About / Statement of Purpose

I am a stay-at-home mom to two children, affectionately referred to as the nuggets. My son was first given that nickname as a three-day old infant, all swaddled tight in a precious bundle, when my husband commented that he looked like “the cutest little nugget of love.” And when our daughter was born, her big brother couldn’t pronounce her name and called her “Erv,” which progressed to Ervness, Ervarooni, and eventually just Rooni. We don’t actually call our son Nugget these days, since he is so much bigger. But little sister still gets the Rooni moniker as often as her own birth name.

As I ease my way into the diverse world of healthy, responsible and delicious packed lunches for my husband and children, I thought it would be fun to document my journey as I hopefully become better at it. There are a couple reasons for Lunch Nugget, including:

• limiting the waste that is so common with packed lunches
• providing a diverse and healthy assortment of food
• expose my children and husband to new tastes and textures
• learning to cook and prepare healthy meals for kids and an active family
• being conscious with our lunch money, knowing there are better uses for it than fast food
• posting lunches and other ideas will keep me on track with my goals to keep our family on the road to being healthy and fit, as well as hold me accountable for staying motivated

Nugget is currently in Kindergarten at a public school. I first began packing his lunch in preschool, because he had an after school program three days a week. Now, I pack his lunches because I am not thrilled about the school lunches that are offered, though I do plan to let him buy school lunches every now and then.

He also has food allergies, which remain a persistent underlying concern as the world today (extended family, schools, society at large) ever-so-slowly adjusts to the increasingly prevalent number of children with life-threatening food allergies. Originally, my son's allergies were to dairy, egg and tree nuts. He has since outgrown the dairy and egg allergy (yay!), but remains allergic to tree nuts. As an interesting aside, there are two tree nuts he is not allergic to - almonds and pine nuts, both of which he was exposed to during breastfeeding and inadvertently as beginning eater. Though recommendations change regularly as pediatric allergists continually learn more about their specialty, the current recommendation for my son (particular to his situation), is to continue supervised and controlled exposure – meaning, in the presence of mom or dad or the pediatric allergist - to peanuts, almonds and pine nuts. This is in order to inhibit a future allergy from forming to those food items. However, none of the lunches pictured in this blog will ever contain peanuts or tree nuts of any kind.

My daughter Rooni is 2 years old, and has tested allergy-free. She eats lunch with me, so if we enjoy a picnic somewhere I will post our lunch, but otherwise she will not get as much screen time as her older sibling. Same with Dad, since I often pack his lunches late at night, or sometimes WAY too early in the morning and then head back to bed.

It is very inspiring to view the number of books, videos and websites about lunch making, and I am going to try and incorporate many of the things I learn into Lunch Nugget. I had no idea about the endless lunch possibilities that avail themselves to anyone committed to venturing beyond standard kid lunch fare!

Primary goals for Lunch Nugget:

• enjoy the progress on my journey to create appealing, healthy kid lunches
• maintain a place to store ideas, tips and other fun thing
• give a snapshot of our food-lives with family and friends - if we cannot break bread in person, we can at least share from afar

Secondary goals for Lunch Nugget:

• keep tree nut allergies in the conscious awareness of family, friends and readers
• provide good lunch ideas for anyone struggling with tree nut allergies
• maintain focus for the more general goal of living a healthy lifestyle
• learn to take better pictures of the food

Thank you for joining us at Lunch Nugget!