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August 25, 2011

SCHOOL SHOPPING LIST GIVEAWAY!

Fun Fact: I LOVE BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING; it’s my favorite time of year!  I’m one of those people who needs an objective when I shop; so when there’s a list involved I feel completely satisified picking out and checking off items. You can imagine how much I loved organizing stuff for summer camp as a kid.

In the past few weeks I’ve had my eye on some cool things at my local Target. I saw a few kids with lists and baskets full of supplies and couldn’t help but feel JEALOUS. Although I don’t miss going to school, I do miss having cool new shoes and a backpack full of the latest school supplies. This year I decided to make my own school shopping list and buy supplies for one lucky reader! If you’re not in school, who cares?? I’m totally acting like I am. I’ve got a brand new pencil case in my purse filled with fresh Sharpies and I’m not ashamed. There might be a highlighter in there or two cuz you never know when you might need one!

Here’s what I picked out for YOU!

1. MECHANICAL PENCILSmy favorite! I like a thick lead mechanical pencil. I hope you do too!

2. LARABARSyou need energy with all of your studying! Flavors: Cherry Pie & Peanut Butter Cookie.

3. GUMSweet Mint! Who doesn’t need gum? Just don’t let your teachers catch you chewing it!

4. SHARPIE- COLOR PACKseeing a pack of colored sharpies makes me happy. ‘Nuff said.

5. SHARPIE- MEDIUM POINTessential for list making. These ones don’t bleed through paper! I’m mildly obsessed with them and I think they make my handwriting better.

6. CUTE PEN CASEwhat are you gonna put your new pens in? duh!

7. PAPER CLIPS—these ones are coated. They look cool.

8. GRAPH PAPER POST-ITS—the greatest invention since sliced bread. Seriously. Life changer. Sometimes they are hard to find!

9. GIGANTIC PAPERCLIPSgreat for huge paper stacks. You won’t realize how much you need these until you don’t have them.

10. NAIL POLISHSilver Sweep & Blue Streak Sally Hansen’s Insta-Dri. The wand is thick & it dries super fast. You could easily paint your nails in the AM if you have to.

11. NOTEBOOKwhere you write down ideas, love letters & shopping lists…

12. HIGHLIGHTERSbecause the world looks better highlighted. Neon is IN.

13. FOLDERSso you can put all your important papers in one place!

A winner will be picked at random a week from today–September 2nd!  Good luck!

  • Maria

    My favorite lunch item was the school cafeteria’s teriyaki chicken bites. I’ve never had teriyaki before that and thought they were an amazing creation.

  • Rachel

    I remember loving to buy pikelets from the canteen for recess, and when my mum made me a fairy bread sandwich for lunch.

  • Iman

    PIZZA! every friday was pizza day and it seemed that day of the week was the most magical… maybe it just meant that I was that much closer to saturday morning cartoons but the pizza for lunch definitely added to the excitement :p

  • Rachel

    Awesome, those Sharpies have got me very excited!

    What was my favourite thing to eat at lunch when I was at school (God, was that only last year?!) Puff pastry parcels with roast vegetables (veggie counter) and the really skinny fries fresh from the kitchens so they are piping hot and crispy! And cherry tomatoes from the salad bar.

  • Panya

    At school, Friday pizza, of course!

  • crizeene

    I was fortunate to buy lunch when I wanted, but I’d have to say my favorite lunch in school–actually in high school!–was when my dad would pack me pastrami or salami sandwiches with swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato on *toasted* sourdough bread AND a thermos of soup–usually chicken noodle or clam chowder. But the best part was always the sweet little note he’d write for me and tuck into my lunch bag 🙂

  • Tory

    My mom used to pack me really awesome lunches, all the way until I graduated high school 🙂 There would be left over spaghetti (so yummy cold), fresh fruit salad, home made cookies……but sometimes the best lunch was still just getting french fries from the cafeteria 🙂

  • Jayne

    I love a simple egg sandwich. Fried egg in 2 heavily buttered bread. I’m incredibly boring. But it’s so delicious when the warm yolk hits the butter! Hungry now…

  • Danni

    Oh god, this is so embarrassing. See, I was a little obsessed with ketchup when I was younger [we won’t mention my love for it now…] so I’d start the day with ketchup on toast, and would always be happy when I got cheese and ketchup sandwiches in my lunchbox!
    The shame.

    x

  • Melissa

    My favorite lunch in school was PB&j, a fruit cup, with a Sunny D in the can. Sometimes I would get to take my friend (now husband)’s cookie.

  • Cali

    PBJ. Probably with hummus and carrots. Maybe some fruit leather. I could totally still take that to school. p.s. I found your writings via the Joy the Baker podcast and I feel like I got a 2 for 1 extra special deal.

  • Kelsey

    I always got excited for taco boats and pizza days! I’m not sure if I’d still eat school pizza now, but I loved it back in the day!!

  • Kimberly

    I liked school cafeteria pizza. Yikes!

  • Lindsay564

    At school, my fondest memory is of when we had pizza that came in these foil containers with french fries baked in under the pizza.

  • Jey

    My mom used to make this sweet soy chicken with rice and broccoli. It was the best. Apparently it was a hassle to make so she only made it once in awhile, but it was always the best day of the month when I would open my lunch box and see it in there waiting for me to eat. 🙂

  • hanna

    PB and bread. No J. Though, it was a gamechanger when I finally got on board. And my mom used to cut sandwiches with cookie cutters–my favorite was a camel!

  • Beth

    I’ve been a vegetarian for 24 years, but I still fondly remember the salami, provolone, and brown mustard sandwiches my dad made me every morning.

  • Tom S.

    I liked the rectangular pizza. I went to kindergarten lunch with my g/f’s kid last year and that’s what they still have, and it is his favorite too.

  • Cynthia H.

    I like the gross looking rice with brown sugar on top. Terrible looking but delicious.

  • Tee

    When I was a kid, I always spent my days outside, playing with neighborhood’s kids. Lunch was just something that bothered the day so it had to be something you could finish up really quickly. For example, mashed potatoes were good – nothing to chew on – and wolfing that down didn’t take long.

    When school started, the same criteria for food held. The faster you ate your lunch, the longer the recess would be. It’s too bad really; I never learnt to appreciate food as a kid. It was just some trouble taking the time away from better things.

  • Elise

    What a cute giveaway! Egg salad sandwiches were always a lunch treat…usually reserved for field trips or other special days.

  • Kristin

    I was quite a fan of my jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, but the days the cafeteria had tater tots was equally awesome 😀

  • amanda Whitley

    oh man I loved the little debbie snack cakes, brownies, or nutty bars in my lunchbox! Now I wouldn’t waste a calorie on those things! LOL;) I LOVE school supplies…as a former teacher turned stay a home mom sharpies are my best friend.

  • Katie

    The school lunch ladies made killer rice pudding with the left over rice. But the absolute best lunch was when my friends and I would sneak past the school to my house (on the same block) and eat lunch at my house. I don’t remember what I would feed everyone. Probably cereal. Good times!

  • katie

    duuuude. this is the best giveaway I’ve ever seen on the internet. no lie.

    all my favorite childhood lunch foods are so embarrassing now. jello cups. ding dongs. lunchables! i even remember looking forward to something our cafeteria called “crispitos.” which if I remember correctly were some kind of ground meat enchilada with yellow cheese sauce. yikes. just thinking about all that stuff now kind of makes me gag.

  • Lauren

    I’m still in school and I have two favourite lunches that are completely different from each other. The first is vanilla yogurt with fresh berries and granola. It’s great for when it’s warm out or if I want something sweet. The other is a garlic bun (garlic butter, cheddar, and mozzarella on a flattened calabrese bun). It’s soooo good.

  • Krissy

    I loved (still do!) a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Skippy peanut butter with raspberry or strawberry jelly – yum! Also, I loved drinking Kool-Aid Purplesaurus Rex. While they no longer make it, it’s just grape and lemonade Kool-Aid mixed in equal parts. AND, the best part, is you can get both in a sugar-free version so you don’t have to feel bad about giving it to kids!

    Love your website, photography and podcast with Joy! Thank you so much for sharing with all of us!

  • Kristi

    I used to love taking a bagel and cream cheese for lunch (with potato chips – the tangy and the salty combo is the best!). But I also used to love the days that my mom would let me buy pizza from the cafeteria! It was pretty terrible pizza, but the novelty of eating it hot for lunch made it fun.

  • Katrina

    This is a great giveaway! When I was a kid I loved plain PB&J sandwiches. My mom used to throw some homebaked cookies in my paper bag too. I loved it!

  • michelle

    i loveeeee sausage rolled with noodle and cassava chips! cute giveaways and i’m still in school….so those things would be so useful for me!

  • Sarah

    Once my mom got really fancy and packed me a thermos of warm tomato soup. Inside the soup was a hot dog with a string tied to the end. At lunchtime I pulled the hotdog out (using the aforementioned string) and plopped it in a bun and had a hot meal. I’m not sure I found it the tastiest lunch ever, but I loved the ingenuity.

  • Stephanie

    This high school favorite is a nod of how far my tastes have come since my teenage years; I used to love a bag of nacho flavored Combos, Reese’s, and white milk. Packed with nutrition!

  • megan

    My favorite lunch was an english muffin pizza with salt and vinegar potato chips, and a capri sun. I’m also a little ashamed to admit I had a weak spot for Lunchables . . . gross.

  • Andrea

    Oatmeal cream pies! Yeah….my food issues started early. Remember the scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids when they’re digging into a larger than life oatmeal cream pie? I still think that would be TOTALLY AWESOME.

  • Erin Faye

    My favorite lunch was peanut butter and honey sandwhiches. I think I ate them every day of elemntary school.

  • Briana

    At my school we had THE best chicken Gravy over biscuit! I still have not been able to reproduce it….I hope they still make it when my daughters start eating lunch at school, I just might have to make it my day to eat with them! BTW I love the school supplies!

  • Rebecca

    Pizza and mac n’ cheese…OHhhhh and the applecrisp was delicious!

  • Mary-Kate

    I love that you love back to school shopping, so funny :]
    My favorite school lunch was either a straight up fluff sandwich, leftover egg rolls my mom made, or buttered popcorn. Diverse, healthy and delicious!

  • Jenny

    Every Friday we got ice cream as the dessert for our school lunch so my favorite thing would be the ice cream sandwiches that would sneak up on us one Friday a month!

  • Cara Rahm carabornert@gmail.com

    Preschool and early on in elementary, I had to have lunchables or a peanut butter and jelly. By high school, my favorite thing for lunch was a blueberry bagel with blueberry cream cheese.

  • Leah

    I ate like a boy in high school, I generally had two breakfasts and I would eat my lunch then the left overs of everyone at my table haha, oh the shame. My Mom would always pack us fruit and healthy things (she was a good Mom but at the time I hated it) so my favourite was when someone offered me their Dunkeroos or Fruit By the Foot or any sugar coated, non-healthy treat of any kind. Jackpot!!

  • Kimberly

    I loved good ol’ PB&J. On the side I’d usually have a piece of fruit and some crackers.

  • Jori

    I liked the mashed potatoes the lunch lady scooped up with a ice cream scooper. What does that say about me??

  • Beth

    I always loved Italian Dunkers which were pizza strips that had no sauce on them but had sauce beside them to dip them in. 🙂

  • Robin

    Peanut butter and fluff sandwiches were my fav! With a Drake’s devil dog for dessert. Not the healthiest, I know, but it kept me full. By the way, this giveaway is TOO cute. I NEED those sharpies and pen case! 😉

  • Meli (Blush + Jelly)

    Sharpies and graph paper post-its? Can we be friends!

    As a kid I used to love Friday because it was pizza day – and sometimes they had these french bread pizzas which were ridiculously delicious!

  • Kris

    I recall liking those gross microwaveable Chef Boyardee thingies. Shudder. But I also ate a fair amount of random sandwiches and whatnot.

