Jackson Free Press

Back-to-school time means back to packing lunches. It can be all too easy to get into a rut, packing a virtually identical lunch every day just before the family flies out the front door in all directions. But with a little advance planning the night before, or even over the weekend, you can mix and match a variety of tastes and textures, vitamins and minerals to create lunches that are healthy and kid-approved.

Supplies you will need

• Durable lunch box

• Thermos or water bottle

• A variety of reusable containers and cutlery

• Cloth napkins

• Frozen ice packs

Healthy drink options

• Unsweetened herbal iced tea in a kid-friendly flavor (our favorite is peppermint)

• Dark-chocolate almond milk

• Water

• Homemade juice blend, such as apple-carrot

• Coconut water

Non-sandwich mains

• Almond butter with apple, carrot and celery dippers

• Black bean dip with whole-grain tortilla chips

• Peeled hard boiled eggs

• Tortellini-veggie salad

• Hummus with sugar snap pea and pita dippers

• Vegetable-loaded mini pizzas

Favorite kid sides

• Trail mix (experiment with different combinations, such as pistachios, gogi berries, whole-grain sesame sticks, apricots and a few dark-chocolate chips)

• Squeezable greek-yogurt tubes

• Healthier bar choices, such as Kind bars or Lara bars

• Cut fruit and cheese cube shish-kabobs

• Shelled edamame

• Healthy homemade muffins that pack some nutritional punch, such as blueberry-zucchini muffins