I wrote a guest post for …And Love it Too. Below is the summary- you can read the full post here (link to And Love it Too).

 I try to keep the following in mind for school lunches:

• The kids have almost no time to eat. If I pack them something like blueberries they will eat one at a time, run out of time, and come home with a full lunch box. So, it must be easy to eat in big bites- fast! Sad, I know, but a fact of our public school life. Nothing too crunchy or time consuming.
• Pushing their comfort zone with a bit of a new vegetable or something healthy that they marginally like is OK. Packing food they don’t like just results in hungry kids. This may seem obvious, but one of my daughters is so particular it is almost impossible to guess what she will like even when I try my best. Asking her is a bad idea as she will only admit to liking fries and chocolate.
• A little bit of fun makes their whole lunch enjoyable. A note. A carrot cut like a flower. A fun food pick.

For my lunch I use all the vegetables in my refrigerator left from the previous week’s CSA. I make a big bone broth and random vegetable soup and freeze it in individual portions. Then I know I will eat well when I am hungry and busy.

That covers lunch but there is one more important healthy food to plan for school: Birthday parties! Our school serves a lot of treats in the classroom. Often events crop up with very little warning. So, I keep my freezer full of Just In Case Cupcakes. (I think most of us Mom’s with special eaters do the same!) I usually freeze the chocolate cupcakes from my cookbook. Today I am sharing my Colorful Sweet Potato Cake recipe (which just happens to be paleo friendly).

Photo: Colorful Sweet Potato cake with coconut whipped “cream” frosting, homemade gummies, and cupcake guys.

Colorful Sweet Potato Cupcakes Recipe on And Love it Too!

(I will post a recipe for the naturally colored frosting (see photo below) on in the next couple of weeks.)

My kids and I decorated a bunch of cupcakes like monsters and then I photographed them. Afterwards I gave the photos to my kids and asked them to write one page cartoons. Most of them are quite nonsensical and being the mom I think they are the cutest thing ever!