  • Katie

    Oh Man, you totally just brought me back! Even though the majority of our school cafeteria food was NASTY, they did make these wonderful chocolate chip cookies, perfectly cooked with gooey centers, yum!

  • kira

    It was totally chicken nuggets with bbq sauce and chocolate milk!

  • Jaime

    Love office supplies! My favorite school meal was chicken fried steak. It makes me cringe now thinking about it, but back then, I loved Wednesday’s lunch.

  • BriBedell

    A plain old Bologna sandwich!

  • Rosemarie

    My favorite lunch was actually in high school. I was obsessed with the pasta fagoli soup in our cafeteria! Now I realize it was no where near what the real soup is like. But I got that and a rice krispy treat everyday!

  • Laura

    My mom would always make me a grilled cheese and tomato soup! Mmmm…

  • Samantha

    in high school, every wednesday was lemon pepper chicken day with mashed potatoes and corn. oh my. it was EVERYONE’s favorite meal. That and fresh cookie day, where they would serve giant (like the size of my face) fresh cookies straight from the oven. It was heavenly.

  • Jessica

    In elementary school, breakfast for lunch was always one of my favorites. My dad would visit me at school for lunch every once in a while and that was always the day he picked to eat lunch with me. 🙂

  • Jessica

    i was always a pita girl…whether it was pb & banana or chicken salad…as long as it was in a pita…yum & fun!

  • Sheri F

    I always loved a good PB&J!

  • Elizabeth

    I loved cream cheese and bell-pepper sandwiches (and still do).

  • Food for Todd

    As a kid, homemade egg sandwiches! Now, hummus with veggies!
    Would love these school supplies to kick off another year of law school!

  • Whitney

    This post made me so happy!

    The first lunch comes to mind is when I was allowed to buy lunch and they had these really terrible but delicious bean burritos. I would totally eat one right now if I could.

  • Suzy

    I LOVE back to school shopping too. I still find myself walking through the isles and seeing what’s popular with the kids these days. And I always end up buying something for myself like a folder or notebook: ) I need to start having my own kids so I can buy more.

    My favorite school lunch would be a turkey and mayo sandwich with a piece of lettuce, that by lunch time is a little soggy. Pure comfort food!

  • Melissa S.

    My favorite school lunch was Hawaian haystacks. Delish!

  • Heather

    I love the items that you chose! I have no idea why but i used to love the school tacos!! I am glad my taste in food has grown 🙂

  • k

    Well I can honestly say that when I was a kid I ate just about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! But when I was at school where they served items that my mother would not allow…(oh there were so many!), my favorite lunchtime eat would have been their homemade pizza burgers, LOVED THEM!

  • Jen

    My favorite thing to eat was spagettios but only the ones with meat balls. Definitely not the ones with hot dogs in them.

  • Vivian

    When I was little my favorite thing for lunch was a salami sandwich with mustard on white bread. Crusts cut off, please! My dad would always laugh at me, because I used to squish the sandwich flat, so that it was no more than half an inch thick. I haven’t had a sandwich like that in years.

  • Wilma

    I can still taste my bologna sandwiches that I would smash my chips into. Yummy! What I really wanted though, was my classmates’ butterscotch krimpets tastycakes. I was so very envious.

  • Sophie

    This post is adorable 🙂

    I used to love set honey on toast. The really thick yellow kind. Mmmm.

  • Linda

    i’m so embarrassed… lunchables.

  • Caitlin

    I loved those lunchables with the little mini-pizzas you could make. Come to think of it, they didn’t taste all that great. But it was just so much fun to decorate the little pizzas!

  • Amanda Berg

    I always ate in the cafeteria when I was younger and my favorite day was always chicken sandwich day! They had a mustard similar to McDonald’s hot mustard.

  • Sarah

    Umm, I can hardly remember, ha. I think I like cheese and pickle sandwiches on brown bread.

  • Sydney B.

    At my school, pizza day was really exciting, but you never knew what kind of pizza you were going to get. My favorite was the rectangle pizza with white cheese, but sometimes they’d serve “stop sign” pizza. It was shaped like a stop sign (obviously) with violent orange cheese on top and it was just as awful as you’d think.

  • jennifer

    i always loved it when i would find ham and cheese pickle skewers in my lunch. my mom would just wrap a little bit of ham and cheese around gherkins, and skewer them with different colored toothpicks. 🙂

  • Jamie

    My favorite lunch was peanutbutter and fluff with banana with apple chips and preztles with a juice box.

  • jenny

    oh my gosh. I am now convinced that we were separated at birth or something. back-to-school shopping–for clothes, but ESPECIALLY for school supplies–was an event I looked forward to all summer long!

    I also looked forward to school lunches…at least when my mom packed them. (I had to pack every other day starting in 3rd grade). but in kindergarten, she used to pack me “sandwich people”: a rice cake for the face, a piece of celery with peanut butter for the body, carrots for the arms and legs, grapes or blueberries to make the eyes, nose, and mouth, and string cheese for the hair. I would lay everything out on a piece of saran wrap and assemble my person before consuming her. my mom also usually tucked a note in my lunchbox to wish me a good day. awwww, mom. 🙂

  • Allie

    My favorite thing for lucnh in elementary school was always pita and hummus, and tomatoes with salt. I was an odd child…

  • Kate M.

    I was home schooled so I didn’t have a packed lunch , but I always loved it when my mom made boxed Mac and Cheese. It was a treat because my mom made most everything homemade. However I won’t touch the stuff now!

  • Sarah S

    As a kid, I always love PB&J sandwiches and pretzel sticks.

  • Mardi

    I loved Peanut Butter and Jelly with Doritos, followed by a little debbie (various kinds). So healthy!

  • Christina

    It had to be peanut butter sandwiches cut into lots of tiny hearts using a cookie cutter. It was pretty much the only thing my mum could get me to eat in a packed lunch when I was 7. I was an odd child.

  • Renee

    Cheetos. Nothing else. Just cheetos–that was my favorite lunch. Did I mention I was a chubby kid?

  • Erin K

    My mom made a great peanut butter and fluffer nutter sandwich, the puffy marshmallow creme stuff with the peanut butter! YUM!

  • Sarah

    I always liked the sandwiches when my mom would buy the oven roasted chicken deli meat.

  • Beth

    We had wonderful cooks in our school cafeteria – mostly mothers and grandmothers of students. Every Thursday we had homemade chili and p-butter sandwiches. instead of jelly on the sandwich, they mixed the peanut butter with honey.

  • CJ

    I love back to school time! I had the joy of taking my niece school supply shopping this past week and had a blast. I love this idea! Why should only the kids get fresh new supplies? To answer your question, my dad always packed our lunches and my fav was banana and peanut butter sandwiches with cool ranch Doritos.

  • Maddie

    I had similar jealousy pangs walking through that aisle yesterday! My favorite school lunch was the taco salads in high school which was just a huge glob of beef on top of a crunchy bed of FRITOS. Looking back it seems gross but I was ALL about it. Still can’t eat a Frito without the memories!

  • Sarah K

    I loved it when we had mashed potatoes and gravy at school. I would probably think it was so gross now, but back then I couldn’t get enough!

  • ashleyj

    I ate a pb&j everyday & never got tired of it! And I really appreciate that my mom packed my lunch & it always included a piece of fruit.

  • Maxi

    I’m from Germany, so instead of Peanut butter and Jelly, we had Nutella sandwiches. Those were a rare but much appreciated lunch option! My more commonly available lunch option was a rather plain salami sandwich. Toasted wheat bread with lots of seeds on it (makes the bread taste sort of nuttier), some butter, a slice of salami, and a slice of tomato with some salt on it. Nom, nom, nom!

  • Maxi

    I’m from Germany, so instead of Peanut butter and Jelly, we had Nutella sandwiches. Those were a rare but much appreciated lunch option! My more commonly available lunch option was a rather plain salami sandwich. Toasted wheat bread with lots of seeds on it (makes the bread taste sort of nuttier), some butter, a slice of salami, and a slice of tomato with some salt on it. Nom, nom, nom!

  • mel

    Tomato soup with noodles in it!
    Funny enough, when I was in grade 5, a friend and I had the job of carrying the milk from class to class before lunch and selling them for 50 cents. Did anyone else have traveling milk sales at their school?

  • Lindsey Cota

    Well Hells Bells Mama!

    You went all out! This is SO cute!

    Let’s see, My favorite school lunch… Would have to be Pizza Friday.
    Second would be the chalupas and third was fave lunch was lemon lime fritos and a sprite. LOL. Everyday of 9th grade was just a bag of chips and a soda.

  • birdie

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid was apple slices with lots of cruncy peanut butter slathered on top. Pair that with a big glass of cold milk…aaaahhhhhh.

  • Dawn

    My favorite lunch was the mexican pizzas that were served in my cafeteria. Can’t find them anywhere else but they are on my to do list for baking experiments.
    I miss school shopping too! Walking through Target I am always tempted to get the back to school stuff, but can never justify getting it. Also, fresh sharpie tips are one of my little joys.

  • missy

    oh my gosh. LOVE this giveaway! i can’t really remember what all i ate at lunch, but i do remember that my BFF and i would combine all sorts of lunch items into bizarre bites. like teddy grahams and cheese and who knows what else. it was fun to go through our lunches everyday and see what strange and sometimes disgusting creations we could make.

    my son would eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches everyday if he had the option. i’m a huge fan of the smuckers natural chunky peanut butter – mmm. so peanutty!

  • Dayanna

    I always loved a good on PB & J or tomato soup with goldfish cheese crackers – YUM! 🙂

  • oneofthepandies

    My favourite lunch was either homemade tomato bread with herbal cream cheese on it or pita bread with gouda and cucumber. I still love both ^^

  • Megan

    My favorite school lunch was pizza. Hands down.

  • Erin

    peanut butter, honey and potato chip sandwich. DELICIOUS!

  • AnnieD

    My hands-down favorite lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a handful of Fritos crushed between the slices of bread. Crunchtastic. Ew! I also loved Hormel Chili, like, a lot. I’m happy to report that my diet has improved exponentially in the past 15 years. 🙂

  • april c

    When I was a kid, I LOVED a bologna and mustard sandwich in my lunch. Now, it nearly grosses me out to think how much I loved them. Second favorite was a basic PB&J…..even in high school. New school supplies feel like a fresh start. Rainbow sharpies? Giant paperclips? Pretty nail polish? Ahhhhhh……that’s a great fresh start!

  • Tort[e]s

    When I was a kid, we’d occasionally get out of school around noon when the teachers had in-service. I’d come home and my mom and I would always eat the same thing on those days: we’d split an onion bagel and pair it with clam chowder. That became my favorite thing to eat – it was delicious, I got to hang out with my mom, and I didn’t have to be at school!

  • Scott

    easy. sloppy joe with a slice of white American cheese and a pile of potato chips all smushed together on a super soft bun. yum

  • Michelle

    My favorite lunch my mom always made for me (even in high school!) was a half of a peanut butter and fluff sandwich with carrots and whatever cookie we had in the house. She would always put it in a Garfield paper lunch bag!

  • Holly

    I loved turkey sandwiches with lettuce and mayo. But my very, very favorite was having a whole pickle to gnaw on. Man, did I love pickles as a kid!

    Great giveaway!

  • Lauren

    Most days I ate Turkey (just the meat), string cheese, carrots, an apple and OJ (ZzzZz) so I cherished the days that I got to bring a Pizza Lunchable to school.
    Newsflash: those things are disgusting. I tried one as an adult when I was feeling nostalgic. Lunchables are NOT food.

  • Melissa

    I always liked the school cafeteria burritos!! GROSS!!!!
    by the way, i made your corn zuchinni lime pizza last night and my husband and i ate the whole thing! yikes!!! it was delicious!

  • Jason G.

    My favorite lunch as a kid was probably not that good. It was those rectangular pizzas they served at school.

