Creative School Lunches: Princess & The Frog Themed Royal Lunch

Last month, I made my very first “creative” school lunch.  To be completely honest, before that, I thought that creative school lunches were only for moms with a little too much time on their hands…  Now I feel bad for thinking that, because creative lunches are so, so easy to make.  Sure, it takes a bit more time than throwing a Lunchable into their lunch bag, but not much.   And my kids go wild for them.  They’ll even eat things that they normally won’t get near with a 10 foot pole.  Broccoli?  Nope, not going to happen.  But make it the grass beneath a sandwich castle and it’s gone.  Completely gobbled up.  In fact, they’ll ask beg for more.

Since my Dinosaur Themed Lunch, I’ve had at least a dozen more ideas for creative school lunches.  So I decided to do a series on creative school lunches.  Lunches that you can whip up in 10 minutes or less, and that your kids will love.  Each will have it’s own theme and I’ll try to keep the ingredients as healthy as possible – because that’s the idea, right?  Finding fun and creative ways to get our kids to eat healthier.  I’m going to try to post one creative lunch each month, if not more, for the next few months.

For this month’s creative school lunch I decided on a royal theme.  You see, for most creative school lunches all you need is a good set of cookie cutters and the ability to look at food a little different than you normally do.  I happened to have purchased these princess themed cookie cutters a few months ago thinking I’d make cookies with the girls.  Well, that didn’t quite happen (or hasn’t happened yet?).  So I decided, why wait for cookies?  Why not lunches?  

I started with honeydew melon for the frogs.  These frogs were made in seconds since honeydew is soft and the cookie cutter could slice right through.  I topped them off with raisin eyes.  Okay, technically, they’re only 1/4 of a raisin because the frogs are small, but you could always use more if you want them to have bigger eyes!My girls love cheese – especially those swirled cheese sticks with 2 types of cheese – so I decided to include plenty of cheese crowns for them to snack on.  The white crowns are white American cheese and the yellow crowns are mild cheddar.  I actually had to make a second batch of these because my girls were home while I was making their lunches and wanted to snack on them right away.  Note: Best to make creative lunches while the kids are out of the house or asleep or you’ll need to double your supply!

Finally, every princess needs a castle, so I included a peanut butter and jelly castle sandwich on a broccoli lawn.  My older daughter is allergic to peanuts, so I put a turkey sandwich in her lunch.  I love that the cookie cutter shows such detail when it comes to the doorway and turret.  At first, I wasn’t sure that you’d be able to tell that it was a castle, but my girls knew exactly what it was!

This royal lunch was a total hit in my house!  Stay tuned for more creative lunches!