Keeping foods at the correct temperature is more than just a health and safety matter. It is often the difference between food landing in your child’s mouth or the cafeteria garbage. To keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold, try these techniques.
Keeping Food Hot
- Use an insulated lunch bag and invest in a good quality thermos.
- While you are heating up soup or other warm foods, fill the thermos with boiling water. When you are ready to add the hot food, dump out the water. Your child’s lunch will stay piping hot until lunch time.
- Avoid adding a cold pack for cold foods when you are packing a hot lunch. Choose a beverage that doesn’t need to be chilled, such as water and select sides that don’t need chilling.
Keeping Food Cool
- Pick up some fun ice containers available in grocery stores. They are reusable for many years and a nice decoration in your child’s lunch.
- Freeze your child’s sandwich over night. In the morning, just pop it into the lunch box. The bread and fillings will thaw by lunchtime. If your child has an early lunch, or it is cool weather, don’t add an ice container.
- Freeze yogurt overnight. It is a fun dessert surprise still partially frozen AND it keeps everything else cool.
- Freeze juice boxes or water bottles overnight. This is especially good when it is warm outside or if you aren’t using an insulated container. If it is very cold outdoors and you have an insulated container, the liquid may not thaw by lunchtime.
Tags: cold, freeze, hot, thermos
More about 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 Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 8:23 am and filed under How-To, Lunch Gear. 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.