  • Nicole

    This is seriously the cutest giveaway ever! My favorite lunch was on my birthday when my mom would bring me a personal pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut as a treat.

  • Tess Galen

    Definitely roast beef with cheddar cheese on a croissant. Kinda fancy, right? My mom would make it for me every morning then I’d pack it away in my little Hello Kitty lunch box with some grapes and perfect change to buy milk from the “milk cart.” Hmm….now I know what I want for lunch today!

  • Leslie

    I used to eat the gross bolonga and cheese sandwich too! Piece of bologna, piece of cheese, than another piece of bolonga with yellow mustard on white bread! I wish I could be a kid again, so I could get a do-over on school lunches. Kids get so many cool things in their lunches now…wraps, sushi, sandwiches with whole grain bread. Alright, maybe I don’t want any homework, but I’ll take a good lunch, recess, and art class!

  • Maggie

    I remember my elementary school desserts most—I loved Swiss Cake Rolls! Especially eating the outer chocolate layer first, and then slowly nibbling down to the center! That was the best 🙂

  • Amy

    My favorite thing to eat was my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the occasional homemade chocolate chip cookie.

  • Rachel

    I always loved school supplies! I had some pretty random school lunches. I think my favorite was a bagel with cream cheese. Mmm, comfort food. 🙂

  • Sini

    Oooh, this is great! After a pause, like years and years, I’m going back to school!
    My favourite lunch at school was finnish summer soup, it’s a milky soup with veggies inside. In Finland the school lunch is free until university, so I never had a sandwich in school 😛

  • Josh

    I used to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and kettle chips. 🙂

  • Julie

    I would love to eat this! When I was a kid I always used to love it when I had a leftover hot dog. So gross sounding I know, but my mom would nuke it to warm it up (in the bun), wrap it in foil, and then by lunch it was just slightly warm but oh. so. good.

  • dali shaw

    cheesies, i loved cheesies, i would have to trade for them because my mom would never buy them.

  • Katie

    I can’t even remember what I had for lunch in school! Must have been delicious…
    But, breakfast every morning of high school was a bag of nacho cheese doritos and a pepsi! (that could be why I can’t remember anything. Yikes!)

  • samantha

    hands down – all time favorite was/is Oreos 🙂

  • Brittany

    My elementary school had this wonderful concoction called beefy nachos. UGH, I have no idea what was in it, but I’m sure it was truly horrible and full of preservatives and salt and other things; but it was delish. 🙂 It was always my favorite day when they served that.

  • Cassie Z

    Peanut Butter and Jelly and Sour Cream and Onion chips. With one of those chocolate coated peanut butter crisp bars. Not the healthiest, but still my favorite at 24.

  • Becky Back

    In high school I was on a kick of cheese and crackers for lunch. If I had known about Tillamook cheese then it would have been 100x better!
    Favorite cafeteria food? Their chocolate cake, I don’t know why, and most of my friends didn’t like it so I got theirs too! Bonus! 🙂

  • Shayna

    My favorite thing to eat when I first started school was a cream cheese and jelly sandwich.
    I remember loving unwrapping my lunch from my brown paper bag and finding inside, little love notes from my parents.

    I love cooking meals for my family and with my friends now – and often use your wonderful recipes as a guide! Yum.

  • Lisa E

    I hated sandwiches so my mom would pack me leftovers…my fav was chinese food!

  • Keshnee

    peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches cut into shapes with cookie cutters!! 🙂

  • Laura @FoodSnobSTL

    I loved school pizza or salami sandwiches from home.

  • Liz G

    I always loved leftover pizza or a delicious whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and cucumbers. So so yummy!

  • erin

    My mom has six kids and packed us all lunches everyday, all the way through high school. My favorite was ham and cheddar cheese sandwich and fruit by the foot for dessert.

  • Kristen

    I loved getting Chips Ahoy cookies in my lunch!

  • Kaitlin

    I know it sounds fancy but I was super picky (and my mom’s Italian) so one thing I loved was prosciutto sandwiches. But everyone else thought it was weird and made fun of me for it. (I wasn’t a cool kid either 🙂

  • Laura F.

    For years, grade through middle school, I ate a plain bagel with cream cheese and jelly at lunch time. I am starting graduate school next week, my tastes have changed a bit….but not much! 🙂

  • Heidi @ Food Doodles

    Oooh, so fun! I used to love back to school shopping 😀 My favorite lunch(as awful as it was) was the cafeteria fries. I don’t know how but they made the most awesome fries. I still think about them, haha.

  • Carol O.

    My poor mother had to make me a classic PB&J (crusts cut off of course) EVERY DAY cause it was the only thing I would eat! She tried to sneak some healthy carrots in there, but I don’t think I ever ate them. Now I can’t stand PB&J (haven’t had it in YEARS) and I love carrots ha ha!

  • Emily J

    For some reason I always loved the weird rectangular pizza slices when I was in elementary school. I don’t know if they have those anymore. In high school my favorite was peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

  • Jen

    My parents did not pack our lunches–we bought school lunch every day. My favorite thing to buy at school for lunch were sour cream and onion chips…and we used to put yellow mustard on them. Which sounds so weird for a kid to like, but I still kind of like it!

  • Laura

    The cafeteria at my school had these great pizza pops… they weren’t your standard tiny little Pilsbury ones. The thing is you had to order yours before the first class bell rang, in order to pick it up at lunch time. So it was always a race to get in your lunch money before that bell! Great giveaway, I am headed back for my 5th year of University so I can appreciate this 🙂

  • Krissa

    I love back to school shopping! I have no idea what my favorite lunch item was as a kid…I know I was always trying to trade with my friend who got candy bars every day in her lunch though! 🙂

  • Jenn

    I used to love peanut butter and honey sandwiches on wheat bread. What is strange is that my taste has changed so much that I don’t even like honey any more.

  • ashley

    Sloppy Joes!

  • Johanna

    At home (on weekends) I loved to eat cheese sandwiches or macaroni (type of pasta) and butter 🙂

    I live in Finland where kids get free lunch in school from elementary to high school.

  • Shauna

    What a fun stash!
    For lunch I used to ask for a salmon sandwich every day until I got so sick of them that I hadn’t had another one until just this summer!

  • Alli

    Mmm, I loved peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, Cheetos, and a Juicy Juice juice box. Lacked nutritional value but I am making up for that now 🙂

    XOXO

  • adrienne

    I honestly don’t remember what I liked to eat as a kid, however, my favorite middle school cafeteria lunch was salty french fries dipped in a chocolate milkshake. Oh, so healthy.

  • Deborah

    The medium point (and fine point) Sharpie pens totally make your hand writing better. They’re awesome. I use them when I’m seeing patients in the hospital – my hand writing stays really neat, and the nurses can actually read what I’ve written!

    I used to eat a ham sandwich every single day for lunch when I was in grade school. I ate so many that I haven’t eaten one since!

  • Shannon

    what a blast from the past! i loved reading through some of the previous commenters favorite lunch items. i think my favorite home-made lunch would probably be the standard peanut butter and jam sandwich, it’s such a classic! somehow i don’t think i’ll be taking those to university for lunch though…

    we also had a fantastic student run cafeteria in high school and they made a mean pesto alfredo. those days were by far the best days at school! also, high school cafeteria is where i fell in love with soggy, lukewarm grilled cheese sandwiches. to this day i still can’t eat them hot!

  • Rachel

    I was always a happy camper with my packed lunch….as long as it included either a J-ELLO or chocolate pudding. I used to gross/impress the other kids out at the table by dipping my baby carrots into the pudding. Not sure why I did that…

  • Rachel

    My friends were always envious of the Bagel Sandwiches my mom would make … she’d toast the bagel, and top with cream cheese, meat, lettuce, sprouts, tomato … so delicious. She had the special touch because I haven’t been able to make one quite as good. Maybe because I don’t let it sit in my locker for 5 hours before I eat it.

  • Erin Louise

    I was really into sandwiches, nothing with mayo though…yuck…and my mom is English, so I grew up putting butter on all my sandwiches. I loved either cucumber and cheese…or just a hardboiled egg sliced up….SO GOOD!!! The egg sandwich was risky though because it always stunk up my backpack/locker lol.

  • Avital Gertner-Samet

    That’s an invitation for a trip down memory lane… When I started school (too many years ago) my father asked me what sandwich do I want him to make. Little did I know that this answer will accompany me all through the next 12 years of school. I asked for a simple chocolate spread and this is what I had from then onward 🙂 Sometimes I envied other kids that had more interesting sandwiches, but when my mom made my sandwich and it wasn’t chocolate spread, I secretly missed my usual sandwich.

  • emmy A

    Mac and cheese all the way!

  • Jessica

    When I was a kid I loved tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches, and of course you had to dip the sandwich into the soup!

  • Colleen

    Best part of lunch…FRUIT. ROLLUPS.

    Amazing.

  • Jennifer

    Egg salad sandwiches. Especially on vacation.

  • Iris

    I ate the school lunches, which were really good. I think my favorite lunch was corn chowder and hot dogs.

  • Kimiko

    We didn’t have much of a choice for lunches when I was a kid, but I loved the days my grandma was visiting and would bring us McDonalds for lunch. Definitely the more popular kid at lunch those days.

    And I’m going back for my last semester of university… so close to the end!!!

  • Sare

    Soup and salad! Except the soup always had to be cup o’ noodles. Eep.

  • Neely

    My mom was a bit of a hippie – so one of my FAVORITE things was lunch at our local juice bar: A cheddar cheese and alfalfa sprout sandwich (with SPIKE – a veggie/herb/salt) on whole wheat bread, blue corn chips, and a Blue Sky cream soda!

  • Lacey Chalenor

    My favorite thing to eat (and still is, in my last semester of college) was my moms leftovers. Second day spaghetti and meatballs, yum!
    If that was not an option PB&J was a close runner up 🙂

  • sweetmaddy

    I ate a pb+j pretty much every day of school from kindergarten to 12th grade!!

    I love school supplies, and I love that you are giving this away!!!

  • Regina

    Honestly my favorite snack was a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich with a nice cold glass of milk.
    PB&Js are still an awesome snack

  • JennaLynn

    PB & J for sure 🙂

  • Lauren

    Couscous and buttered, steamed carrots. I still eat them today as a side for pork chops 🙂

  • Laura P

    I loved when my mom packed ravioli for me in a thermos for lunch. So much better than an average sandwich!

  • Katie

    MMM. I loved everything about lunch. But, my Mom is a nutritionist so the best lunches were lunchables. Because they were so gross and such a treat.

  • Carolina

    My favorite were fried eggs & fried potatos. Not a very healthy meal but we were allowed to it once in a while, and we treasured those times!

  • Alison

    Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Until grade 5 when peanuts got banned from my school. So sad for me but good for the allergic kids. You know?

  • michelle

    the salad bar! yes. i totally loved salad as a kid.
    and i have an obsession with back to school gear… when it goes on clearance i hoard it. so when my kids are older. i’ll never need anything. lol

  • Emily

    School lunch: crispitos, which are made of questionable “meat” wrapped in tortillas and fried…so delicious! Sack lunch: anytime my mom would pack potato chips…and she always wrote a nice message to me on my napkin 🙂

  • Stephanie

    Peanut butter (no jelly!) sandwiches! (Yes, my kid palate was way boring. But this giveaway…WAY FUN! Will make grad school life that much more exciting!)

  • julia

    my favorite thing to eat was yogurt (slightly sweetened). everyone ate in the cafeteria (this was in france) so yogurt was always a safe bet 😉

  • Michelle

    My favorite lunch was grilled ham & cheese and apple juice. 🙂

  • Eva

    Gushers and Hostess chocolate cupcakes , on the real.

  • Kenna

    I never really ate school lunch, I was lucky enough to get a fresh mom-packed lunch every day! My favorite part was my pb and j sandwich!

