I had a good media day on back to school day. My packed lunch box ideas were featured in the Mail, The Sun and The Mirror! New readers to my blog, welcome! Here are the recipes you are after for the lunch items I made.
Aldi set me a challenge to come up with 5 different packed lunch ideas to feed my three boys for a week. They asked me to keep it to below £1 a day. Challenge accepted.
Turns out I could do it for less than £10!
Healthy Packed Lunches
Having a filling and healthy lunch is very important to us. My three boys are very active and burn a lot of calories, so I must keep them full. I have two big inspirations for lunch ideas, firstly from my friends and instructors at the gym. We often devise clean eating healthy eating plans and I take inspiration from these for the boys. The other source of inspiration is Dylans’ Football club (he plays for Cambridge United Academy) we have regular presentations from the nutritionist giving us lots of food ideas for growing active boys
My tips to keep costs down
We do our main big shops at Aldi and love the bargains we find. Take a look at the super 6 fruit and veg and see what bargains you find. Use cheaper ingredients to make things, like oats for example. I find that the boys prefer beautifully buttery rather than butter, and its so much cheaper. Send them to school with water in a reusable bottle rather than juice drinks in a plastic bottle. We also use bees wax wraps instead of cling film, better for the environment and in the end cheaper as you don’t need to buy cling film.
Here are the details of the lunches with recipes for the homemade food.
Day 1 Egg muffin
Egg muffins.
These are so lovely, and super healthy and easy to make. This recipe makes 6, so covers 2 days of lunches
- 3 eggs
- 50g feta cheese
- 25g chopped up kale
Break the eggs into a bowl and mix in the chopped kale and feta.
Add the mixture to 6 muffin cases. Bake at 180 degrees in fan over/190 regular over for 25 minutes.
They are very nice warm, but keep for a few days in the fridge.
Day 2 Kale Crisps
I really like kale crisps and actually prefer them to potato crisps. Place around 75g onto a baking tray and leave to dry out for 10 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for 25 minutes at 180 fan over/190 regular oven. Dont let them catch as they turn bitter.
Day 3 – Flapjacks
Flapjack are definitely the boys favourite!
- 250g butter (we used beautifully butterly as it was much cheaper)
- 250g of soft brown sugar
- pinch of salt
- 4 tbsp runny honey
- 350g oats
Put the butter into a saucepan and melt over a medium heat.
Add the soft brown sugar and stir until melted and be careful, as its super hot.
Add the honey and pinch of salt.
Then add the oats.
Mix together and transfer to a baking tin. I used a large roasting tin.
Bake for 25 minutes at 180. In fact all three recipes bake at the same temperature and time.
The edges will start to turn golden brown, you know they ready to remove from oven at that point.
Let them cool for 10 minutes, cut and remove from pan before they harden as they can become stuck to tin!
Feel free to add ingredients including nuts, dried fruit to make it different, although my boys prefer plain oats flapjacks!
Day 4
Day 5
I hope you enjoy the flapjacks and muffins as much as we did.
This was a collaborative post with Aldi.
One Response
I love snacks like this, especially when I don’t have time to cook. Also, I recently found healthy snack brands, I want to switch completely to a healthy diet. After all, we are what we eat.