A situation like the current crisis has caused many families, either to save money or to get a better diet than that offered by school canteens, choose to prepare children a cakes at home and take food from home. But, What should we put in the tupper pra school food?
This has also been raised by our colleagues from Directo al Paladar, great experts in gastronomy, who have sought solutions that we encourage you, too, to read.
Tupper's first recommendation: let it be food that the child likes
Both in Babies and more As in our sister blog, Peques and more, we have come across this increasingly widespread approach: that children take food from home. And we will reflect on the best way to do it. And the first question is this: let it be food that the child really likes.
Although, of course, a balanced diet is more easily achieved by eating the widest possible variety of foods, let's not fool ourselves, nobody eats everything. That is why my first advice is this: put food that the child likes. Let's not use lunchtime at school to eat spinach, hake or liver fillets if they don't like them. It is not the time, nor is it necessary for them to eat anyway.
AdvertisingFirst, no culture eats all possible nutritious foods (how many of you would eat a good dash of fried ants or seaweed?). The second, almost no one, within the foods accepted by their culture, enjoys all the foods, they don't feel good, nor they feel like it. Neither children nor us.
There is a kind of obsession that children eat everything and I consider it a mistake. We must seek to expand their menu, try everything, have, and that if essential, all nutrients. But away from home it is not the time to force them to eat something they do not like, or worse, that makes them disgust, or to put more quantity than they normally eat.
So let's take advantage of the great advantage of taking food from home in the tupper: let's put things that they like and educate their shovels at home, which is our obligation as parents to deal personally with this issue, and not leave it to some monitors of the dining room that neither know our children as we do, nor perhaps have the knowledge of child psychology that we would like.
It is not that I say that the caretakers of the dining room are not good professionals, or do not have the appropriate qualification, that I do not say. There will be some edges of those that pressure children to eat everything a little unpleasantly, which will be the least safe.
But, whatever it is, your obligation is not to educate our children at the table, but to take care of them so that they eat without problems, help them if they need it and be affectionate so that they feel welcome. Nothing else. Whether they eat everything or almost everything is our business.
However, before moving on to the next point I want to clarify something: that we put food that the child likes in the tupper for school It does not mean that we have to give him insane food. Their diet has to be balanced, with all the nutrients and fundamentally cooked with fresh products, and if they are locally produced or organic, the better. Let's see now some options of dishes for the school tupper.
Practical questions to consider about tuppers for school
The attention offered to children who bring their own food to school It is simple: they will heat the tuppers in the mic if necessary and they will put the table service. We just have to take care of the food. Although the truth is that we ask ourselves, and so do our colleagues from Direct to the Palate, if it is correct that they charge you for taking your own food to school.
I am not sure that the 3 euros per day that is said to be charged are not excessive. If I think that means 60 euros a month plus what we spend on food, the savings will be quite low, however, I am still in favor of the tupper, because we can guarantee quality and enjoyment of the food.
We have three options to put the food: use tupper and heat them (it is necessary to buy tupper without BPA), use tupper and put them in thermal bags that keep the temperature or put the food in thermos. All three are valid.
What to put in the tupper for the school?
The question is, first of all, put in the school tupper dishes that are going to be easy for children to eat and as complete as possible, although if any nutrient is missing we can compensate for it at dinner or at snack time.
My advice is to put a single plate. So the child does not have to carry many pots and can eat easier. It is also important, I think, that the dish is easy to eat, that it has no bones or scrapes to separate.
They are ideal spoon dishes: vegetables of all kinds stewed with vegetables (chickpeas, white and red beans, lentils), vegetable stews, stews with lots of vegetables that include meat or chicken or fish without scrapes, stewed potatoes. They are dishes that we can make very tasty, adapt them to our pocket and that will fill the children with energy.
We can also include pasta: macaroni, spaghetti and all varieties. There are thousands of possible pasta recipes: with crushed homemade vegetable sauces, with ham, meat, tuna or chicken. Pasta is a unique dish also of guaranteed success. It would be good to try to change habits and use whole grain pasta, much healthier and more nutritional.
He rice It is another basic for the tupper. The rice, cooked with a stir-fry, Chinese style, with vegetables, in paella or broth. The possibilities are endless and perfectly accept vegetables and proteins. We can also, if they like, use quinoa or amaranth, which are very rich in protein.
Other days we use tortillas with many ingredients, mashed potatoes covered in a tasty sauce, vegetable and meat pies and empanadas, for a change.
We can complement these dishes with a salad, fruit, homemade desserts and nuts, depending on the child's appetite and preferences. But, I repeat, what I will not eat at that time we will have to complement later, it makes no sense to put more things than they will really take.
The point is that we can take advantage of the tupper for our children to take homemade food, healthy, rich and that they like, in the amount that each one needs and respecting the preferences or customs of each family, be it for tastes or for religious, cultural, nutritional, ideological or philosophical issues.
I hope these tips will help you make the preparation of school food tuppers and that your children enjoy and are well fed.
