Lunch Box challenge!

Ever since Abhay started after-school day care, my biggest concern has been packing his lunch! If getting your little one to relish piping hot meals at home is a challenge, then having him  polish off his lunch box is an extreme version of the said challenge! Needless to say, Abhay is not exactly thrilled at the prospect of eating out of a box packed in the morning. So I’m still in the painful process of figuring out what clicks and what doesn’t! Besides, I have to work my way through several cooking challenges that in fact closely resembles a Master chef contest -  Abhay’s lunch should neither be spicy nor bland, neither sticky nor dry, neither mushy nor hard, neither contain too many vegetables nor made plain and finally not-to-forget perfectly fermented curd or curd rice!!! To top this, I have bear in mind the nutrition quotient of the meal!  With such high standards to meet, can you blame me for being on an obsessive prowl for lunch box ideas all over the internet …… so here's message to  all you food bloggers…. HELP!!!

 So today, I read about a girl whose aversion against her lunch could well be Abhay’s story! “Samira’s awful lunch” by Bharati Jagannathan and Preeti Krishnamurthy throws light on how to tackle picky eaters who treat lunch boxes as mere samples rather than full meals! Samira,  (whose mother I sincerely pity) cannot appreciate what her mother packs for lunch – noodles remind her of worms; upma feels like wet sand and idlis taste like mud and not surprisingly, she does not like the day's  lunch - parathas and brinjal curry! Determined not eat it, she closes her lunch box and heads out for a stroll in the school grounds when she meets a row of ants who empathize with her and decide to offer her their lunch – a cockroach wing! Disgusted, she runs into the garden when she meets a butterfly who agrees that vegetables are boring and in turn encourages her to drink the nectar off the flower! So Samira meets all her animal friends from the crow to the cow who seem more than willing to share their lunch with her. But compared to the half-eaten mouse offered by the crow, or the barley-seed lunch of the sparrow, or a cow’s meal of grass and hibiscus bush, Samira runs to open her lunch box to find parathas with brinjal to be the most delicious lunch she’s ever had!!! So a good read to help turn your little one's lunch box from awful to awesome!:-)