If we were living in Slovakia where I come from most of the nurseries come with full on board meals.( snacks+ lunch)…and are at least half less expensive 😒

Anyway we in the beautiful UAE and the nurseries here are amazing but you have to provide your child every day with snack box and lunch box🤕

It has its benefits as you can be in control what your child eats every day on another hand it is extremely time consuming and often mentally challenging ( especially when you put some time into it and your child comes home with the content untouched😤:)

I totally understand why so many parents struggle to keep the snack and lunch boxes interesting and healthy and nutritious in the same time. It is not an easy job!

After 2 years of experimenting with different ideas here is the system that works really well for us….so far this is the best between the two worlds 1. time available and 2. general quality of food provided

I. Snack box (the pink one)

consist every day of

1) 2 kinds of different fruit (I usually buy enough for 2-3 days and then do one more fruit shopping in the middle of the week)
2) nut free biscuits (most nurseries’ policy) or bliss balls or crackers (all home made and put in freezer so they are always easily available) quality cheese or sausage( beef or chicken as pork products are not allowed)

My favourite to  snack recipes to freeze
http://18.139.30.106/cheesy-quinoa-crackers/
http://18.139.30.106/super-easy-fruit-and-nut-energy-bar/
http://18.139.30.106/easy-amaranth-biscuits/
http://18.139.30.106/nut-free-bliss-balls/

System: I chop the fruit and take a buiscuits or so from the freezer in the evening and leave the whole snack box in the fridge over the night and the only thing I do in the morning is that I just transfer the snack box into the cool box.

II. Lunch box (the yellow box and the thermoflask)

1) Thermoflask– contains food from previous dinner or I use additional carbs like rice or noodles or barley always available from the freezer.

System: This I prepare in the evening and put to a plastic container in the fridge for overnight. In the morning I just put it into the microwave and transfer into the thermoflask.

2) Lunch box-contains fresh vegetables.

System: In the evening I chop the veggies into sticks or black olives or sun dried tomatoes and put the box into fridge. In the morning I just transfer the box into the cool-box.

Mili’s lunch then is:

warm food from the thermoflask ( transferred in the nursery into the yellow plate- part of the yellow box) fresh vegetable from the yellow
+

fresh veggies from the yellow box.