Lunchbox: So Easy, So Delicious, So Much Fun to Eat

A cookbook and lookbook of more than 75 easy-to-make themed lunchbox creations to bring inspiration, joy, learning, and nutrition to a child’s midday meal, from IACP Award–winning authors Marnie Hanel and Jen Stevenson.

Take the drudgery out of the midday meal with Lunchbox—an adult’s guide to creating 75 unique, healthful, and delicious lunchboxes for children ages 3 to 10. For many parents, packing or preparing a healthy and satisfying lunch for their child can be a daunting task. But with breakfast being the most routine meal and dinner often a struggle, lunchtime is an opportunity to get your little ones to explore new foods, fuel up on nutrients, and sample a range of ingredients. Each meal in ​Lunchbox is built around a theme meant to reinforce learning, celebrate holidays, and set children up to have a positive relationship with food.

There are lunches themed to colors and shapes, like the All-Orange Lunch or the Circles and Squares Lunch; lunches featuring foods of global cuisines, like the Japanese Lunch, which includes onigiri and edamame; and fun meals that sneak in foods maybe otherwise overlooked by picky eaters. Each lunchbox is designed with the busy parent in mind, so no creation requires more effort than gathering store-bought ingredients and whipping up one basic recipe (at most!). There are opportunities to repurpose leftovers, ideas for customizing any of the 50 homemade staples (such as hummus, mini muffins, and protein balls), and cost-saving and waste-saving options. Like adults, children eat with their eyes first, so every lunchbox is styled in exciting and enticing ways to encourage children to dig right in (and there are tips to get older kids involved in making their own lunch)—while annotated photographs of all 75 lunches make it easy for the parent or caregiver to re-create the visual magic. As a bonus, the book includes perforated cards so no lunch goes to school without a little note to say hi, crack a joke, or send love.

About the Author

Marnie Hanel is the coauthor of The Snowy Cabin Cookbook; Summer: A Cookbook; The Campout Cookbook; and The Picnic, winner of the 2016 IACP Award for Best General Cookbook. Hanel is a journalist who writes about the wild, wonderful way we live. Her essays and articles have been published by The New York Times Magazine, Food & Wine, and Vanity Fair. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Jen Stevenson is the coauthor of The Snowy Cabin Cookbook; Summer: A Cookbook; The Campout Cookbook; and The Picnic, winner of the 2016 IACP Award for Best General Cookbook. Stevenson eats and tells on her Portland food blog, Under the Table with Jen, and is the author of Portland's 100 Best Places to Stuff Your Faces. She lives in Portland, Oregon.