- Hi, everyone.
I'm Claire, I'm a Tasty producer, and today,
I'm gonna show you some back to school recipes
that you can make for your kids.
Meal prepping is something that I like to do
on a weekly basis.
It helps me stay organized and makes me feel
like I have a little bit of my life together.
I've found that I actually eat so much healthier
when I plan out for the whole week.
So, transitioning that same concept into meals for children
is such a great idea, and as a parent, it saves time.
One of the easier ways to plan meal prepping for kids
is to pick a base vegetable, a base protein,
and a base fruit to put in every lunch.
You can mix it up day to day by having one or two choices.
So, in this video, what my coworker Hannah did
was she picked a couple of base vegetables
and a couple base fruits to play with
so that way she can add one or the other in
for a little variation and to keep lunch interesting.
When I first started making lunches
for my niece and my nephew,
the video I turned to was this one.
It's really fun to give kids variety with their lunches.
I think that making lunch an activity helps with that,
and having build your own kind of dishes
makes it really exciting to eat
and lets them be a little creative with their lunch.
I know how difficult it is
to make a different lunch every day,
and when that lunchbox comes home
and all of that food is just still in there,
it drives me nuts.
So, I try to make things as exciting as I possibly can.
I'm all about convenience,
and just to make it even more convenient,
you can utilize the same ingredients in different forms
so that way you're not having to spend extra money
buying extra ingredients to make four days worth of food.
You could just buy one package of tortillas
and make three different things out of it.
I think packing lunches is important
because it's one way that I can show my niece and nephew
that I care about them,
and I ask for their feedback all the time.
Did you like this?
Did you like that?
Can I put this in your lunch tomorrow too?
And if I get an excited yes, I know I've done a good job.
By no means do you have to follow
exactly what is in the video to a tee.
You can customize it to make
whatever you think your child would like.
Obviously, not every kid is gonna like
hard boiled eggs in their lunch, but that's okay.
You can put in something else
that you do know that they like,
that way you can provide them with a lunch
that you know they're gonna enjoy,
but is also gonna give them sustainable energy
throughout the rest of the day.
Another way you can meal prep is by using leftover chicken,
or you can buy one chicken, shred it up,
and make your lunches from there.
Chicken is one of the most popular meats in the world,
and just about every kid I know will eat chicken.
There's a variety of recipes that you can make with chicken,
which is why it's perfect
for meal prepping for kid's lunches.
Like I said before, you can use these as jumping off points.
If your kid doesn't like chicken salad,
you can make your own version
or mix it up with your favorite family recipe.
This is just another way
to optimize your efficiency in the mornings.
You just have one solid protein
and you expand on it from there,
and you can really go anywhere with it.
Just make sure to remove all the bones and cartilage
and shred the chicken really well.
Growing up in my house, I hated eating leftovers.
So, my mom would get sneaky and she would turn the leftovers
into something new so I wouldn't even know
that I was eating leftovers for lunch.
So, that was something that really inspired me
to make this video and to pay homage to my childhood
as well as my upbringing.
If it wasn't leftovers,
my lunches were typically pretty boring
and the same every day.
So, I didn't want the same for my niece and nephew,
and that's why I put in a lot of effort
to make their food exciting and fun to eat.
My niece is only six,
so having a full day at school is a really long time
for her to go without having a snack every five minutes.
I really like making sure that she has healthy choices
for her lunch every day.
Making a lunch that she brings home
with the box totally empty is such a satisfying feeling.
When you're that age,
lunch is such an exiting time of the day,
and it's even an exciting time of the day for me
as a 25-year-old woman.
One of my favorite things to do
that my mom used to do for me is to leave notes
in their lunches with funny little sayings,
and I absolutely think that I'm the funniest aunt
in the whole entire world
because I leave the cheesiest, corniest notes,
and I crack myself up as I'm writing them every morning.
I like to add puns on little notes in their lunches,
and I think I'm funny, but I don't know if anyone else does.
But come on, I be-leaf in you.
Come on.
Lettuce taco 'bout it.
You've bean a good kid today.
I'm funny.
Give me the credit, I'm funny.
For my nephew, since he's only three, he can't really read,
but my niece is starting to be able to read
and she either gets my jokes or kinda looks at me
in disappointment like oh, auntie, that was a drab one.