  • Pamela

    Oh, I loved my Mom’s homemade white bread with homemade strawberry jam. Yum!

  • Leslie

    BLT or PBJ! Still love ’em today! Don’t forget the chips! 🙂

  • Kirsten

    Well, my mom was REALLY into healthy, all-natural stuff…so I was jealous of other kids’ fruit roll ups and packaged chocolate chip cookies (I got fruit leather and homemade cookies that had oats and other healthy stuff in them). I especially loved those Kraft “Handi-Packs” with that cheez whiz spread you spread on the crackers with those little red plastic sticks. Now, I appreciate all the healthy goodness my mom packed in my lunches:)

  • NoraSB

    In highschool I used to buy an avacado, a hard roll, and a blue sky natural soda. So simple but so delicious.

  • Vanessa

    I had FLUFFERNUTTER sandwhiches! Still love them to this day! My daughter takes them now and when my nephew comes to visit, this is the first thing he asks for as he runs through the door!

    PS-I love school supply shopping, it was the school part I didn’t like so much-LOL

  • Laura

    Wow, I love school supplies so much (and I am a teacher so I get to buy them every year!). I was a big fan of pasta salad in my lunch as a kid (weird?). I think I ate that like three times a week all through elementary and middle school.

  • Julie

    This is so sad, because now I don’t think I could eat it, but I used to have butter and jelly sandwiches on that nasty white bread. I didn’t like peanut butter, so my mom used butter instead — heck, it was probably some kind of margarine. Ugh! But I loved it as a kid.

  • Denae

    I always ate at the school cafeteria, so no bagged lunch for me. But I fondly remember when the cook would make chili with caramel rolls for dessert. I still feel like I need to make this combination. Our school was blessed with the greatest “lunch lady” in the world. She took pride in what she served, and it was always delicious!

  • maribeth

    This is so not good for kids but my favorite thing for lunch was a bag of Munchos. The were only a quarter!

  • Steph Mazzucca

    My go-to growing up was a peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off. AND Dunkaroos. Those things were amazing!

    (Hint, if you forgot about these, they are cookies that you dip in icing. So indulgent and delicious!)

  • Jinger

    I loved my mom’s tuna fish with Ritz crackers! Everyone would always be so jealous and try to trade, but it was just not happening. It was all about the dill relish in there.

  • Sara

    OOHHHH . . . probably a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with fritos on the side!! YUM!! Also, I TOTALLY LOVE school supplies!!

  • Tiffany

    Mmmmm ! My mom would make a black olive, cream cheese, and avocado sandwich on white bread. It was smushy and would stick to the roof of my mouth. no PB&J for me, although, that is one of my favorite go to treats now.

  • Ashley

    I loved when my mom would make me a container of crackers, cheese, and luncheon meat of some variety. Sometimes, if I was lucky, or if I had a big test or something coming up, she’d cut the meat and cheese with cookie cutters to make it more fancy. 🙂

  • JeannaG

    My favorite was hands down campbells chicken noodle soup with crushed up saltine crackers. The best!!
    Now it has way too much sodium and makes my fingers swell just thinking about it. OMG! I’m old!

    P.S. I love your blog!! I think I might even be addicted to it.. :-)>

  • Dani

    My favorite lunch was open-face peanutbutter and jelly sandwich! Of course you couldn’t pack it that way, I had to peel it apart. I thought both sides together was too dry. Also cheese cubes. Even though they were bite sized I would always eat them in several bites. I was a weird kid.

  • Katee

    I LOVED back to school shopping when I was a kid, it was my favorite time of the year! Okay, favorite lunch time snack, even now, it’s still nutella and banana sandwich. Love it!

  • Helene Mahnken

    I always loved Salami but I got made fun of because it smelled funny 🙂 leftovers were always awesome too.

  • Carrie Rosalind

    Oh man, so fun! This question made me laugh when I read it – I was such a picky eater and I immediately thought of what I used to eat for lunch…my mom would make bean soup and put it into a little Thermos for lunch. By the time I got to lunch it was only lukewarm, but I always thought it was soooo good. That takes me back! Ha! Fingers crossed – this is an awesome giveaway!

  • Stef

    Oh, this is embarrassing. My freshman year I ate french fries dipped in ranch dressing and a Snickers ice cream bar for lunch EVERY day. Ughhh I can’t believe I did that, but it was so good!

  • Amy Jo

    Does dessert count? My mom would put left-over frosting between graham crackers and include them in my Hollie Hobbie metal lunch box. Such a treat. I love your picks for the Back-to-school giveaway.

  • Becky

    I used to love cheese sandwiches. Two slices of white bread, some mayo, and a Kraft single. I could still eat one now, but I’d have to grill it first. Mmm… melty cheese.

  • jackie

    i had two favorite sandwiches for lunch, cheese & mayonnaise, and cream cheese & jelly. although i don’t eat them anymore, and they sound a bit weird/gross, i have a sneaking suspicion i would still like them today.

  • Foodiebia

    I threw my PB&J sandwich out for about 4 years in a row and didn’t tell my mom. My lunch consisted of Better Cheddars and Oreos! (healthy!)

  • marie

    my breakfast : hot chocolate + fresh baguette with butter on it
    Cut an about 6 inches long piece of bread, slice in half (lenght), add butter, fold (important step !), dip in hot chocolate, eat – HEAVEN !
    Try it, you’ll thank me later (or not)

    by the way, big fan (BIG) of your blog, I check it every Friday when I’m doing my grocery list (desperately in search for some easy dinner inspiration). I fell in love with your AMAZING banana bread recipe… THE BEST !

    xo

  • Samantha Toy

    My Mom’s grilled cheese 🙂 It is still the best!

  • Michelle

    I LOVE school supplies! Love love love. My stats class, not so much. Anyhoo…

    My favorite things for lunch was when I was in kindergarten. Mondays was mashed potatoes with this meat filled gravy and beets! The beets were my favorite part because not only did I love the way they taste, they were in these little cubes. And to this day, I love beets! My dad always makes fun of me for it. It’s one of the food items that I can vividly trace back to how/when/where I started liking it.

  • Kendra

    I’m going to be a sophomore this year, but my best lunch ever was a panini with pesto and havarti and pears that my mom made and dropped off at school. I think the teachers mouth was watering.

    ps- Another lunch memory. My siblings and I used to go to a small private school and a lot of the kids there have really strict parents and wont let the kids eat french fries and stuff. One day my siblings and I forgot lunch, so my dad came with a bunch of stuff from taco bell. When we had our lunch, there was still like ten tacos left so he went into the lunch room and distributed tacos and tater tots to the sad, deprived, healthy children who thought he was their hero.

  • Laura

    My favorite sandwich was cucumber, cheese, and tomato. I still really love this sandwich as an adult! I also remember my mom making these peanut butter balls that required no baking just a bunch of mixing and then rolling. I would help her make them and I was super excited to get them as a lunch snack!

  • Katie

    I have a serious problem with pens and sharpies. I totally made my husband buy me sharpies as a gift once. I don’t know, these things just happen.

    My favorite lunch was when we could get pizza delivered in the cafeteria. It was sooo much better then the school pizza!

  • wren

    Pizza+mashed potatoes+ corn… together. I don’t know why but back home they always served mashed potatoes and corn on pizza day. All I know it was yumminess on a cafeteria tray to me.

  • Adrienne Yancey

    I loved hot lunch when I was little.Especially the tacos and pigs in a blanket. I also loved the peanut butter bars with chocolate frosting! My palate has since expanded, but back then I loved that comfort food of the cafeteria!

  • Jane

    Cold sesame noodles! Perfect for bringing along since they taste great even at room temperature 😀

  • Erin

    Man, as a brown-bagger I sure was jealous of you lunch buyers! Except when my mom would write me notes; I loved that. All you parents, get on that practice – but make it small so your embarrassed-but-secretly-pleased-child can enjoy it privately. As a teacher, I now appreciate taking my own lunch to school every day.

    As a kid, I loved lunch on field trips – that can of pop (soda) wrapped in foil was the best treat ever! And a pb and j – smooshed by fruit in the sack. Sooo good!

  • Tagati

    Have to say my fave was cold fried halibut when I lived on Adak. We would go fishing in the Bering Sea and come back with a boatload of halibut (my father used to shoot them in the head so they wouldn’t swamp the boat!).

    My mother would fry some of the halibut up tempura style (an old Japanese tradition). While the fish was good hot with hot rice, my fave was to have them cold the next day for lunch!

  • Regina

    my mother would most often pack me very eccentric lunches … beef tongue sandwich, bread with butter and red caviar, borcht…sensing a pattern? yes, we’re russian. but my 10yr old self only wanted to fit in (i already had the funny accent working against me) and so i would never eat my packed lunch but would rather exchange whatever small nonsense (paper clips, pencils…erasers shaped as animals were especially a hit) I could find around my house for things inside my friend’s lunches. so my favorite school lunch consisted of anything (and i mean anything) that wasn’t within my own packed lunch. now that i’m much older and have now been living on my own for quite some time now, all i yearn for breakfast, lunch and dinner is everything that i would let rot in my elementary school locker. i should note though that my mother’s cooking is beyond delicious in fear that you’ll let my childhood, unappreciative palate convince you otherwise.

  • Rachel

    Favorite School Lunch? That’s easy: Crunchy Peanut Butter and Dill Pickle Sandwiches, of course!

    To the uneducated, the combination sounds repulsive but mark my words – they’re delish! There’s something about the salty sweet peanut butter mixed with the vinegary crunch of a dill pickle that just works like magic. Try one, you’ll be converted into a follower.

  • brownsugarandbacon

    my sis and i loved bologna n cheese bowls (i can’t believe we ate this)… my sis and i would take a slice of bologna and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so, the edges would curl up and form a bowl, and then we would put a slice of kraft singles in the middle and zap it for a few more seconds until the cheese melted. bon apetit! oh yah, and tater tots. mmm…tots!

  • Morgan

    My mom would pack me peanut butter & jelly on white bread, then at lunch time, I would add Nacho Cheese Doritos (they had to be Nacho Cheese!) right into the sandwich and loved the sound the chips crunching made when I squished the sandwich back together! So, soo good!

  • kg

    prior to my vegetarian days, mom would occasionally pack me pastrami sandwiches, which I thought were awesome….unless she used 12-grain bread. ewww bug bread! my tastes have changed since then – bring on the seedy bread but leave out the meat, please!

  • Marla Solano

    I lived down the street from one of my good friends Robbin and her mother would order us pizza the night before and we would eat cold pizza on our walk to the bus stop… i remember thinking how cool her mom was to do that for us! so sweet.

  • Jilly Tierney

    Whoa, I was shocked when I read your post and realized one week from today is SEPTEMBER 2nd Already!!! The holidays will be coming up real quick! My favorite lunch when I was a kid was buttered noodles and turkey at my school. I know it sounds weird, but our lunch food was so good and parents always came on buttered noodle and turkey day because they loved it so much too!

  • Hillary

    My favorite lunch was a capri sun, cheese (cheez?) balls, and fudge stipe cookies. I didn’t care about the main course. Turkey sandwich was the usual, though. Do they even make cheese balls in that blue can anymore? I loved those things.

  • Leslie

    Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches of course.

  • Christine K

    I loved their fries!!

  • Karla Rodriguez

    As a kid my lunch was waived by the school I attended, so mom didn’t have to pack me a lunch. At home I loved, loved to eat Lucky charms cereal. I was a happy child if I had my bowl of all the fun marshmallow charms. At school, I loved eating this peanut butter loaf bread they gave us each Thursday for breakfast. It was sooooo goood. Sometimes I want to sneak into my old elementary school on Thursday and see if I could score myself a piece of my own. 🙂

  • Sharon

    Hellmann’s mayo on squishy white bread. I’m not ashamed.

    I might be a teacher due to my love of school supplies. Please let me when so my eighth grade students will be totally jealous of my dope stash.

