Pasta salad is great cold
My wife bought my second grader of bento box container.
Aside from homemade lunchables, does anyone have any ideas?
So far, I've been thinking about pinwheels.
She said she wanted Chinese, which I think translates as ramen noodles for her... But she backed off pretty quick when she realized it was going to be cold noodles 😂
I may try to introduce something like a California or a Philadelphia roll, but I have never made rice rolls.
Pasta salad is great cold
We have metals ones for each kid with three compartments. We do sandwiches with cream cheese and strawberries or blueberries, or cold quesadillas, or roll up cream cheese and cucumbers or strawberries in a tortilla and cut it into little “sushi” pieces. Other two compartments get a fruit and a vegetable, snap peas or lightly cooked broccoli, and clementines or apples or whatever or fruit of the moment is.
So you are talking a lunchbox with multiple sections? My kids get Sandwich, Cheese item (Babybel or stick), then its mostly fruit. So chopped up apple, watermelon, grapes, cherries, mandarin etc. Variety of healthy stuff and I have to make it before bed so nothing that will take a long time to create.
The Bento I got for my kid has a removable freezer pack in it. My kid likes chicken Caesar salad in theirs.
There are crunchy ramen snacks, some of those or like a cold sesame noodle salad might work? Spring rolls (the Vietnamese kind) are also cold and really tasty. Mini onigiri may also be an option depending how much she likes rice. If you learn how to make apple bunnies, those are a very easy cute addition to bento style lunches. There are also fun molds for shaping hard boiled eggs.
My daughter loves cold pasta for lunch but we try not to do that more than once a week. Wraps with turkey, hummus and cheese are usually a hit.
They have bento boxes with built in thermos containers. You can dump hot water in it to temper then add your noodles. I have an electric lunchbox I plug in to have hot food. Not sure if school is cool with it
Maybe try making some chow mein style noodles on Saturday, then let her try them cold the next day to see if she likes it.
Cold noodles with bit of oil and soy sauce is actually my daughter’s favorite lunch to pack. Maybe let her try it and see what she thinks