Category: Food

School Lunchbox Rules and Ideas

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If there’s one area that is frequently discussed among parents and teachers but has no clear solution in place, it is the topic of school lunchboxes.  Many believe that poor quality lunches are a big part of the growing obesity epidemic and some schools are taking dramatic steps to deal with the problems of children food.  Others believe that parents need to be better informed about what they should give their kids for lunch.  So what are the rules and ideas to make for a better, healthier lunch

Educating parents

Others take the view that the solution isn’t about banning or confiscating foods but educating parents on what constitutes a healthy lunchbox and what they should include in it to give their kids the best meal.

In the US, there is also a big move towards giving parents the information to create healthy lunches.  This can include elements such as baking batches of food to freeze such as whole gain muffins or breads as well as healthier cookies.  A big emphasis is placed on what the food looks like because tasty looking food is more likely to be eaten by the kids – hence the reason that sugary foods are always popular.

Filling a box with veggies sticks and a little amount of a yoghurt dip or hummus are ideas discussed along with healthy crackers with toppings, fruit smoothies and sandwiches made with pitta bread rather than normal white bead.  Even leftovers such as grilled chicken breasts cut into sticks or nuggets and served with a dip are easy to make options.

Websites such as Change4life offer a rota of school lunchbox meal ideas to get the right stuff into the kids but to keep the menu varied.  There is also a range of recipes on the site to make with the kids and then send into school for their lunch.

Why it matters

While the growing concerns about childhood obesity are at the centre of these concerns, there are other reasons why a good, healthy school lunch is a benefit to children.  For starters, eating the right foods can boost the metabolism, making the children feel more energetic and increasing their concentration.  This leads to better results in class.

By making all children eat school lunches, there can be a stop to the problem of some children feeling left out when eating a school meal versus a ‘fun looking’ lunchbox filled with poor nutritional foods.  Let’s face it, kids love what isn’t good for them and if they see their friends eating fun, sugary foods, they don’t want to eat their own healthy lunch.

Whether banning, confiscating or educating is the way forward, it is clear that a plan needs to be in place to help our kids have a happy, healthy lunch that sets them up well for the rest of the day.

The best ice-cream parlours

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When the sun comes out and the day is warm, there is nothing more enjoyable than an ice cream or a sorbet.  Ice cream is available everywhere these days from the traditional ice cream van to the supermarket.  But if you want something a little special, then visiting an ice cream parlour is the perfect idea for a children’s fun day out.  And the UK has some of the best going ice cream parlours going.

Minghella’s, Isle of Wight

Minghella’s is a family run business that has been making their ice creams and sorbets for over 60 years.  They price themselves on the award winning quality of what they make and their new, innovative flavours.  They produce only the highest quality yet have managed to make over 200 different flavours, meaning no visitor will ever be lacking for choice in what to buy.  Their ranges are all made with fresh milk and cream from local farms along with natural ingredients meaning they are suitable for vegetarians and mostly for gluten-free.  As well as ice cream, they stock fruit sorbets, exclusive sorbets and even cocktail sorbets for the adults with a splash of complementing alcohol in them.  A visit can also include seeing the factory where everything is made and taking home something special.

Roskilly’s, Cornwall

Roskilly’s is an organic farm on the south tip of Cornwall that has been working on ice creams and other dairy products for over 60 years.  They started out producing clotted cream in the 1960s and added ice cream to their range in the late 1980s.  They opened their ice cream parlour over twenty years ago and have continued to add new products to their range since.  As well as ice creams, they make fudge and yoghurts, all from the Jersey cows that call the farm home.  Their range of ice creams only use natural ingredients such as fruits and nuts and they even condense their own milk for the products.  The farm also has a shop to pick up a few treasures to take home with you after you have finished sampling the ice cream.

Treleavens, Cornwall

Treleavens are proud that their ice creams and sorbets have won more awards that any other Cornish producer and their range is comprehensive, stocking over 90 different flavours.  They have been producing artisan ice creams and sorbets for fifteen years and most of the production is carried out by hand.  This makes for denser products that taste different to machine-made ice cream and are made using only the best natural ingredients, most of which are locally sourced.  Their ranges include those suitable for diabetics as well as for fans of chocolate or fruit and even a few for the adults with real alcohol in.

Mr B’s, Cornwall

Mr B’s make artisan ice creams every day of the week to ensure the best quality, freshest products no matter when you visit.  Formed in 2004, the idea was born when the owners realised there was an ever increasing demand for good quality ice cream.  They use a combination of the best locally sourced ingredients with the finest Italian produce to make ice creams, sorbets and other treats of superb quality.  Their ranges start at traditional flavours such as vanilla and strawberry then continue into modern combinations, including triple chocolate chunk with fudge.  There are also plenty of refreshing sorbets such as red grape or kiwi flavoured.  And the toppings mean you can have the perfect dessert with fresh sauces on offer as well as other desserts, smoothies and even milkshakes.

