Top 8 Allergy Safe Lunch #5

I make this pasta with meat sauce about twice a month these days. The recipe is so forgiving -- if I have things on hand like carrot, celery, onion or red bell pepper, I'll add those in, but it's absolutely delicious with just crushed or pureed tomatoes, garlic, basil and olive oil. We've recently started using a gluten free chickpea pasta, which my family really enjoys. 

The best part of this meal is that my kids love it with their lunches, and yes, they eat it cold. I try to make a menu plan for dinners for the week and my kids keep leftovers in mind when they're choosing their lunch foods with the LaLa Lunchbox app. This lunch has gluten free pasta with meat sauce with salad (and olive oil and vinegar in those little containers), plus apples, strawberries and top 8 free gummy bears. 

Top 8 Allergy Safe Lunch #4

My kids love to roll their own sushi. Check out this video to see my 10 year old in action! We frequently make these with egg, but for this series, we've got carrot, lettuce, avocado and either brown rice or rice noodles. There's coconut aminos - a great soy sauce substitute - for dipping, plus some chickpeas seasoned with gomasio. Naturally, if you have a sesame allergy (rates of that are on the rise), just eliminate the gomasio. All of that plus strawberries, kiwi, raspberries and some gummy peaches which are free of the top 8. 

Top 8 Allergy Safe Lunch #3

Everyone loves Taco Tuesday! 

This lunch has a corn tortilla with ground meat (here we have beef, but you can use any ground meat), chopped tomatoes and lettuce for some DIY fun. I seasoned the meat with some homemade taco seasoning using this recipe. I've left the avocado as is, because my little one likes to scoop it with a spoon, but you can easily mash it for your kids to use as guacamole. Make sure to squeeze fresh lemon or lime juice on it to prevent browning. This lunch also has popcorn and apple slices. 

Top 8 Allergy Safe Lunch #2

Here's a colorful lunch that's filling and balanced! We have roasted sweet potato slices (slice a sweet potato, drizzle with olive oil and roast in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes), plus grapes, apple, dried coconut, sliced ham (I use Applegate ham, which is free of dairy, gluten and casein, but of course any meat will do here), and rice noodles with tomato, broccoli, olive oil and nutritional yeast. 

Nutritional yeast is kind of amazing. It adds a boost of savory flavor (kind of like cheese) but it's vegan. Be sure to read the label to make sure that your nutritional yeast is not made from whey. Here's the one I use. I cooked and drained the rice noodles, and then sauteed some chopped tomato and broccoli in olive oil. After about a minute, I added the rice noodles and stirred to make sure the ingredients were evenly distributed. I added a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, gave it a final stir and that was that - it took all of 5 minutes! 

Top 8 Allergy Safe Lunch #1

This lunch couldn't be more simple and the best part is, it's easy to pack quickly. I'm a fan of packing lunches at night because mornings are hectic around here. But this lunch can quickly come together in the morning rush if need be. 

Here we've got sunflower seed butter (you can even make your own with this recipe) with apples for dipping - which most kids love to do, plus steamed broccolini (any leftover veggie from dinner will work!), popcorn, a "tuxedo banana" and a sticker for some added lunchtime fun. 

To make that tuxedo banana, just carve out a V in the peel, and add three (non dairy) chocolate chips for the buttons. This is a huge hit with my kids. We've manually added this to the LaLa Lunchbox food library (and you can too - find out how here). 

Here's another bit of news: today we've made the Dairy Free lunch bundle FREE inside of the LaLa Lunchbox app. We've never done that before so go ahead and snag that one today!