opting out of lunch

Our elementary school doesn't have a cafeteria.

Two days a week they bring a hot (well, probably lukewarm) lunch in.

Wednesdays, pizza. Mondays, chicken pita wraps. You order at the first of the month for the entire month.

My 7 year old has taken pizza every Wednesday, like clockwork, since he started school. It's just cheese pizza, on whole wheat crust with a low-sodium tomato sauce. Pretty benign. Bland as hell, too. But he likes the treat, and I like not needing to do anything beyond throwing a piece of fruit and some yoghurt or a cheesestring into his lunchbag once a week.

This month he begged me to order him the chicken pita wraps, too. He seemed to think I would say no.

ARE YOU KIDDING I DON'T NEED TO PACK LUNCH FOR YOU TWICE A WEEK SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.

The total cost for May is $19.50. Less than twenty dollars! He gets a hot lunch twice a week. I get a little break. The school takes a small profit - 25 cents per item - and that money gets split between little extras for the school and a lunch fund for those kids who don't always have lunch of their own.

I find this last push before the end of the school year so difficult. All of my brilliant ideas for fabulous lunches have been used multiple times. Everyone is anxious for the fresh fruit to start coming in. This is the time of year when I start getting slack about nutrition and balancing out the lunch fodder carefully; I'm more apt to just say "hey, you want a cream cheese bagel and a cheesestring and some yoghurt and some milk to wash it down? Dairy is a vegetable, right?"

So I'm happy to have an alternative to offer.

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I feel like I don't post enough recipes here, so I did some browsing this morning for an egg-muffin recipe. I'm going to try these this week, to use for breakfasts or lunches for the stay-at-home kids, and I'll let you know how they turn out. Or, if anyone has a favourite version of these, let me know in the comments.