Otter Valley Dairy, Devon

Otter Valley Dairy is located in the beautiful Otter Valley and is a family run business producing ice creams, sorbets and frozen yoghurts.  They are inspired by traditional Italian Gelato to produce a vast range of flavours from traditional vanilla to lemon and lime meringue flavoured.  They even produce ice cream cakes, ideal for special events that feature ice cream and whipping cream in a mouth-watering dessert.  The dairy has won a number of local and national awards since they were founded in 2010 and make use of the best fresh ingredients.  The milk used comes from the dairy itself so can become ‘cow to cone’ in a single day.

Boho Gelato, Brighton

Boho Gelato offers a range of ice creams and desserts with an interesting story behind them.  The company is part of Fareshare, a food waste charity that sees waste items from warehouses such as biscuits, maple syrup and juices reused into the ice cream that is then sold to the public.  They also use ingredients from other restaurants around Brighton to make a range of unique flavours.  These range from Battenberg flavour to a tipsy mojito and apple.

Billy-Bob’s Parlour, Yorkshire

Billy-Bob’s Parlour is part of the Yorkshire Dales Ice Cream Farm and offers a range of homemade ice creams in a vintage 1950s American-style diner.  Music from the time, leather booths and even an Airstream around the corner serving coffee makes for a unique venue and the range of ice creams is suitably dazzling.  From traditional flavours to modern innovations such as Yorkshire rhubarb or liquorice and blackcurrant there is something for all tastes.  There is also an adventure playground for the kids to run off all that ice cream on the site!

S Luca, Musselburgh

S Luca have been making ice cream since 1908 in the seaside town of Musselburgh and recently added a second café in Edinburgh, serving their quality ice creams and desserts.  The root of the business came when Luca Scappaticco and his wife Anastasia arrived from Cassino in Italy in the late 1800s and learned to be a pastry chef.  He later added how to make ice creams from a Swiss chef and soon opened his own business.  Many years later, the family still run the business and offer the tastiest desserts to the town.  Their cakes are all made from the ice cream and include a lemon sorbet slice and a traditional Neapolitan cake with its three flavours in one.  There are also cakes to order for special occasions.

Keep it simple

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The growing competitive element of hosting a children’s birthday party that has recently emerged now means that many parents end up overspending and creating a party that is filled to the brim with far too many activities. 

Do remember that children love simplicity. Not to say the entertainment shouldn’t be good or varied. It should definitely be good and varied. It needs to be engaging, fun and imaginative too. But parents should avoid the temptation to overload their kid’s party with too many activities at the same time as this will end up being over stimulating and confusing. 

In the same way, parents that don’t plan enough activities or have any form of entertainment at all, can often find that their children are completely underwhelmed, bored or worse become very restless and start running around and be difficult for parents to control. If there is no structure to the entertainment planned this can happen a lot, which is something all parents want to avoid.

A perfect party has a few fun activities planned for different times, but parents should be prepared for their party ‘timetable’ to change slightly during the celebration so it can be adapted to suit the kid’s energy levels on the day and to accommodate any unforeseen events. 

Keep it simple and enjoy!!

Budding archaeologists

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If your child is into ancient History, then maybe an Egyptian party would be just the thing;

You could ask your guests to come dressed as an Egyptian (not only would it be great fun but also very educational)

There could be lots of crafty making (seeing as the Egyptians love to build things) why not have a Pyramid building competition which cardboard recycling could be put to very good use. All you need it glue, glitter pens and the children’s imagination to build an amazing Pyramid!!  

PARTY GAMES & ACTIVITIES;

Mummy wrap game;

Divide the children into 3 teams and had them wrap one person as a mummy. Best wrap in 5 minutes’ win.  You will need lots of toilet tissue, try and buy the more expensive stuff as the cheap tissue will rip easily.

Next game is a scavenger hunt. Divided into teams and gave them hieroglyphic clues which they had to translate. There are a lot of websites that give ways to translate hieroglyphics, but not all of them use the same letter-to-hieroglyphic translations.  Tell the children that archaeologists weren’t always given complete information!

The first clue led them to an archaeological dig site (the sand box). They had to dig up a ring, necklace, gold coins, and their next clue. Use one of the pyramids to give instructions — particularly, one item per person; I wanted everyone to get one of each.

The second clue took them to buckets that they had no idea what was inside.  There were all sorts of horrible feeling things inside for example, Jelly, baked beans and custard and they had to dig deep to get their clues!!

