Vegan School Lunches & Our Super Amazing Containers

I like to be healthy (ok, so I love my sweet treats, but I try) and I want healthy food for my son as well.  I have made every lunch for my son since he started kindergarten (he's in 4th grade now) and I wouldn't dare let him eat the processed gunk the school calls food.  Over the years it's hard coming up with healthy recipes for cold school lunches that he can eat without heating up.  Now that we've gone vegan, we have to be more creative.

This is a blog full of pictures like a children's book, appropriate I think.  These are just a few of the lunches that my son has taken to school.  I'll add more as time goes on. 

Lunch #1.  

Ignore my messy counter, I'm sloppy in the morning before I have my coffee :)
Sandwich with vegan whole wheat bread and homemade Vegan Deli Slices, Vegenaise, and mustard.
A bit of hummus, broccoli, and baby carrots.  On the side or for snacks is peanuts (our school is not nut-free) and Garden Vegetable Wheat Thins.

I am a fan of Bento boxes and bento-like containers, but as I was surfing the web, the ones I found were crazy expensive.  I'm a frugal mom and I hate to spend more than I should on a novelty lunch product.  I refused to pay $30 to $50 for a special lunch container that also required me to buy the case to carry it in.  So, while in my local Wegman's I found these amazing containers.  They are Rubbermaid Lunch Blox and the whole kit was $8 on sale (normally $10.99).  Woo!

I thought it was just a name, but my son quickly found out that these containers "snap" into each other like blocks so that they stay together in the lunch sack or box.  Even the blue ice pack (you can see in the pic) comes with little grooves so that it snaps in on the top and bottom of the containers.
My son thought these were really cool and the containers are the perfect size for a sandwich and three sides.  Another plus beside being cool to play with, is that the tops have a super seal.  The yogurt stayed where it should be and didn't leak out.  We haven't tried applesauce or anything thinner yet, but I have no doubt that these will stay leak proof.

Lunch #2

In the lunch packed above he had his Vegan Deli Slice sandwich (he eats these often since he really likes them), some strawberry Silk Yogurt, a pot of strawberries and blueberries, and leftover cold Vegan Pasta Salad. 

At the same time I found the Rubbermaid Lunch Blox, I found this amazing little utensil set from Sistema.  It came with a fork, knife, spoon, and much to my son's delight, chopsticks.  I'm not a perfect mom and I don't have a perfect kid.  I honestly thought that he would use the chopsticks as a sword at lunch time, but he convinced me to leave them in his kit so that he could have two of his classmates teach him how to use them.  The kit is small enough to be tossed on top of his Lunch Blox.  Each piece in the kit locks in so the utensils stay in place and the case snap locks as well.  I love Sistema products.  We also have a sandwich container and a sides container from the company and each has an easy snap-lock lid system that doesn't leak.

This is my son's lunch sack.  We both think that this is pretty awesome.  The top pic shows the bag filled with lunch and ready to be rolled.  This is truly the most amazing lunch bag ever. EVER.  We just roll down the top  as far as we want and fasten the sides together with a plastic snap buckle.  If there is a day when I don't wash his plastic lunch container (gasp!) I use baggies and he can wad this lunch sack up in his back pack and not have to carry it.  The super bonus is that the inside of the bag is lined with some special plastic-like coating (I'm so technical) so it's easy to wash out any spills and liquid never touches the fabric.  We found this little baby at Target for around $8.

Thanks for reading my thrifty, frugal lunch post.  I'll be posting more lunch recipes as I make them up :)
Happy Day!