School Lunches & Copious Basil

I have to admit, I been slacking off with packing lunch for kids this academic year. There are numerous documentaries out there (some on Netflix) that shows what is being served for school lunches. A simple visit to the school cafeteria during lunch will confirm the same. Most of the lunch is made from frozen or canned food. Not to mention, a variety of junk food are available for the kids to choose from, like kids Cliff bars, fruit bars, ice creams, Doritos, Cheetos so on and so forth. To top it, there is the snack provided by the after school care ...what do you expect, another round of cheetos, pudding loaded with sugar, doritos and the likes. No doubt, a few days in a month, they try and provide fruits for snacks.

We can blame the schools and food industry all we want. But we know the not-so-healthy food choices are not going to stop any time soon. It is way easier to teach the kids to stay away from excess sugar and processed food. I think of it as a modern day "Life Skill", a skill our parents or grand parents never needed.

With all the basil growing in the backyard, I made some pesto sauce sans the recommended quantity of olive oil. Packed linguini and pesto sauce for the kid's lunch today. It was so so.

The only way I seem to like basil is with fresh mozzarella and/or tomatoes.