brown baggin'

School has started for our bambini.  The elder lad is in second grade now, the younger lad is a wide-eyed kindergartener, and the elder lass is going to preschool two days a week ('twas her idea).  So far things are going well, though I always brace for a harrowing adjustment time the first few weeks(!) of school as everyone gets used to the new reality.

Along with the earlier wake up call, school days signal a return to packing lunches.  The lads like to eat school lunch when breakfast is on the menu, but otherwise they take their lunch.  The elder lass has to take her lunch.

from Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Given my thorough treatment of picky eating preferences, I still try to keep things interesting as well as healthy and delicious in their lunchboxes. For ideas I pore over all the posts I can find on the subject, including this witty and informative post penned by my sweet friend Katie. I'm especially fascinated by the whole bento box movement, which places a premium on the presentation of food as a pathway to the food actually being eaten. I have yet to carve hot dogs into octopuses of cut out fruit in flower shapes, though. The closest I've gotten is my rainbow fruit skewer.

While some of the bambini are more open than others to variety in their lunchboxes (I won't name names), this passage from Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban (we are, by the way, big time Frances fans) neatly sums up the attitude of at least one of our bambini when it comes to branching out a bit:

"How do you know what you'll like 

if you won't even try anything?" asked Father.

"Well," said Frances,

 "there are many different things to eat,

and they taste many different ways.

But when I have bread and jam

I always know what I am getting, and I am always pleased."

Frances may not be open to spicing things up a bit (at least not at the beginning; I won't spoil the ending), but at least she and her friend Albert take a real lunch break to enjoy their food.

from Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

With the prospect of recess looming for kids who are hungry but eager to burn off some pent-up energy, lunch is less leisurely, more pit-stop-esque, there's hardly time for doilies and tiny vases of violets...