had had a certain kind of in the pouch drink that day!

People talk about ADHD, but seriously, as soon as we got him drinking milk, smoothies and other healthy choices, he became a fantastic student, and went from the least popular boy in the class to the most because he was in control.

Fruit juice is okay in a lunch box if it is only eight ounces and 100 percent juice. I often dilute mine with seltzer for a spritzer, or you can just add it to the water bottle to give it a bit of extra taste.

Snacks in the lunch meal are simple, so there’s no need to go all out in this department at home either. Give the kids pieces of celery, some peanut butter, and some raisins. Let them make their own dessert creations.

Raisins are naturally sweet, and there are dates, figs, and other dried fruits like pineapple rings, apricots, and apples.

Just be careful with the dried fruit as some of it can be preserved with some fairly heavy chemicals. Go for natural ones in health food stores where possible.

Be especially careful with apricots, as they often use sulfites to preserve that lovely orange color, but can trigger an allergic reaction.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

For kids, messes are a regular occurrence. To avoid them at lunch, use a sandwich sealer. It is a round tool that will seal the edges of a sandwich once you make it. Use it for peanut butter and jelly, cheese sandwiches, ham, turkey, bologna, and the like.

There is also the hot sandwich press, which can turn an ordinary sandwich into a crispy, gooey in the middle treat if made with cheese as part of its ingredients.

Cookie cutters can turn a regular sandwich into stars, moons, balls, and other fun shapes to keep kids interested and looking forward to lunch each and every day.

Since you are making the sandwich at home, you can use light or fat free condiments and meats to make them healthier.

When you can, use slices of chicken and beef left over from dinner meals. A slice of chicken breast or a piece of roast has fewer preservatives than the lunchmeat found in the grocery store, not to mention the fact that it’s easier on the wallet too.

Many people argue now that preserved lunch meats have cancer causing agents. They are always very salty. So whenever you can, bank and slice your own meat.

You can even get a fairly inexpensive deli type slicer for making your own thinly sliced lunch meats. It will save you money in the long run, just be REALLY careful whenever you wash the blades. I took a tip off my finger with mine!

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Like most people, I love sandwiches. It is a basic staple of lunch. We start with a sandwich and build it up from there.

The only problem, everyone gets tired of the same old sandwiches for lunch after a while. Here are some ideas for healthy and fun lunch fare.

My kids used to love those lunch snack packs you get at the grocery store. They had sandwiches, drinks, and a snack all in one handy box. Some have pizzas that you could build in place of a sandwich, a drink and snack. But after a while, they got expensive, not to mention unhealthy, because they are loaded with salt and other preservatives.

Kids like variety, and so do adults. So we can give them variety without breaking the bank and adding extra calories and sodium by making Lunchables at home.

We’ll start with the sandwich first, since it’s the main course of these types of lunches.

Sandwiches can come in many shapes and sizes. If crusts are not your thing, take a sharp knife and cut the bread into a square.

It isn’t necessary to pay extra to buy bread that has the crusts already removed. And you can use the crusts for a bread pudding, or french toast strips, so that nothing goes to waste.

The bread you choose doesn’t have to be traditional sandwich bread at all. Pitas, hoagie rolls, buns, and tortilla wraps make excellent sandwich packaging. It all depends on what kind of sandwich you are making.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Don’t forget fresh fruits and veggies. For a vegetable treat, cut up some broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, carrots, or other favorites and serve with ranch dip.

Add a twist to your fruit by cutting up apples and pears, adding some strawberries, and serving with a bit of cream cheese for dipping.

These are great finger foods to keep around for those days when you’re busy and don’t have time to prepare something.

Keep fresh fruits in a bowl on the counter to grab as you’re going out the door or for the kids when they get home from school.

Keep containers of vegetables and your favorite dip or dressing in the refrigerator to do the same.

Finger foods aren’t reserved just for parties. Choose quick and healthy finger foods and eat them any time you get the urge for a snack. In this way you will be able to save time, money, and your waistline, and won’t be tempted to grab something really bad for you.

There is no such thing as comfort food, only discomfort food when you gain weight or realize you are eating in an unhealthy way and feel run down and bloated.

So quick fun finger foods will help keep up your energy level and boost your metabolism. Try some today.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Crackers are also a perfect snack food if you choose ones which are low salt, low fat, and whole grain. They are good on their own, but taste even better with some type of topping.

For instance, a piece of cheese between two crackers with a little slice of ham is a handy and tasteful snack.

You can also spread some cream cheese or peanut butter on your crackers. Kids may enjoy strawberry jam or grape jelly between two crackers.

This is definitely a healthy alternative to cake or a piece of candy. Make up a few of your favorite cracker snacks the night before and chill them for the next morning.

If all else fails, go for some snacks that you can pick up in the store. Be careful though. Read food labels to check fat, cholesterol, and sodium content per serving.

Some excellent choices are baked chips, granola bars, and roasted nuts.

Low fat luncheon meats can be wrapped around cheese or fruit slices for a healthy little snack. Just beware of the sodium.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Chicken is the most versatile food you can find, except possibly for turkey. You can bake, broil, roast, sauté, and fry (but because we are aiming for healthy, we won’t do that) it.

It can be cubed, sliced, julienne, and diced. Cut a large chicken breast into strips and bread them to make chicken fries. Or bake or broil to make chicken fingers you can top a salad with, or use to dip into some low fat ranch dressing or another kind of dip.

The strips are great for those days when you should eat lunch but you don’t really feel like it. A few chicken strips and a piece of cheese will replenish your protein.

Yes, chicken breast is more expensive, but it also weighs in at one third the fat per ounce compared with dark meat chicken.

And all of the above suggestions can be applied to turkey, or even ‘that other white meat’, a nice lean piece of pork for a bit of variety.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Finger Foods are great at parties and family get-togethers. They are a wonderful alternative to a filling meal at important functions of just about any type. Easy to prepare and even easier to eat, make some healthy finger foods for yourself and see how versatile they can be.

Finger foods make great snacks on the go. Take cheese, for instance. It provides calcium and protein which we need each day. At about ten in the morning, it’s not quite time for lunch, but it is a good time for cheese snack. Cut a slice off of a block and enjoy.

Buying a block of cheese is more economical than a bag of cheese sticks if you plan on using it as a snack quite often. Saving money is just one more reason to turn to cheese as a healthy snack.

If you buy a large block at Costco, make sure you freeze it into individuall portions. It can go moldy very quickly if not kept in optimum conditions in your fridge. Also keep in mind that one ounce of cheese is the equivalent of two dice, if you are watching your weight.

When it comes to finger foods, think about how you can recreate some of your own favorites at home. There are two benefits to making your own finger foods.

One, you save money. Two, your ingredients are fresher.

If you’ve eaten a lot of processed food, it might take a bit of getting used to when it comes to eating fresh fare. There is the time factor in getting them prepared, but it is well worth it because the taste is like no other.

Everything has a sweeter taste when they are fresh, and you can also avoid the issue of whether or not foods which come in plastic wrap are bad for you because the chemical leach into your food.

Meal Planning 101

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals