Homemade Salad For Today's School Lunch

New school

I mentioned the little one is going to a new school since this year and so far we're happy with the change. Not only does it mean that I no longer have to drive her to school every day, which is insanely convenient especially now that part of that route is blocked again, but also it saves time and diesel. Of course these trips aren't expensive in total because it wasn't too far but still, I hate grabbing the car for short trips constantly. Walking wasn't an option because of the steep hill part so I'm pleased that it's no longer needed.

Traffic here is insane too though, I'm happy that I'm not one of the parents dropping off my kid to school with the car here either because parking is very hard. Glad our car is in the garage.

More organised

This school has shown to be much more organised in many things and my daughter loves it. The books stay at school as well as their big A4 notebooks they have for each class and this makes the trip to and from school a lot easier. Even though all these kids use trolleys, they do have to carry the trolley up and down the stairs several times because their class is upstairs. I'm happy it's not fully loaded with all these books and notebooks. This way there's less room for error.

Less tutoring

As the books are mainly at school, so far tutoring only took place twice while normally she'd see her a few times a week. Once exams start, it will probably be more often but it seems to be going great until now. The teacher is happy that our daughter listens well and already mentioned that to her personally several times. Apparently here too there are some trouble makers in class.

Mandatory fruit days

I love the fact that the school has two mandatory days where the kids need to bring fruit for lunch. The other school really didn't care and it was an issue when we gave it. She simply would not eat it sometimes. That's not happening here as the teachers pay attention and also check if the kids brought fruit. They mentioned it's understandable that sometimes it's not possible but I bet if it happens weekly, they will reach out. Which I'm ok with. I'm trying my best to make sure not to forget to load up on fruit in time, so far so good.

My daughter took it like a champ and because of the overall attitude at school and the education they give around it (very important) she finally sees this is necessary and hasn't made a fuzz about it once! She even at her fruit before any extras that were included the first times. Great!

They allow the kids to bring anything they want on Mondays and the two other days it's a sandwich on the schedule. I'm happy that they try to motivate the kids to eat fruit and if all kids take it as well as ours, I bet the kids are a lot healthier overall there than at the other school.

Salad day

For a few weeks now, they promoted the fact that they are spending time to educate the kids about vegetables and asked the parents to bring a salad to school for lunch today. Later they said a fruit salad is accepted as well but minimum 4 different things and different colours. I decided that it would be a meal salad because this is the way that we eat it here and it's ok to show this.

Our daughter surely wouldn't eat only lettuce and other greens, and I get that because I think balance is important to make a salad delicious so I'm not ashamed to show our salad at school. It's just how we do that here and the little one gets the simplified version of how we eat it because my boyfriend and I usually have several more ingredients in it because we love that.

The ingredients

As I know my daughter very well, I knew I had to discuss the ingredients with her because otherwise she'd just refuse or start a fuzz the morning of school. A week ago, I started to talk about the salad (best to take my time lol) and to my surprise, we agreed the first time.

Lettuce, cucumber, chicken, pasta, bacon and cashew nuts.

I knew that the school may demand at least several veggies so when this happened, I decided to cut the paprika very very tiny and just add this a little bit for exposure and colour but not gross out the little one. For some reason, she hates them, I don't get it. I get why she hates tomatoes, I'm not a huge fan either but paprika is so nice (especially with Hummus lol).

When I prepped all the ingredients yesterday, because there's no way I can get that done in the morning before going to school, I decided to add some spinach leaves as well so she has 4 veggies in the salad plus 4 other ingredients as a bonus to make it extra delicious.

I hope she enjoyed it but I yet have to hear about that.

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All pictures are my own, taken with my Sony RX10 III, still learning so every picture is an adventure!