  • Nelle

    When I was a kid my mom would pack us special surprise lunches. My favorite was one where everything in the lunch box was numbered 1-6 and there was a die. I had to role it to see what I had to eat first! Love your blog, love the podcast!
    *Nelle

  • alana

    school supply season is my favorite. i haven’t been in school for years, but always still get some fresh goodies.

    i rarely ate hot lunch at school… but would make a point to whenever there were SHRIMP POPPERS! little breaded, shrimp-shaped nuggets. looking back, i doubt they were really shrimp. but they were salty and delicious. and always served with mashed potatoes and buttered bread.

  • Allison

    Peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches with the crusts cut off with cookie cutters so they were in shapes like hearts and stars! I still pack them sometimes even now that I am a first grade teacher!

  • Jessica Ann

    I totally bought myself a little mathematical set with a compass and protractor the other day. As a kid I had a weird love of V8 and my dad would buy them in bulk (he had a love of them too) and I would take one to school every day. I love them.

  • Shannon

    It wasn’t my favorite, but in a rush… my parents would pack me a butter and jelly sandwich on a hamburger bun. I think after that, I started packing my own lunch..Love those graph paper post-its. I’m a teacher, and all of this stuff would be super helpful!

  • Amy S.

    I loved sun dried tomato turkey. I still do! And always with baby carrots… I have a serious addiction to office/school supplies. It might have something to do with being a teacher’s kid…

  • Chelle

    My favorite lunch was pizza and chocolate milk (gross, I know!!)

  • Claire

    I preferred to pack my own lunch in school and my favorite thing to eat was your classing peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sometimes I would throw on some honey or bananas if I was feeling particularly adventurous.

  • Rachel

    Peanut butter & banana sandwiches cut into triangles…

  • Mandy

    I loved goulash (spelling help?). It was sooo good. The crispiness of the cheesy, the gooeyness of the mystery meat and pasta in the middle. Sort of a lasagna, sort of spaghetti, lots of goodness.

  • Jenny T

    Burritos, before burritos were cool! My mom would make them in the morning and wrap them in foil…they stayed warm until lunch!

  • tamara

    I loved it when my mother would pack Little Debbie snack cakes. I liked the fudge rounds the most.

  • cindy

    I L-O-V-E school supplies! Also, thick lead mechanical pencils and those sharpie pens are where it’s at! I think they make my handwriting look better too!

    My fave lunch was always peanut butter + honey on wheat! It was the first lunch I made for myself 😀

  • Jessica

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid was definitely a PB&J (with creamy peanut butter of course) and a pudding. So delicious! 🙂

  • Barathi

    I love love loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on wheat bread, heavy on the peanut butter with just enough jelly that your mouth doesn’t totally stick together. (and back in the day I enjoyed the transfat loaded skippy and jif just as much as the next kid)

  • Jessica

    I LOVE nutella and peanut butter sandwiches! But it HAS to be Peter Pan peanut butter..

  • Mary

    Oh, I want to win! I start my second year of library science grad school on Monday- these would be awesome supplies to have!

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid was a salami sandwich on a bagel. And then, if I was lucky, my sister would decide to eat an apple and cut it into pieces and I would get 1 or 2. Delish.

  • Haylie

    sweet and sour ribs and seaweed soup…

  • Henrietta

    When I was younger, my favorite thing for lunch was my mom’s homemade Vietnamese sandwich. Oh man, I could go for one right now.

    Keeping my fingers crossed for the giveaway!

  • Jane M

    Well we have this boneless breaded chicken which we call AUNTIE JUNE CHICKEN – because Auntie June taught my mom how to make this chicken which we (me and my sis) make religiously. So a lunchbox with a piece of Auntie June chicken was like hitting the jackpot! A couple of chocolate chip cookies to chase the chickie down didn’t hurt either!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Ashleigh

    You can never go wrong with a PB&J!

  • Libera

    Elementary school lunches are a GREAT memory. I distinctly remember when I was in fourth grade someone came in with pomegranate seeds as a snack and it wowed the entire class. I then ran home and made my mom buy me a weeks supply of pomegranates. For weeks after you were not cool if your lunch box wasn’t equipped with pomegranate seeds.

  • nikki

    pb & j all the way!

  • Katheryn

    I loved it when I got a Lunchable. They were too expensive for our family, so the one or two times I got one a year was a special occasion.

    BTW, I love school supplies. Having a son going into 2nd grade is totally great because I get a list!

  • Katie

    When I was little, I went through this phase where I ate almost nothing but blueberries and Breyers blueberry yogurt 🙂

  • Bethany

    Baked potato bar at my middle school. The potatoes were huge, and there was everything you could think of to add onto it. I am well on my way to my degree in college, but I still enjoy buying school supplies. I always ended up with too many pencils and pens. My dad always told me that I wasn’t allowed to get anymore each year for school.

  • Emmy

    I love school supplies too! I really miss buying new crayons.

    My favorite school lunch was a Lunchable, when I could get it, which was not very often. Otherwise I loved (and still do) a banana and peanut butter wrapped up in a tortilla.

  • Lisa

    I love school supplies and are currently buying them for my trip back to high school as a teacher. My favorite thing to eat as a kid in my lunch box was my pudding! It was little and individually packed and I loved that.

  • Miranda

    My favorite lunch what the rib-a-ques. Even though it was pressed meet to look like ribs was good.

  • Jill W

    Ha uhh… chicken rings and mashed potatoes. So gross, I know, I don’t even eat chicken anymore. Even if I did I definitely wouldn’t eat chicken rings!

  • Hui Wen

    My favorite lunch was a slice of quiche and a side salad dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. But growing up in Singapore, not many kids had ever seen balsamic vinegar and the other children were weirded out by it. They kept saying it looked like dirt because it was black. Oh well, at least now as an adult in New York I can eat all the black vinegar I want. 🙂

  • kellybee

    My fave was always pizza day and I would get chips with it. As if it wasn’t salty enough, I’d put salt on my pizza with the red pepper flakes! Then I’d get the chocolate cake with about an inch of white frosting for dessert. Oh ya and the chocolate milk.

  • Adrianna

    Ooh, ooh! I AM in (grad) school! Pick me, pick me! It’s kind of revolting to think about now, but in jr. high, my favorite lunch was a cup-o-noodle. The school had a hot water dispenser and all the cool kids ate cup-o-noodles for lunch. I shudder at the thought of how much MSG I must’ve consumed on a weekly basis.

  • radhi

    graph paper + post-its = LOVE! given that i thought i owned everything graph paper, i can’t believe i’ve never spotted these! my fav lunch was so boring but so classic: peanut butter & apple jam. french fries on the side were always a welcome addition.

  • Alana

    Great Giveaway! I’m still in school, and I could use all the help I can get with buying supplies this year 🙂 The Sharpies are the best!

  • Nicole

    In elementary school, my mom would pack a bagel with cream cheese and a little baggie of goldfish. I would always press the goldfish into the cream cheese like they were swimming and then eat it like an open faced sammie.. I loved to bite into those things!

  • Stephie

    I was totally that weird kid who always had something that all of the other kids thought was gross in her lunchbox. I was (still am) very into green peppers (everyone else thought they smelled weird…) and other such fresh veggies. I also frequently brought leftovers for lunch (when they didn’t require excessive reheating). Leftover days were the best days.

    No pb & j for this kid. I also read like it was my job. I probably should have just eaten lunch with the librarian and called it a day.

  • Twinkle

    I loved eating lollies for lunch when I was a kid!

  • Sarah

    When I was in fourth grade I was a picky eater but a HUGE tacos (or nacho chips) and salsa fan, so I would love it when my mom would pack it for lunch. It was even better when she packed doritos to scoop up the salsa instead of regular nacho chips 🙂

  • Bed

    I ALWAYS had teriyaki beef jerky in my lunch — I still eat it now, but my parents have to ship it to my university because they don’t sell the brand in Louisiana. mmm, beef jerky.

  • Heather

    I liked “Pizza Bobbz” which were grilled cheese sandwiches with mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, and pizza sauce, but my faaaaavorite lunch in school was “fiestada” – a stop-sign shaped “Mexican” pizza thing. I know it would not be nearly as good if I were to eat one today, but the memory remains. Those were the days!

  • Michelle

    Most of the time, my mom packed my lunch. But she always let me buy my lunch on pizza day! That was always my favorite. And my favorite thing to remember about lunches now are the sweet notes she would leave in my packed lunches.

  • Julie Walter

    My favorite thing to find in my lunchbox as a kid was…leftover pizza from last night’s dinner. Almost better the second time around. 🙂

  • GYM

    i was a salami fiend as a kid

  • Dominique

    mmm honey and peanut butter sammies : )

  • Steph

    My most memorable lunch (and perhaps my favorite since I can’t think of anything else) were frozen egg rolls from Costco.

  • Jachel

    I loved peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Simple and delicious.

  • Rachel

    My favorite day to buy lunch was always baked potato bar!

  • Erin B

    Hands down – Pigs in a blanket! Still love these things today too! 🙂

  • Teri

    I have to tell you, when I was a kid I totally loved getting my school supplies together! I couldn’t wait for the Pay n’ Save Ad in August so I could get everything together. Now I work in the schools as a Speech Pathologist (Speech Therapist) and I get to do it every year along with my own kids. As far a favorite lunches go- I grew up eating whole fresh foods and wheat bread when everyone else was squishing their Wonder Bread sandwiches into little balls. I was a little embarrassed about my lunches at the time (how I wish I knew then what I know now!). My favorite was when we had field trips and my mom would let me bring chips and a soda, along with my sandwich and fruit or veggies. So soda 2-3 times a year- that’s not so bad. Thanks for indulging me on my trip down memory lane and for putting together such a great blog

  • Jen

    Peanut butter and jelly, extra special if there was a juicebox involved!

  • Darcee

    I grew up in the Midwest, a small rural community of about 1000 people. So I went to a small school where we had real lunch ladies, who got to work way early and actually made us our lunches for the day. Some of it was pretty ick, but the homemade pizza was always the bomb!!! Also, the cinnamon rolls. Oh, if I could go back and have those two things, I’d be in heaven!!

  • Erin

    My mom made me homemade muffins for lunch!

  • Loren

    The treat! Any kind of cookie or leftover Halloween candy. I always saved the treat for last and made myself eat everything else first.

  • Lucrecia

    My favorite thing to eat was a little cake that is called “Gansito” in México, is like a piece of chocolate cake with strawberry jam inside. Its like the typical candy-meal you could have in the mid 80’s.
    Send me those pretty things to México.
    Greetings (:

  • Roxy

    I have always LOVED back to school shopping! I am in grad school so don’t have an excuse to buy too much of the fun stuff, but any time I need to buy pens or post-its I get unreasonably excited. I still remember going through my brand new planner the week before high school started and putting in all the important dates. But then of course I would lose it or stop writing down my assignments by week 2….

    When I was a kid my favorite lunch was sharp cheddar cheese drizzled with honey on toasted pita bread. Weird, I know. I remember in college when I told my best friend that this was a really good combination of flavors and she was completely disgusted. For the first time it dawned on me that this is not normal kid food. It wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco and saw a cheese plate drizzled with honey at a foodie friend’s dinner party that I realized I was just ahead of my time 🙂

    BTW cherry pie lara bars and sweet mint orbitz are clearly the best!

  • Danielle

    My mom would pack us Farmer Boy lunches from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series. There was an apple turnover (my favorite food part), a sausage and I’m not sure if I remember what else. My mother read us those stories growing up and it was so awesome to have that connection to the book. My favorite overall item was the note my mom put in 🙂 she always worked so hard for us and the memory is so special. I hope to be half as good of a mom to my wee girl.

