Lunch Recipe Share

Today for Arlo's lunch (and mine), I amended a basic "spaghetti" recipe that the Divine Miss E (head of nutrition program at Iowa City Montessori) makes for kids at her school. It just goes to show how easy it can be to make a reasonably healthy and quick lunch for your kid's lunchbox. Now, why can't our public schools be serving foods like this?

It goes something like this:

• Pasta. I used rotini, E usually uses angel hair. You could easily slip in a whole-wheat variety here.
• Sauce. Just a few spoonfuls, to keep it mild for Arlo's palate--also to obscure the fact that it has sauce on it, since Arlo's is convinced that he doesn't like sauce. (He does.) E's recipe (and mine) uses pesto.
• Your kid's favorite veggie. I threw chopped carrots in with the pasta during the last 5 mins of boil time. E uses tomatoes--usually grape tomatoes, but maybe sometimes sliced Romas? (Arlo genuinely doesn't like tomatoes. Yet.) And don't forget to throw in a healthy handful of chopped, uncooked spinach right after you drain the pasta--the heat and moisture from the noodles is sufficient to cook it, and all of the nutrients stay in the meal.
• Cheese. Feta and parmesan, in our case.

You can pack this along as a pasta salad (if your kid will eat it cold) or send it in a thermos, like we do. Just don't forget to include a fork!