Ain't no such thing as a free lunch

Lauren is in full-day kindergarten. They have a lunch period around 1 PM or so. In the first month of school, I packed lunch each day. It's not a gourmet lunch, but it's reasonably well balanced. Lauren's teacher insists that their snack should be packed separately, so she has a plastic container that's big enough for a juice box and a granola bar, and her lunch box accommodates the 2 by 3 Pyrex I use for cold lunches and thermos for hot lunch. It should not have surprised me about 6 weeks into the school year Lauren began to ask to buy school lunch, since everyone else did.

Now, I'd had an active albeit futile role in the district nutrition committee last year, and I go out of my way to make sure we eat meat and dairy that's been farmed with higher standards. I still begrudgingly agreed that she could purchase the school lunch one day a week, and we'd discuss which hot lunch or deli sandwich because she wasn't permitted to buy cereal with chocolate or strawberry milk (because that's not an adequate lunch) or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (because why pay $2 for something we can make at home?). She agreed and on Sunday we discuss the school lunches and which days she's going to buy. One day bridged into two days, and yes on some weeks when Alec travels it even goes to three. Until...

There were a couple days in a row when Lauren came off the school bus famished and cranky. She's generally Tigger-like in great leaps and bounces, but that day she dragged herself off the bus and weakly handed me her backpack.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm just so hungry."

"What did you have for lunch?"

Now Lauren occasionally dips her toe in the small lie, but even she knew that this was information she could be busted on too easily with the menu posted on our refrigerator.

"Cheerios with strawberry milk on them."

"Seriously?"

"Well, Lauren this is why I told you not to get cereal for lunch. It's too long of a day to just eat a quarter cup of cereal."

"Hungry."

I snapped. "We're having grapes for snack. I guess you're going to be hungry." To top off the punishment, I refused to allow her to buy lunch for a week, not that humus, pita, and baby carrots over Tasty Tacos are punishment. But it did make the point. This week when we discussed lunch, she carefully considered her options and went with today since it's International Pancake week and they are serving pancakes and sausage for lunch...