    • Danielle

      Bread and butter and an Apple 🙂 Eliza Jane (a character in the book) brought it in a pale. I remember wanting a dinner pail too 🙂

  • Rachel

    When I was a kid, every once in a while, my mom would pack me a hotdog in a thermos of hot water and a bun with all the condiments. I got to put it together, plus have a hot dog for lunch! I loved that. I also loved when she would pack me grapes and cubes of cheese. Those were the days. Now I’m lucky if I scramble out the door with anything. Every once in a while I go all out and slap some beans and cheese in a tortilla. Oh, the life of a university undergrad…

  • Marina

    Mmmmmmmm my favorite thing to eat was cooked pasta with butter melted into it, some salt and pepper to finish.

  • Ashlyn

    My favorite was a peanut butter and fluff sandwich! Talk about a sugar high

  • Mary

    I love school supplies! my favorite thing for lunch when I was a kid? a grilled cheese sandwich!

  • Claire S

    Haa, as a kid in Wales in the 80s, peanut butter sandwiches were the height of exotic sophistication!

  • Sarah W.

    i always had a bag of doritos & a dr pepper in my first year of high school since we couldn’t leave campus, give or take a snickers. it was normally a soft pretzel & a tigers blood sno cone in junior high. wow. healthy! XD going for my second degree in college, now i grab vitamin water & a container of different fruits or salad. what a change!

  • Sandra

    Okay, this is really gross but I loved fried bologna sandwiches, with some American cheese on top of course. Could anyone possibly eat anything more unhealthy? Yuck.

  • Maggie

    In elementary school our lunch ladies would make “walking tacos” which involved them opening a bag of frito lays and putting in taco beef, iceberg lettuce, and cheddar cheese.

    I live in NYC now, and I can’t help but look back at these hilarious food inventions in small town Wisconsin with a lot of fondness.

  • Ivana Gresham

    My favourite was always mozzarella and tomatoes in mum’s homemade bread but the school lunches that stick in my head the most are the sandwiches filled with Russian Salad. Bleughhh. I don’t know what she was thinking there, they always seemed to end up in the bin. (sorry mum)

  • Brier

    A good old fashioned peanut butter sandwich with FLUFF and CHIPS on the sandwich!!

  • Mary

    A slightly underbaked huge chocolate chip cookie that I would get on the rare occasion my parents allowed me to buy lunch at school!

  • Molly

    My favorite lunch was when my mom would bring me a surprise happy meal!

  • Ellen

    My FAVORITE lunch was some good old oreos and chocolate milk. Squee.

  • MollyH

    Oh, I love back to school shopping. If I don’t win, maybe I’ll just go buy a bunch of school supplies for fun.

    My favorite lunch, which my mom packed until the day I graduated high school (with a note in every one), was a turkey and provolone sandwich with pepper. That’s it. To this day I hate condiments, although I will include lettuce and tomato now…

  • Val W.

    I grew up in a single-mom (2 job) home so there wasn’t a lot of time to throw lunches together. However, every Friday and Monday, without fail I would be sent off to school with a lunch box filled with oodles of goodness! Best lunch for me as a kid was a peanut butter and marshmellow sandwich with bananas (not the healthiest, but oh how yummy it was!). Side dishes that accompanied the “fluffn’nutter” sammy was ants on a log (celery sticks, w/ PB and rasins) and applesauce! I heart my mom and Peanut butter!

  • Timi

    In Finland, we got a warm meal at school every day. The menu was pretty good, although I didn’t think that way back then.

    My favorite thingy was fish fingers with sour cream sauce 🙂

  • Lisa

    I was obsessed with salami and cream cheese roll ups and Squeeze-it’s!

  • Julia

    I loved Nutella sandwiches. Whenever I had them I was the envy of the whole class. You could always count on kids crowding around my desk saying, “You have CHOCOLATE for lunch?!” They’re just so yummy. . .

  • patinNM

    peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches or fluffernutters. Yes I had an obsession with peanut butter.

  • peachey

    that photo makes me dizzy with joy, tracy!
    school lunch as a kid: steak’umm sandwich day
    packed lunch as a kid: peanut butter and honey
    school lunch as a teacher: taco salad day
    packed lunch as a teacher: leftovers and an apple

  • Katy

    peanut butter and honey sandwiches!

  • katesayshi

    i was always soooo jealous of the kids who got to leave 5 minutes early to get get hot lunch…but then whenever they came back with plates of goo, glop, and yuck i was delighted to open up my KNOTB lunch box to find apple chips, cream cheese and grape jelly sammie circles (sandwiches cut in circles), trail mix and orange slices. I knew my mom loved me more than those lunch ladies ever would 🙂

  • Tamara

    I got to go home for lunch, and my mum would always have nice home made stuff to eat. However, my absolute favourite was when the volleyball team would have hot dog day as their fundraiser and I’d get to stay at school and buy $1 hotdog that wasn’t even warm anymore. SO. Gross.

  • Maddy

    White bread thinly spread with butter and sliced fresh, ripe strawberries. No crusts, of course!

  • amy

    pb&honey on wheat bread, potato chips, and frozen grapes!!!

  • Jillian

    This was pre-vegetarian but: ham, cheese, pickle, and ketchup on white bread.

    But the BEST was after Thanksgiving. I have always hated cold-cut turkey but I love leftover turkey. My mom would make a larger turkey and I would eat turkey sandwiches for a month. (She would freeze it)

    Remembering this is going to make it harder being vegetarian!!

  • Maddie

    I looooove back to school time too. I always watch Legally Blonde (favorite back to school movie) while organizing my supplies. When I was a kid my favorite lunch was a freshly baked, hot, airy loaf of bread that they served with whipped butter, mmmmmm.

  • Leslie

    Wow! What an amazing giveaway. I’m going “back to school” (for the third time), so I would love to win this one! My favorite lunch was homemade macaroni and cheese and fish sticks. My mom always made that for me after I got home from morning kindergarten. Those were the days!

  • Anna

    Has to be a good ol’ fashioned pizza pocket! I could totally go for one of those right now…

  • Berenice

    Awesome! I also loved back to school shopping especially since my parents paid for everything, too bad those days are over. As a kid for lunch I would always have lunch from the cafeteria and I loved, loved, loved chalupas! I don’t know why because now I think back to how greasy and kind of stale the tostada part was. Back then though, a delicious chalupa with lots of “hot” sauce and some chocolate milk was my favorite meal that the school offered.

  • Mary Margaret

    Rice cakes with slathered with butter. For real. I can’t believe my mother let me eat this.

  • tricia

    lunchables! when i think about that now, it seems totallly disgusting, but my parents rarely packed my lunch and my school had a decent hot lunch (i loved the mac n cheese). i would get to have lunchables on field trips and other special days.

  • Charity

    I grew up in Hawaii, so my favorite thing to eat for lunch was spam musubi. Yes, I said spam. hehe

  • Sif

    I am a bit obsessed with back to school supplies, and I think my two young daughters have inherited this obsession! I loved nothing better than gathering up all my new supplies before the first day of school. And for lunch, my mom used to make me a sandwich that loved — cream cheese with sliced green olives on wheat bread. I loved it!

  • Ryann Rugg

    Weiner Wraps!! Whole Wheat dough wrapped around a hotdog. Dip it in mustard YUMMY! Still my favorite lunch…lucky me I’m a school teacher and still get to enjoy them. Only once in a while however.

  • Iris

    French toast sticks, to dip in syrup! It was the only hot lunch I liked getting.

  • MAUDE

    I was OBSESSED with school lunch sloppy joe’s. No one else liked them, so I’ve been known to down at least four. I still think about those at sleepless nights. No matter making it at home, from scratch will ever be the same. Sigh.

  • eileen

    I loved school lunches. The grosser the better (except grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese pizza blocks)! I’m kind of sad at how healthy (jest) and food-like school lunches have become… I, uh.. also like hospital food and airplane food :/

  • Desiree

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch was a frozen burrito with a slice of American cheese melted on top. I would also have a capri sun with it too. Yummy. Miss those days sometimes.

  • Dianna

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch when I was a kid was the sandwich that my friend always brought made by her mother. My grandpa always made my lunch sandwiches and well he didn’t understand that you cannot put the wet items, i.e. tomatoes, pickles, ect. next to the bread. So by the time I got my sandwich out of the bag at lunch time it was soggy. Luckily I had a friend willing to share her sandwich with me.

  • Lynda

    PBJ and fritos, with a banana…seem like I ate it every day!

  • LN

    My most commonly consumed lunch was the classic peanut butter and jelly on white bread with the crusts cut off. But what I really liked the most was cream cheese and raspberry jam on a graham cracker followed by candy. I loved candy – still love candy.

  • Katie

    Oooh, fresh school supplies…you’d think my grad student bitterness would’ve overridden that feeling by now, but it hasn’t! My favorite thing to eat as a kid…hmm…for some reason, I really looked forward to hot ham & cheese sandwich day at school. That seems very sad to me for some reason, but I did. Hot ham & cheese and chocolate milk. Ew.

  • Heather P

    Tunafish sammich on sourdough, can of Pepsi, and potato chips!

  • naomi

    This is amazing. I love back-to-school shopping. Staples? Totally my favourite place. I can go nutso.
    I used to LOVE bringing dinner leftovers for lunch (whatever it happened to be), but my absolute favourite thing in my lunchbox was the occasional inspirational note from my ma. 🙂 🙂

  • Brandie

    If the lunch was at or from home, my favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid was canned ravioli’s. I loved those things…and didn’t get them very often. My favorite cafeteria lunch food was pizza, or hamburgers. 🙂

  • elizabeth

    I definitely had YEARS of ham + cheese sandwiches. And my mom would always slip in a couple Mary Janes too!

  • Tabitha

    I was a school lunch buyer, which sometimes left me pretty disappointed. My favorite lunch that I always looked forward to was peirogies! They were sooooo good, loved those noodle pockets filled with potato! And so greasy!

  • Chris

    Sprinklins Yogurt! So fun to stir in all the sprinkles!

  • Andrea

    Every morning at 7am my dad would whip out the panini maker and make me a turkey pastrami and swiss sandwich. Ooooh my goodness. So unbelievably delicious. Crispy bread with melted swiss layered withing slices of turkey. Nothing could have been a better. Although I’m now a vegetarian, I still crave these bites of nostalgia *sigh*

  • Nikki

    It always depended on who made my lunch, mom or dad. and Yyou could tell right away once you opened it. mom was coldcuts and cheese and my dad was leftovers ina sandwich with ketchup. and joy came in the form of surprise dunkeroos or those little debbie cosmic brownies. but the best was every time my dad made the lunch, there was a cut out heart that said, i love you.. usually made out of scrap paper :]

  • Erin Fae

    THE ONLY THING I ever ate for lunch as a kid were red seedless grapes. Seriously. I took a bag for lunch (and then ate two cups after dinner). No wonder I didn’t grow past 5 feet tall

  • Nancy

    My Mom is Japanese so sometimes I’d open the ole brown bag and get PB&J when she was being very Anerican or it could be a sliced panko crusted pork cutlet over rice with Japanese pickles. Which also would be my all time favorite school lunch. She never forgot to include the chopsticks either! To my extremely country CT classmates I was so exotic. Which sometimes is all a kid wants to be anyway – so thanks to Mom!

  • Jennifer P

    I think my favorite thing to eat when I was a kid was the Jack n Jill ice cream sandwiches from the school cafeteria. I didn’t get one too often, but when I did, it was a delicious treat.

  • Lauren I-S

    I loved pudding snack cups! I never got sugar or treats at home but mom always packed us Snack Packs. It was our little treat for a long day at school. Still nostalgic to eat pudding 🙂

  • amy h

    I always ate school lunches, but my favorite was chili and cinnamon rolls!

  • Stacy Brewer

    I really hate to admit this, but it was totally lunchables. I always thought they were the coolest thing, especially when what I had for lunch was a Tupperware of cereal – all you need is a quarter for a carton of milk! They were the expensive lunch item I coveted and got on a special, rare occasion.

