Snacks

When I was a kid, my mom always packed us these super healthy, homemade lunches. A sandwich of some sort on whole wheat bread, a piece of fruit, some carrot sticks, and home made baked goods like muffins (Shira's Favorite Good for Me Bran Muffins is the actual title of a recipe my mom submitted to a cookbook in 1980-something. I really do not recall when exactly they were ever my favorite muffins). I longingly eyed my friend's yodels and Pringles and rolled my eyes at these embarrassing healthy lunches.

Little did I know that what was natural (pun intended) to my parents then would be the height of cool these days?
And so, here we are, and I am the mom now, and snacks and lunches are a VERY IMPORTANT THING to my children, just as they were to me.
And so I have this ongoing internal battle with myself over said snacks. Do I send them what I *know* I should be sending them? Or do I make them happy now and send them what most of their friends are getting? While I am eternally grateful NOW that my parents have always been so health conscious and am trying very hard to follow their example (ok, maybe more follow my mother's example, notsomuch my father’s, V'ha Meivin Yavin), I also remember wanting JUNK so much, that I became too focused on it, and that was also not a good thing.
Yaakov is the least picky child I know (Thanks Yehuda!) and while Amira may not be the pickiest, she certainly has her "rules." So lunches might be a sandwich on whole wheat bread, or organic yogurt, or whole wheat pasta with cheese (sauce and cheese for Yaakov). I bought these really cool thermos's at the beginning of the school year and when you put the food in hot in the morning, it stays hot all day!, plus a veggie (Amira will eat any vegetable, as long as it is raw) a fruit, and as Amira calls it "A Junky Snack."
My kids really love their junky snacks. Choosing the Junky Snack is the highlight of the morning. In fact, in the middle of a massive tantrum after school one day, I finally got Yaakov to calm down enough to tell me what was wrong and his reply: "I WANT JUNK! I WANT SUGAR." Um, yeah, that's REALLY going to make this tantrum thing better. String cheese it is. Most of the time Amira eats the junky snack and the lunch, and leaves the fruit and veggies, unless I send her with a pickle- those are moderately junky, so ok to eat. Of course when she gets home she is STARVING and I have to be the mean Mommy and make her eat her healthy snacks. Sigh.
Lately she has been asking me to send her salad for lunch, and that definitely works, and I (again, what’s up with that?) feel like my mother when I say “Stop eating so much salad- eat something else for once!”

Sometimes I try to compromise and give them the Organic! Transfat Free! Super Healthy Sugar! type of junky snack, but my mom just rolls her eyes at me and says, you really think THAT's healthy?