I always thought it was so special
when my mom would put notes in my lunch
because it was just a little reminder from her to me
that she loves me and cares about me,
so I'm carrying on that tradition with my niece and nephew.
These cereal bars are the best snack for any time.
You can grab 'em and go for the morning,
you can put 'em in a lunch,
you can have 'em as an after school snack.
They really are the perfect food for any time of day.
When you're making these,
it's a perfect opportunity to involve your child
in the cooking process with you.
It's the best when you see how proud they are of themselves
and you see a big smile across their face.
My coworker Hannah's son, Jackson, helped me make this,
and he's usually my sous chef in Tasty Junior videos.
This particular day,
he was really upset that we were putting
the yogurt chips in the mix.
I had to tell him they're part of the recipe
and we have to put them in, but you know what we can do?
We can make a batch separately just for you
that doesn't have yogurt chips in it,
and he really enjoyed having his own little version.
At the time, I was a little frustrated with him
because he was changing my vision,
but he really taught me a valuable lesson
in that you should always customize your recipes
to your own preference.
Another reason these are great
is because you can wrap them up and save 'em in your fridge
for about three months before you'll need to toss them.
These are just another way for you to save time, and also,
this way you know what ingredients are going in
compared to the mystery ingredient sugar filled bars
that there are out there today.
Now, with this snack,
I can't tell you exactly what they're based on,
but it starts with cheese and it's a great snack,
but we'll just call them baked cheese crackers for now.
My favorite part about this recipe
is that it's four ingredients.
It really doesn't take that long to make,
just a little bit of effort, but the effort is worth it.
These are something that I make for myself all the time,
and they pair really well with chardonnay, by the way.
They're lighter and they have
a really satisfying crunch to them.
Have the kids help you cut out the shapes
and put them on a baking sheet
and poke a hole in the middle.
When you use the cookie cutters,
it just makes it so much more fun and so much more kid-like.
You can add these into lunches,
you can keep them for an at-home snack,
you can hide them in the back of the pantry for yourself.
Whatever you do, just make them.
You can even play with the type of cheese
that you put in them.
You can do mozzarella, Colby jack, American.
No, don't do American.
Mozzarella, Colby jack, pepper jack
if you're a little fancy, or you can even amp up the flavor
with a really great sharp cheddar
and you'll have really flavorful and delicious cracker.
You can also use a cookie cutter
and just keep rolling out the dough
until you don't have any dough left.
Just like last time,
I told you guys that I do read the comments, and believe me,
I know you can buy these in a box,
but making them is so much better
and you can make the cutest little shapes,
and they taste 10 times better, promise.
Go make them.
I mean, it's only four ingredients
you probably have in your house right now.
It's another surefire way of making sure you know what
your kids are eating and what's going into those foods.
This is another four ingredient really easy snack.
You could even really do it with three ingredients.
You're really just dehydrating the fruit,
and that's what's taking so long,
but the end result is worth it.
If you were to compare these to rolls
that you would buy at the store,
you could look and see that there's far
less processed ingredients.
These are something that you can do in big batches.
You can do two or three sheet pans at a time
since they do take so long to bake.
These are really really fun to eat,
and it's along the same lines of using
little to no added sugar.
Just peel right off of the parchment paper that they're on,
and I would even eat them as a snack for myself
because they're just that delicious.
The last school year was a really interesting
learning process for me.
I had to relearn what kids like in their lunches.
My now six-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew
landed in my life just like a bomb.
I don't have the typical aunt, niece, nephew relationship.
My mom and I are their caregivers,
and it's been a really big learning experience
for me to make them lunches and play this role for them
that was so different from anything
I'd ever done in my life before that.
It's really taken a lot of self-reflection
and looking back on my childhood and my life
to help me learn what to feed them,
and it's a lot of testing, asking for their feedback,
but they always have so much gratitude
for the food that we make them,
and I am so lucky to have such wonderful kids to feed.
Before they came into our care,
I was barely making lunch for myself,
let alone eating something other than
pizza rolls from the freezer.
So, it's been a big opportunity for me to explore
some of my favorite dishes from when I was a kid
and bring them back to share with my niece and nephew.
School's already hard enough,
and kids really look forward to their lunch breaks.
I know I can't be there all the time
while they're at school and I'm at work,
but knowing that I've provided them with food
that I know they're gonna love,
it just makes it all worth it.
That was it.
- [Andrew] Oh, yes!
(laughing)