  • Tiah

    Little Debbie’s. My mom would only buy them during the school year and they were so good to me because I only got them a certain time a year.

  • Rachel

    Breakfast for lunch was the cat’s pajamas.

  • airincupcakery

    Pepperoni pizza. Macaroni and cheese. Chili con carne. Cheese hotdog on a stick. Burritoes. All with a side order of green beans! Yums

  • Jillian

    Grilled cheese and tomato soup… still my favorite, although the quality has increased a bit 🙂

  • Carissa @ Choice Sustenance

    I loved when we had CapriSun and Fruit by the Foot. I could make that foot of sugar last so long and I felt so cool when my tongue was a bizarre color.

  • emily anne

    I always wanted lunchables… Thankfully my mother wouldn’t buy them! I loved turkey sandwiches and some pretzels!

  • irene

    oh my goodness, mac and cheese beyond a doubt. my brother and I would make boxes and boxes of the Kraft goodness.

  • Claire

    I’m seventeen so this year will be my last year of high school! AKA I’m really diggin’ these supplies, mostly because I haven’t even bought mine. 🙂

    My favorite lunch has got to be bologna and spinach on potato bread with a little bit of mayo, kettle cooked chips, baby carrots and a homemade cookie of some sort that my mom and I always bake/have lying around the house.

  • Effie

    believe it or not, it was actually ramen noodles. my mom had such a way with them it was a wonderfully new dish every day of the week 🙂

  • Claire

    I was a child of simple tastes, so I always looked forward to good ol’ fashioned PB&J sandwiches.

    That being said, I was insanely jealous of the kids who got Lunchables.

  • Becky D

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch when I was a kid were those pizza lunchables! So fun and so delicious! 🙂

  • Dana

    What a fun giveaway! I loved peanut butter/creamed honey/banana sandwiches!

  • Jenna Meyer

    Boloney Sandwich on white bread with mayo–yech!
    I LOVE school supplies!

  • Laurel

    My mom’s homemade pesto made a great leftover lunch the next day!! mmmmmmm 🙂

  • rachael gregg

    my soccer mom would pack me a fruit drink that probably contained no fruit juice, greasy salty chips, fruit snacks that probably contained no fruit, a lunch meat sandwich containing only meat, mayo and bread, no fruit or vegetables and a dessert like a hostess cupcake.

    best mom ever? yes, best lunch ever? no, but i forgave her in the end.

    all the kids were envied the amount of sugar.

  • Alessandra

    Ants on a log! Celery with peanut butter and raisins, so cute and fun!!

  • Torrey

    Our cafeteria always had a special dish of the day and an “alternate”. I always loved when the alternate was a Lebanon Bologna sandwich (which was often). I had to get that. Every time. And days that Mom gave me $.50 for an ice cream sandwich were the best days ever.

  • Amanda

    My favorite lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup or at school was weiner wraps

  • Teresa Marie

    Probably the school pizza or chicken nuggets. Oh to not care about being healthy!

  • Jessica Daniels

    My favorite thing to eat when I was little was peanut butter and jelly! I liked it so much I had it every day for lunch through school until I graduated high school!

  • Tempa

    All the cool kids had Lunchables, so naturally, that’s what I wished I had for lunch! Plus, sometime about those neat little compartments of meat, cheese and crackers really appealed to me…
    My favorite lunch time treat was a frozen juicebox – ice cold and still slushy by lunch time!

  • Lanette

    Tuna sandwich with a dill pickle on the side.

  • erin

    I used to be the official snack maker in the family -I’d make cookies, brownies, muffins… yoyos were probably my favourite. I love back to school shopping too!

  • Jenna

    definitely, definitely grilled cheese. it was a special treat, because we normally had peanut butter and jelly. oh yes, warm, gooey grilled cheese.

  • Lena

    I’d go for a peanut butter/ nutella/ banana sandwich anyday. The best.

  • Adri

    My favorite lunch as a kid was a turkey/cheese sandwich with Doritos and a Little Debbie Star Crunch. I liked to put the Doritos inside my sandwich.

  • Pam

    I loved the school mac and cheese, I went to a really small school and the cook made everything from scratch, it was delicious!

    I love buying stationery supplies, I’m an uber geek. I also don’t like when my stuff gets messy!

  • Heather

    Mashed potatoes with turkey and gravy. You know, the cubes of so called turkey! Then paid an extra nickel for another dinner roll to make sure you get all that gravy. 🙂 memories.

  • Karen

    Actually I didn’t eat at school often as we lived really close by school. However in my final years I did stay there often and my favourite if I had a hot meal was the school’s spaghetti. We had really good lunch at school. Lucky.

  • dana828

    Kraft Mac & Cheese! But my favorite school lunch item was definitely Cowboy Bread…I actually hunted down a recipe for it last year, and now I think I need to go dig it out & bake some up!

  • ktlovespie

    Spaghetti Day! Either that or Pizza Fridays when I was allowed to have chocolate milk for lunch instead of regular.

  • Courtney

    Pink fluff and pb sandwich! Yum! My mom rarely indulged me though 🙁

  • Lauren

    Leftover pizza. Cold. Still might be a favourite, to be honest! Plus chocolate milk in little bags, that sit on the desk while you stab them with a straw, then sip away.

  • Simone

    I really loved Turkey sandwiches and pretzels with Ranch dressing for lunch…and I still love them.

  • Christina

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch when I was a kid… hmm… not the school lunch, that’s for sure!

    My mom used to wake up in the morning and make soup for me. She would put it in a thermos so it would stay warm until I had lunch. Usually tomato soup. And for some reason I loved cheese sandwiches with miracle whip. I also always got some sort of chocolatey treat, like a nutty bar or these cookie peanut butter things covered in chocolate. So not good for you, but they were yummy!

    🙂

    P.S. I’m a teacher and I could really use all of these supplies.

  • Neely

    The best days were when I opened my lunchbox and saw a fluffernutter! A peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, score!!

  • laura

    I would say my favorite thing to eat would be whatever I traded for – usually tastycakes! Or pizza day on Fridays – that delicious square pizza that can only taste good in the context of a school cafeteria 🙂

  • Sam Gum

    I love Love LOVED (and actually still do) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, they have to be cut diagonally, it makes the sandwich. It really does.

  • ikkinlala

    My favourite thing to take for lunch as a kid was peanut butter and jam on whole wheat bread. My parents had me pack my own lunch, so I’m not sure whether it was my favourite because I liked it or just because it was easy to make. I loved baking cookies to go in my lunch, too.

  • Helen

    Living in a Korean household, my typical packed lunch was rice with kimchi and some other small dish. I loved the days when my mom would branch out from the typical Korean cuisine and pack me a little bit of pasta.

  • Leah

    School Cafeteria Pizza – I still think about it!

  • Steffi S.

    Tomato soup. It always made me super happy when I had soup for lunch when I was in elementary school.

  • Jen

    Everything On A Plate!!! Was, and still is my favorite meal. Okay, cafeteria pizza and salad drenched in Italian dressing was pretty great. And so were chicken patties; though I have now traded those for Chix Patties. But Everything on a Plate – as my Aunt Ginny called it – was the best. Cheese, bologna, dipping mustard etc. You could roll your cold cuts into tubes. Awesome!

  • regan

    Peanut butter and jelly. Once I was allowed to start making my lunch for school that’s what I made every single day.

  • Kasey @ Wit of the Staircase

    Oh man… string cheese in my lunch box. And ham and cheese sandwiches. I toughed out the crusts. That was stellar right there. Mom used to draw pictures on a paper towel with little cartoon dinosaurs and doggy superheros for me. I was the coolest little girl at the table (even though no one else knew it).

  • Kris

    Oooh, I remember “hotdog day” at elementary school. We didn’t have a hot lunch program, so when this happened (just a few times a year) it was the coolest lunch EVER. You got to order hotdogs, chocolate milk and a DONUT – whoo hoooo!! Funny how that was such a big deal back then. 🙂

  • Kaley [Y Mucho Más]

    Favorite thing to eat for lunch was PIZZA! I loved bringing leftover pizza to school, wrapped in foil. Yum! I also enjoyed school spaghetti day because they made garlic “bread” out of hamburger buns with butter and garlic. I’m sure it had TONS of butter, and that’s why I loved it, but it was sooooooo good.

  • Tina

    It’s a tie between peanut butter and pickles (a taste I inherited from my grandpa) or the mini oh-so-warm-and-delicious bread loaves my high school sold for a dollar smothered in butter. om nom nom!

  • Kimberly

    I was always over the moon on the very rare days I got to buy lunch from the school cafeteria. It seems horrifying to me now, but I definitely preferred those awful school lunches (no matter what they happened to serve) to whatever my mother prepared for me. It wasn’t that they necessarily tasted better, but at the time it felt much more glamorous to be able to buy my lunch than bring it.

    P.S. Thank you for this awesome giveaway, Tracy! 🙂

  • Krafted by Kelly

    My mom used to make me the yummiest tuna salad sandwiches for lunch on some days. On those days, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world!

  • SArah

    Peanut butter and jelly. Always. I was a picky eater (thank goodness that phase ended) till I was about 13, and I didn’t hold with such things as sandwiches that had actual meat and actual lettuce and tomato on them. Same goes for yogurt, carrot sticks, and every other lunch box staple. But peanut butter and jelly (grape, of course) on white bread (no seeds!), squished underneath my thermos so that the jelly bled through and turned the bread purple. That was my idea of a gourmet meal. I think my elementary school self would be horrified to see the current me eating things like tofu and figs and spinach.

  • Meagan

    We all brought brown bag lunches to school and my favorite thing was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made with my grandfather’s homemade peach preserves.
    However, my least favorite thing was when my mother bought 7-grain bread, because one of those grains looked so much like dried boogies that I just couldn’t eat them. It was a mental image that I just couldn’t get around.

  • Jen

    My school had three separate lunch periods, and I was in third lunch, with none of my friends. My sweet parents would take turns coming to school during my lunch hour, sometimes with a packed lunch, or sometimes they would take me to Yoshi’s, the fast teriyaki place down the street, and they would eat with me in the car in the parking lot.
    Lunches with company are the best lunches ever, it doesn’t matter what the food is. 🙂

  • Mary Ellen

    My favorite thing at school was when they ordered out Roy Rogers on Thursdays. Loved it.

  • Cheryl

    I use to love Pizza on fridays!!

  • Ina

    My mom’s ABC soup with a slice of sour dough bread!

  • Stacy

    When I was in grade school I always took my lunch, except for a couple of certain meals that were served in the hot lunch program. My Favorite was the diced turkey and gravy, served over mashed potatoes. Don’t ask me what they served with it. I couldn’t tell you if I tried, but I can tell you that those were the days my parents were willing to come to the school and eat with me as well…I have fond memories of that meal.

  • Ashley (Peace.Love.Pastries.)

    CFS (Chicken Fried Steak) day which was every thursday in Junior High and High School. I would only eat it on the days they served it with brown gravy and it was my favorite! I loved dipping my roll in the gravy….I’m a pescatarian now and it still makes my mouth water when I think of it. I mean, it was it even really meat anyway?

  • Elsie

    My go-to lunch was PB and J but my favourite special lunch was one of those little pizzas from McDonald’s. The ones that took forever to make so that by the time you got yours it was time to go back to school and it was too hot too eat. Lol the things we do for love.

  • Karen

    Peanut butter & banana sandwich- the best!

  • Maggie @ A Bitchin' Kitchen

    I can’t believe my parents allowed this, but I was a big fan of bringing triscuits and that bright orange WisPride spread cheese for lunch. To this day, I still love that stuff.

  • Kat

    Nutella and banana sandwiches…or lunchables.

  • Kerri

    Sliced tomato on whole wheat bread with mayo. I ate it just about every day for lunch from May to September. The perfect sandwich!