The third clue took them to the Nile River. Planks were laid out in the garden and pretend water was underneath them.  The idea is that they balanced and didn’t fall. At the end of the Nile was a crocodile’s nest. They had to get the eggs from the crocodile’s nest for their next clue. 

Final stop was Tutankhamun’s tomb, for their prize there were sweets and prizes all stuffed into a treasure chest 

KIDS PARTY FOOD;

Sandwiches and crisps were laid out and ice cream scooped into bowls, so just had to bring it out from the freezer.  Oh and of course a Pyramid Cake!!!

Monsters Inc…

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This little boy was mad on Monsters Inc and he wanted anything to do with Mike Wysocki!!

INVITATIONS: 

Invitations can be bought as there are lots of merchandise from the Monsters Inc film, but for these invitations we downloaded from the internet was a cute picture of ‘Mike Wysocki’ from the internet and stuck them onto card.  The invitations said ‘You’re invited to a pool party for Jacob’s 5th birthday’ it also had important information like: Date Time Place RSVP info.

DECORATIONS: 

Since the party was at a pool, there was no need for a lot of party decorations.  We had a poster board sign for the entrance that said Welcome to Jacob’s MONSTER of a party! with a clipart Mike on it too.  For the tables, we filled metal buckets with glass beads, blowers, & clipart Mike on sticks and attached balloons.  I did lime green balloons and attached cut-out eyeballs & smiles to make the balloons look like Mike.

PARTY BAGS: 

Since Mike is the comedian of Monsters Inc. we bought a joke books to fill the bags.  Also had bubbles for younger brothers and sisters at the party.  To the books & the bubbles, we tied suckers and a tag that said thank you for coming to my MONSTER of a party with a Mike clipart.  We used round suckers and glued a lime green circle & big wiggly eye to them to look like Mike.

FOOD:

Simple and easy food, like pizzas, popcorn, jelly and sandwiches which we put a little green food dye on to make them more monstrous!! For dessert, we served choc chip ice cream with a Mike cake.  We made the Mike cake with a large round cake pan and lime green icing with his trade make one big eye. We used plain lime green plates, napkins, cups, etc. It turned out great and was a really fun party and exactly what he wanted.

Alphabet parties

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We all want our young ones to learn their ABC’s but it always seems to be not that fun in learning them. Why not create an ABC party and bring the fun back into learning!!

Decorate your party room with punched out letters (you can buy these in any stationary shop and even supermarkets.  Use primary colours on table wear, tablecloths and balloons to match your primary coloured decorations. On each balloon spell out each child’s name attending the party, using sticky letters.

Children’s Party Food.

For the children make letter cut-out sandwiches (tuna, egg, or ham using white and brown bread to add colour. Serve alphabet cookies and make a cake to resemble a big alphabet block. If your child has a four or five letter name put one letter on each side of the cake with the first one on top if he/she has 5 letters!

Party Bags

Buy brown paper bags with handles and make the front of each bag look like an alphabet block by painting a thick boarder around the perimeter with a cut-out letter pasted in the front, the first letter of each guest’s name.  Fill the bags with a word search book (according to age of child); or an alphabet book; or you could buy fridge magnet letters and make sure the child’s name is in their bag.

Games/Crafts.

Letter T-shirts ahead of time.  Buy white t-shirts and iron on transfer paper for your computer. Find a program that will let your print alphabet letters.   Print each child’s letter on paper and then iron on to the front of each shirt; the day of the party of each child find their letter and have them imprint their hands on the back of the shirt (using fabric paint).  Do at the beginning of the party so hopefully they will be dry before they go home.

You could also play a game ‘what letter am I?’ Place a sticky letter on your guest’s forehead and he/she has to ask questions about the letter, for example what words do my letter come in? It may seem easy to you and I but a 3 or 4-year-old may find this a bit tricky, but on the other hand it’s a great learning game without them even knowing!!

A Disco Roller skating party

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This party was inspired by a family who hired out a hall for a roller skating party, loads of fun was had by all and of course it wore everybody out!!

Kids party invitations:

Invitations were homemade and drawn skates on each piece of card shaped into a ‘roller-skate’. The time and venue were written and also the duration etc.…

Kids party venue:

A hall at the local gym is able to accommodate ‘roller-skating’ and because it was a council run sports centre it was really reasonable as in price.  It was £50 for an hour and we had to include the food etc. 40 Children were invited and the venue was just the right size – not too big and not too small.

Glow necklaces were purchased for each child and as the lights dimmed everyone’s glow sticks started to glow.  They played the standard skating rink games of limbo and the dice game and each winner was given a “prize”. They skated for 1 1/2 hrs and then it was time for cake.

