— Char Nolan

So I had mentioned this before that chickpea uh, salad is one of their favorites and I do, it's kind of like the mock tuna, um, one that we do. But the chickpeas salad, uh, that I do for them is usually a cashew cream with chickpeas and uh, pickles, uh, or and a pinch. I'll use a vegan mayo to be able to make it kind of quick. Uh, that's definitely one of their favorites to be able to have in lunches. Um, but I do diversify that up quite a bit with a lot of their favorite snacks. They're big fans of seaweed as well. Usually not mixed in with the chick be salad, but they'll just have the little seaweed strips. Um, they've just recently be getting into sushi now that they're making it themselves as well, which is great. Um, so really kind of switching it up with things that they can be involved with to get them kind of used to some of the foods that you're making for dinners and then including those into the lunches as well. I'm also a very huge advocate of, uh, school lunches as well and trying to get school lunches to be the best and most flavorful, um, farm sourced. Uh, really scratch cooking, um, schools as well or getting those school lunches to schools. I've been working on that avenue for many, many years and still do that here in Wisconsin. Um, and so I do make a point that we do at least two days per week as a school lunch to be able to help support the system as well. Now that can be a little hard for some families, especially if they're whole food plant-based. Um, my kids are not a hundred percent whole food plant-based, but they are vegetarian, which makes it a lot easier for us. And all I have to do is basically go through the menu items for each day to see which one works best for them and then pick out the one that works best and then explain to them what they're going to get for lunch that day so they actually know if it's going to be a veggie burger on a bun or something like that. Or be able to, um, look for what they're, um, to look for the food that they're looking for. So a couple of things do love to be able to do are normal diets or things that they're used to at home to be able to make them easy to be able to eat at home with not a lot of mess. 'cause parents out there, you know, they go to school and a white T-shirt and they come back and there's pasta sauce all over the front. It's very easy to do. So, um, you know, sometimes we have to dress accordingly depending on what they're eating from lunch at the same time. But, uh, again, just really going back to things that they're used to that they're going to enjoy, um, that they're going to eat. I know sushi and a lunch for some public schools a little odd. I did the same thing when I was a kid and it was a little odd but I turned out okay. So, um, but you know, just exposing them to a lot of things too. Uh, I also try to put in just one, something a little different in each one as well. Just a small taste. Usually that's something we do at home, but sometimes I'll do it in the lunch too, just to see what they think.