Hello there, I’m not Dermot, I’m Aileen, a nutritionist working at safefood. My office is next door to Dermot’s so I guess I’m the closest thing we can offer while he's taking a break.
Speaking of breaks, the school holidays are nearly over. My little girl is only two and a half, and being a full time working mum, she goes to crèche every day, so there’s no major push for back to school in our house. We are very much looking forward to moving upstairs for pre-montesori in September though!
Me and Lily getting ready for back to school
by : Aileen McGloin
At the moment she is toilet training, so I’m very ‘wee fit’. That’s right, I spend a lot of my spare time running around mopping up after her, which is a bit of a bummer (did you see what I did there?), but we’ll get through it. We’ll talk about all that business another time. Lots of hand washing, lots and lot of handwashing, and all other kinds of washing…
Back to back to school. My own mum used to dread the end of August, partly because she was a primary teacher and the long break was over for another year, and partly because she hated making school lunches. Just a pet peeve of hers. I remember in the early days a lot of salami sandwiches, apples and blueband bars. Do I have that right? Blueband?
Do you remember any strange ‘stock’ items in your school lunches as a kid?
Luckily, the variety of food we can offer kids is much better now. Even the way we can store pack lunches is better, with insulated bags and so on. You can also get small freezer packs, but freezing a carton of juice or bottle of water to keep things cool is just as good.
The guidance on pack lunches is also much better these days. School lunch policies are fairly common now. I don’t know how you feel about it, but it seems to me that it’s much easier for parents to limit ‘treats’ when all the other kids are following the same rules. My little girl is only two and between the birthday parties and the doting grandparents, it can be pretty hard to limit treats at the best of times!
If you are looking for healthy school lunchbox ideas you'll find some here.
Dermot will be back next week (phew!), I’ll get back in my (lunch)box now. Good luck with back to school.