Tempting Little Tastebuds

Early last term Offspring #1 began bringing home his school lunches uneaten. I wasn't too worried initially. Maybe he'd had a full-on day? Maybe he just wasn't hungry? I figured he'd get over it and go back to demolishing his lunch as per usual. Except... I was wrong. I tried to question him in a totally subtle mum-type way (ie like a bulldozer) but came up blank. School was fine. He had lots of friends. Lunch was fine. He liked what I was making for lunches. No-one was being mean to him. He just didn't want to eat his lunch. I set his Dad onto him and he gradually, as Dads do, drew the answer out of him. It took him too long to eat his sandwich and then he didn't get enough time to play, or he was still eating and his friends had finished and gone off to play. He'd decided that rather than miss out on playing he'd miss out on eating.

This was not a solution I was happy about and I've spent the last few months coming up with lunches that are both tempting enough that he really wants to eat them and small enough that they can be bolted down super-quickly. I've had some success with the pizza muffins - the normal ones are too big but making mini muffins from the mix worked nicely. One mini-muffin equals about one 7-year-old's hugest possible mouthful so two muffins can be eaten without fear of missing out. Meatballs were an unexpected winner as well, for much the same reason.

With school back today I knew I had to come up with another lunch idea and was considering a ham and cheese scroll recipe from the ugly binder. I was multi-tasking - looking at recipes and checking emails, face-book and twitter - and when I stumbled across a link to Cheesymite Scrolls on twitter I had to check it out. It looked simple and was soon baking in the oven. Both kids have taste-tested and declared it a two-thumbs up winner and Offspring #1 has enthusiastically agreed that they would be great for lunch. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll actually eat it when it's in his lunch box.