 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be all about our homeschool lunches lately. Now a few weeks ago, I shared a video with you guys explaining how lunch is hands down the hardest meal in our homeschool and how I meal prep to save my homeschool sanity. So if you're interested in seeing kind of how I meal prep or more details about that, I will link the video up here for you to watch that. But in short, basically what I do is I meal prep on either Sunday night or Monday morning and I try to make a week's worth of meals for Emily and myself so that our homeschool day can go off without a hitch. That way we're not having to stop for me to make lunch or interrupt lessons, especially if one of us is hungry at a different time. It also makes sure that we're getting healthier options and that I'm not like pushing for something super easy and convenient like a bag of chips because it's easier than me making something. Typically I make two different options for the week and sometimes her and I will alternate. We're like, we'll eat one option on one day and one option on the next day. Other times we eat all of one option because we're in love with it and then we eat all of the other option. It just depends on our mood. But basically I will ask her before I grocery shop, what do you think you're in the mood for? Pizza, sandwich, a snacky lunch, whatever. She'll kind of give me an idea and then I buy this stuff to make her two different variations of whatever it is she's in the mood for. I leave them in the fridge and she is free to eat them whenever she's hungry. So she doesn't have to wait on me, she doesn't have to ask me, she can just go get her lunch and eat whenever she's hungry and then the same thing for me. It's there, it's ready, I don't have to think about it and it just makes sure that we're getting something better than what I probably would have made otherwise and it helps not have that stress of like, oh you're hungry, let's stop in the middle of this lesson, let me make something and then getting back into that lesson, which is a nightmare. So today I'm going to share basically what is approximately a month's worth of lunches for us. I've been filming for the last month and I have kind of given you a glimpse into like what I have made when I've meal prepped so that I can give you some ideas of things that we've been meal prepping in our homeschool. Emily wanted pizza this week, so I've made her two different pizza lunchable type of options. This is two of these Joseph Mini pita bread. This is with the Rayos pizza sauce, pepperoni and shredded cheese. Then her other option is like a cracker pizza lunchable, we have crackers, pepperoni, cheese, bell peppers and grape tomatoes. I am going with a snacky lunch this week. So this is boar's head turkey and a light mozzarella string cheese, sugar snap peas, pretzels and sweet peppers and then for dipping I have this Bolt House Farms classic ranch yogurt dressing. And then for a second option this is boar's head chicken, low-fat or light string cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes. These are the Simple Mills Mediterranean herb crackers and then for dipping sauce I have the boar's head tzatziki. This is my favorite. Emily asked for sandwiches this week so one of her options is a pantmer and jelly sandwich with some goldfish and berries and her other option is a little mini ham sub with cheese on the side, not on the sandwich. Grape tomatoes, sugar snap peas and then these are the made good granola minis with chocolate chips. For lunch this week I'm having chicken and cheese taquitos. This is the first time I've made this so they definitely could use some more. My wrapping skills are not the greatest. I used these extreme wellness high fiber wraps. I buy these in bulk at Sam so I had a lot to use and then I just made a mixture of shredded chicken, cottage cheese so that it would be a lower calorie higher protein and a little bit of taco seasoning for taste and I'm thinking I will have probably three, maybe four of these each day for lunch and then dip them in this Bolt House Farms yogurt based dressing. Emily requested a snacky lunch again so I have to get really creative when she asks for that so that's her number one request. So we have some of the archers beef jerky, that's her favorite beef jerky. Some Colby Jack cheese slices, trail mix which is basically just a homemade version of peanuts, raisins and M&Ms and sunflower seeds. Celery sticks, she may or may not add peanut butter to those when she eats this and then blueberries and strawberries. And then her other option is paninos. This is prosciutto wrapped with mozzarella cheese inside, multi-grain crackers, apple slices and carrot sticks. So this is the crackers that she'll be eating and then this is her favorite beef jerky. This is my lunch this week, it is a high protein dip. So we have chicken buffalo dip and chicken taco dip. They're essentially both the same with just some different seasonings so it's just shredded chicken and then Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. The key to the cottage cheese is to blend it. Like I'm talking, it just looks like sour cream. Like I don't like cottage cheese and that makes it work. And then the difference is the buffalo chicken has buffalo sauce and ranch seasoning and the taco has taco seasoning and taco sauce. I like to eat them with protein chips so the ranch quest protein chips are my favorite for the buffalo and the quest taco ones are my favorite for the taco-based one. This one does also have corn in it and I like to do black beans too. I just didn't have any this week. And then my favorite veggies to pair with it, which I'll pair some of those to is celery with the buffalo one and the mini sweet peppers with the taco one. This week Emily had zero input for her lunches so she got a smorgasbord of whatever mommy could come up with. These are turkey, cheese and lettuce pinwheels. They're just in a wrap with some dill pickles and grapes. And then this is gonna be, we're gonna call it a chicken taco. It's some wraps with grilled chicken and shredded cheese. That is what she will eat on her taco. And then she'll have like the lettuce and tomato as like a side salad. So chicken and cheese tacos and a side salad. We had a crazy busy weekend and I wanted something super easy to prep this week but also kind of warm and filling. And so I am doing a chicken Alfredo. This is the easiest thing ever. I just get these bird's eye steamable bags but I do them in a pan instead. So this is a penne and vegetable Alfredo. And then I just added this grilled chicken to it and that will be two servings. Other combinations I really like are this garlic butter, rutini and vegetables with cooked shrimp. These are basically ready to go. So I just put all that in the pan it's like 10 minutes and again two servings. And then this one, which is the zesty marinara with zucchini and bell peppers. And then I like to pair it with chicken sausage. The Italian is the best. And then again, this is two servings. So I double it for the week. So I would do like two of these and two of these, two and two and then two and two.