Kids party food:

They had pizza delivered and had a cake. For the cake they made a girl with blond hair and blue eyes out of fondant. It was made sure she had on a pair of skates and an outfit to match what the birthday girl was wearing that day. 

At the end the guests got downloaded pictures of the day and on the pictures read ‘Thank you for sharing in my 6th Birthday’. 

A party for the 4th of July

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Join in the fun and celebrate the United States’ Declaration of Independence with all the fireworks, stars and stripes that go with it for your 4th of July party this year! All you need is an assortment of traditional patriotic foods such as apple pie, hamburgers and ice cream, and a firework-worthy location to create the most magical commemoration of American freedom you and your family have ever experienced. 

4th of July party besides the fireworks is fantastic food. You can start by pledging allegiance to your grill and making some of America’s favourite barbeque foods like hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, steak and chicken. Try adding an Independence Day twist to some of your favourite classics by incorporating an American flag or the colours red, white, and blue in each dish. For example, you can buy some toothpicks with an American flag attached from a party store and stick them in each of your hamburgers.

Your 4th of July party success depends largely on the location of your family gathering, whether it is a cosy barbeque or fun picnic for the kids and all the family.

Since this sunny holiday takes place in the summer, it is wise to select a party location where you and your patriots can enjoy the beautiful weather and even a firework show after the sun sets. If you aren’t willing to host your 4th of July bash in your garden, try staking out a spot at the beach or the park where you can best enjoy the sunny weather. Although many cities do not allow fireworks to be set off to avoid accidental fires, there is always the option of driving the family over to a park where fireworks are not prohibited. And don’t forget to be safe and bring a bucket and some water to ensure that all the fireworks are properly extinguished.

Hire a Limo for a teen party

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The birthday diary of a teenage girl….

Three girls, 2 boys. We got picked up on a Friday night in a Limo supplied from my dad. We all rode around for a half hour making lots of memories by taking pictures. After that we rode to our favourite place to hang out a big shopping centre complete with restaurants, movie theatre, and tons of shops.

We went to dinner at TGI Fridays We enjoyed the 50’s feel of the restaurant.

We had burgers, fries, and milkshakes. At 6 o’clock the waiters and waitresses all danced to the song “stayin alive” We all enjoyed and started singing along. After this we all went to the mall. We all shopped and hung out at the mall. This is where they used their money.

Then after this we went and caught a movie. We all laughed through the movie. After this we went outside to and ice-cream parlour where we had ice cream and I opened presents. I also handed out the gift bags.

For the boys they had sweets and these really cool sport pens. I had trouble finding things so I also gave them these cool posters of skateboarders and skate board keychains. For my girlfriends, they all got sweets, lip gloss, nail polish, eyeshadow, keychains, a bracelet, a necklace, and I bought us all matching shirts that said “Best friends”.

After the boy’s parents arrived my Mum took my 3 friends and I home to sleep over. When we got home we talked, read magazines, did each other’s make up and painted each other’s nails. Each girl used the stuff provided in her gift bag to do her makeup and nails. I bought them in special colours for each girl.

I had the best teenage Birthday ever and my Mum and Dad are just brilliant at organising and they also gave me my privacy.”

A teenage beach party

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It’s tricky when the children reach their teens, you want them to have a teenager birthday party but they are not too keen on grownups being there.  If you live by a beach and your teenager’s birthday party is in the Summer, weather permitting too, it would be great fun to organise a beach party for your little grown up.  Here is an account of one such beach party which you will see he really enjoyed:

“For my 14th birthday, I had the most AMAZING party! I invited 14 people, 7 girls and 7 boys. Everyone met at my house on the morning of the party around 10:30am. At 11am, a limo came and picked us up and drove us to the nearest beach, which was about half an hour away. We blasted the music in the limo and took a load of pictures from our smart phones. We had a lot of fun. We arrived at the beach around 12:15. We rented a room for the day at the coolest little hotel opposite the beach. The hotel had a pool, lounger chairs, tables and a refrigerator in the room to keep drinks and stuff in.

When we got there, we had lunch. We got burgers and chips. We also had sweets, cookies and stuff to munch on. My mum and dad set up our spot where my mates could sit and chill on the beach. By our wind breakers we had plenty of towels, drinks, and sunscreen.

After we ate lunch and changed into our bathing suits in the room, some people from a surf team came and taught us how to surf! We had 6 boards and 3 instructors and everyone took turns. When they went surfing, we were playing in the ocean or tanning. After the surf pros left we all played in the sea some more and had a huge sand fight! After that Everyone got into teams of 2-4 people and we had a sand castle building contest. 

 We had just the most amazing day and it was so cool!! My mates talk about my birthday all the time and I am pretty chuffed that my Mum and Dad arranged all of this, they are the best parents EVER!!”