The idea for this site was born when our daughter entered Kindergarten. Until then, we had enjoyed the luxury of eating lunch together at our kitchen table every day. Suddenly, we entered the world of the lunchbox. We started thinking about everything from what to pack… …to how to be more environmentally conscious with what we packed it in.
Since the curriculum for Kindergarten was focused on the alphabet, we started this journey by brainstorming foods for all the letters. As the list grew, we thought about what to do with it. How could we make it functional, inspirational and fun? Never ones to fall into a predictable pattern, we started using our list to make a variety of lunches for our daughter.
How to Use Lunchtaker.com
You can collect different lunch items into a single lunch for your child. First, register to join the site. Then, from any lunch item page, click “Add to My Lunches”. It’s that easy! You’ll be able to find everything you’ve created under “My Lunches”. To make it extra fun, we also created the Lunch Food Lottery, where you can try your luck at building a lunch you’ve never thought of before.
Inspiration and Fun
This site is meant to provide inspiration for you and your children. We want to appeal to everyone on some level. Perhaps some of our lunch ideas will be too “out there”, or others won’t go far enough. Our goal is not to focus on any one niche, but to provide a breadth of options that a lot of different families will find useful.
Remember, you can add your own things to the site, and create your own lists. Regardless of how you use the site, we know that there is something for everyone here. Roll up your sleeves, get hungry, and have fun!
About the Editors
Scott, Amy, Elizabeth and Alexander
One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies.
Healthy eating and fitness are a passion for us, not our field of study. Our backgrounds are in teaching and computer science: neither directly contributes to our quest for knowledge about what’s good for our bodies, but we are always learning and wish to share our passion with others. It’s our hope that this site helps inspire you on a similar quest, and helps you realize that it’s a goal within reach.
Many of our meals are prepared and eaten together in our home. Restaurants are an infrequent indulgence (you’ll see some restaurant options on this site, based on our experience), and soda is something we consume only when in dire need of caffeine. We support our local CSA year-round, and fill our freezer with berries (strawberries, blueberries and raspberries) in the summer and grass-fed meat (beef, pork and chicken) in the winter. In short, we try our best to support local agriculture and feed our bodies as naturally as possible.
Each year, we also challenge ourselves with a fitness goal, in addition to our normal fitness routines involving weights and in-house cardio on an elliptical. We’ve done a half-marathon, 100-mile bike rides and a sprint triathlon. We’re hoping to lead by example so our children will grow up with an appreciation of the importance of fitness and a well-rounded diet. As evidence, we all ran in a 5k together (picture at right), and had a wonderful time while doing it!
Thank you so much for visiting Lunchtaker. We hope this site continues to be an inspiration to you, and that you refer to it often. We also look forward to any feedback you have!
– Amy & Scott, Editors
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Authored by Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 8:26 am and filed under About This Site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.