  • Julia

    This was in the 70’s and my Mom almost always made my lunch, but when the cafeteria had “Pigs in a blanket” I so wanted it and she would let me buy lunch on those days. YUM.

  • maura

    bagel and cream cheese, carrot sticks (before days of baby carrots), apple and star-crunch (a little debbie snack). coins in my lunch box for milk!

  • Jeanne

    weird but true: its a tie between a toasted pepperoni sandwich (a childhood discovery of how good pepperoni are-but without the crusts of course) or a Texas toast grilled cheese with extra Longhorn cheese and tomatoes (split between my Mom and I on half-day Mondays)

  • Monica

    Sounds gross, but it was oddly tasty…. chopped olive sandwich. So it’s chopped olives held together with my old friend mayonaisse. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm… on white bread, in my Snoopy lunch box. Yes, I am a child of the 70’s. 🙂

  • Lydia Joy

    I was a crazy person about a ham sandwich on a kaiser roll with Italian dressing WITH sour cream & onion chips put in the sandwich just before eating… I also loved fruit roll ups. I would peel the whole thing off the plastic, wad it up and eat the whole thing at once. So gross.

  • Jen G

    As a child I was completely obsessed with top ramen with poached eggs. Delicious.

  • vera

    obviously my tastes have changed since then but we used to get these hot lunches at school and sometimes we would get french toast sticks which im pretty sure were fried. with a side of boiling hot syrup to dip. delish.

  • Sidney

    Well I will be a junior in high school starting tomorrow, so I still enjoy this 🙂 my favorite lunch is a turkey sandwich with lettuce pickles and mustard, an apple (preferably pink lady), chips, and a pudding cup 🙂

  • Caitlin

    My favorite school lunch was cream cheese wrapped in salami! Sounds kind of gross now, but my mom used to make it for me and sometimes put sliced up green olives in there too. So much better than peanut butter and jelly.

    I love school supplies! Love your list.

  • Allison

    Should I admit this? … Ketchup sandwiches… Thats ketchup spread between 2 pieces of bread. I cant believe my mom let me eat those.

  • Kaila

    My favourite was definitely the classic peanut butter and banana sandwich. Brings me right back to my childhood!

  • Katie Rae

    Just jelly! I was scared to try peanut butter and was convinced I did not like it so my sandwiches were, “Just Jelly!!”

  • Leiah Lauber

    In highschool I used to love bagels with cream cheese stuffed with Doritos! Ate one every day 🙂

  • wintor

    Almost every day in highschool my friend Echo and I would zip back to my house for toasted bagel sandwiches with sliced turkey breast, sprouts, cheese, tomato and avacado…yum.

  • Kelly

    My favorite meal on the lunch menu in elemetary school was taco in a bag….so just a bag of fritos with taco meat and cheese dumped in. yep, taco in a bag.

  • Jasmine

    My favorite thing was in high school we only lived a block from school so I got to to go home at lunch time and my mom would make me lunch…didn’t even matter what. Leftovers from dinner or pb & j. I just liked being able to come home for lunch. When I was younger tho…a lunchable. Rarely got them so thought they were THE coolest!

  • Whitney

    Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies!!!

  • deebo

    my favorite thing to have for lunch as a kid was what everyone else was having. i guess its hard to appreciate whole grain breads and other healthier options when youre small. with that said, id always trade my fancy chips for my best friends fruit snacks. now that im grown up, im just like my mom…. my kids dont mind so much, yet. 😉

  • Michelle

    I was always a pb&j girl. On potato bread. Tortilla chips and some sort of fruit on the side. I still love this lunch 🙂

  • Jen

    Crinkle-cut french fries.

  • Ginny

    once a month I was allowed to buy lunch–usually on hot dog day. And I always got a nutty-buddy. otherwise it was bologna on white with french’s mustard. what’s with my pre-teen processed meat obsession?

  • Claudia from Idiot's Kitchen

    Sloppy Joes. Homemade NOT from the groddy school cafeteria. P.S. I love sharpies too.

  • Jenny (VintageSugarcube)

    Bologna, yellow mustard and slightly smashed rippled potato chips between 2 slices of white bread.

    PS.
    Thank god I have evolved. But once in a while, it still tastes darn good!

  • Lucy

    I know this is stereotypical, but my favorite lunch was PB&J. My mother would write our names in the peanut butter and then circle it with a big heart, before putting the two pieces of bread together. I always felt special eating it during lunchtime.

    Lucy

  • Adrienne K

    I loved whenever I would get Dunkaroos in my lunch box! They were my favorite and they made my lunch so much more special. 🙂

  • Vanessa Strobel

    Peanut butter banana bread sandwiches.

  • Aimee

    tomato soup & grilled cheese

  • Rachell

    Favorite thing to eat were those hostess crunch chocolate cookies. I was always excited to find them in my lunch box. Impossible to recreate. I don’t know why, but they are a little bit epic.

  • Emily

    My favorite lunch as a kid was when I would get “finger food” packed for me- cut up carrots and celery to dip in peanut butter, grapes, cubes of cheese, rolled up lunch meat (aka “rollies”), etc. I made me so happy to have lots of choices!

  • mandee

    I loved my classic pb&j, or pb&honey, with some fruit on the side, and the occasional money to buy orange sherbet from the cafeteria.

  • Marla

    Pbj! Still is my favorite. I pack it all the time got lunch and I’m a college student

  • Molly

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch growing up was this stuff called ‘shrimp salad’ that came from the grocery store deli. It was a mayo-based salad with shrimp and celery in it. I really have no idea why I loved it so much because now I don’t think I’d like it at all. Its funny how your taste changes so much as you get older.

  • Nia

    There was this plastic tray with cheese and crackers and a little red plastic stick to get the cheese on the crackers. I remember you had to be careful with the film cover or you couldn’t get to the cheese. I know they still make this now but I never see the cheddar bacon cheese flavor that was my absolute fav.

    http://www.amazon.com/Handi-Snacks-Crackers-Cheese-Count/dp/B000FA38YU/ref=sr_1_2?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1314649540&sr=1-2

  • karen

    my mom’s turkey sandwiches…on french bread with honey mustard. best evverrr (mom AND sandwich)

  • Kristen

    Little Debbie Oatmeal pies and pizza from the cafeteria!

  • Brittny

    jam and butter sandwiches. Nasty now, but I used to want them EVERY DAY!

  • Ashley

    Ice cream! My favorite thing my mom would pack was rolled up turkey, cheese cups and crackers!

  • Vanessa K!

    Hi Tracy!

    Business first:
    Fave thing for lunch in kindergarten was ants on a log! Fave thing in elementary school was french bread pizza with a chocolate milk…mmm! Fave thing in high school was a Snapple Iced Tea and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or Egg Pudding Tea with Boba and a steam pork bun if we got to escape to Chinatown. LOL 🙂

    Random Babbling last:
    I miss school shopping too. Great finds! Graph paper post its?!? Two of my fave things smashed together? It’s a dream and I can’t believe I’ve never seen these before! Thanks for the totes awesome tip! 😉 I hope I win theeeeem!!! *crossing fingers*

    Have a great day!

  • Jen

    I loved bringing bagels for lunch. Yum!

  • Natalie

    I loved eating pesto pasta for lunch!

  • Sarah

    Those are a few of my favorite things! My favorite lunch as a kid was a turkey and cheese sandwich on sourdough, with a small stack of sour cream and onion Pringles and an apple. So plain, but always so good.

    I’m 32 and my mom is a school teacher, so she still busy me “school supplies” every year. Sometimes you just need new office supplies to make the day bearable. Amirite?

  • Julie @ Sugarfoot Eats

    A ham & cheese sandwich with Ruffles crumbled between the bread too.

  • monica

    I just loved a salami and cream cheese sandwich! with a granny smith apple, of course.

    not something I eat these days, but I loved it in grade school.

  • Molly

    I always loved when my dad would switch it up and pack me a peanut butter and banana sandwich instead of a PB&J.

  • lgmf

    peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  • @beatgozon

    grandma’s pork chop sandwich which she lovingly cut into perfect little cubes, a little bit of breading still on, w/mayo on whole wheat; and an apple.

  • roxy

    hmmm my favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid would have to be panini sandwich…..I was home schooled so lunch was a cooking class.

  • Christina

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch as a child was lunchables. My mom wouldn’t bu them for me but my grandma would. It was a special treat from her to me. Thanks grams

  • Laura

    I was most definitely a “packed lunch” gal over the years. Correction: I was most definitely a “mom packs my lunch daily through senior year of high school” gal. My favorite lunch snack was definitely dorito’s (nacho, not cooler ranch). They were definitely a treat.

  • dawn

    Hmm at secondary school I used to take a cold pasta salad, nothing fancy, torn up sliced ham, cucumber, cherry toms, er… pasta, salad cream, yes salad cream, not exactly gourmet ingredients but it used to last until lunch really well. At college it was chip butty and a flapjack 🙂

    Primary school was a bit of a nightmare, I had school dinners for a short while, I loved being able to have either strawberry or chocolate angel delight, with a blob of squirty cream and chocolate button on top, but you could only get a great dessert like that, if your main meal was some kind of dry horrid meatloaf. If you went for sausage, chips and beans, you were left with an apple for dessert 🙁 Most of the time though, I had a packed lunch, but my absolute nemesis was the small carton of milk my mum used to pack for me. You know the ones, where you have to pull at corners, and then pull it open – seriously, what small child of 6 or 7 can handle that, without it ending in complete disaster???? 🙂

  • Erin

    i took a pb&j or salami and muenster sandwich for lunch everyday in elementary/middle school. on any given day there might also be a: little debbie, fruit roll up, baby carrots, capri sun.

  • Michelle H.

    Thursday hot lunch was the same thing each week allllll through elementary school and it was my favorite day of the week! Chili, gooey cinammon rolls that seemed huge to a little kid, and it was the only day a week we got chocolate milk. I miss those days.

  • Kim

    I loved anything that my sweet mom packed for me. She would always leave me a note with some really cute drawing on it. Wouldn’t matter what she packed…….it was always good but the notes were priceless.

  • Hannah M.

    One of my favorite things to have for lunch as a kid (and I still love it today!) was bread and cheese and cold leftover green beans 🙂

  • Miss Rachel W.

    when i was a kid, my dad went fishing every summer in alaska, and brought home tons of salmon. he took some of it to the local fish guy to have it smoked, and i LOVED to take that to lunch with some ak-mak crackers! kids teased me b/c it smelled fishy, but i thought it was such a cool treat 🙂

  • Molly

    Oh my goodness, I TOO love school schopping. It was always something I looked forward to as a child. My favorite lunch however at school was pizza burgers …. or sloppy joes with pickles and ships smashed inside. YUM !

  • Emily G.

    Lurved Friday Lunches in elementary/ junior high school. Always pizza, but that weird Ellio’s type yum. I remember licking the cheese and sauce off and leaving that pop tart looking dough/ crust remaining. I would nom that down in a circular fashion saving that tasty center bit for last. Jeez, I was a weird, gross kid. 😉

  • Kelsey

    I always brought my lunch so the best days were when I got to buy lunch and would buy cheese pizza or just plain, hot rolls that they sold in the lunch line. They were so delicious.

  • Kathy

    My favorite school lunch was pepperoni pizza with the tiny cubed pepperoni or awesome frito pie! However, I usually got packed lunch and my mom made little salads for me to be healthy. Dad always hooked me up with chocolate covered raisins though 🙂

  • Elle

    I had 2 favorites for school lunch… pizza (the rectangle one) and Panther Burgers. Panther burgers were the best burgers going. Our school mascot was a panther so the burger was thus named so. It was DElicious – the bun was a bit eggy with a hint of sweetness and the toppings although simple made it even better! yumster

  • Lindsay

    Such a fun giveaway! My favorite thing to eat was hands down pb&j on white bread!

  • Rachel (De Ma Cuisine)

    My favorite thing… Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Still one of my favorite meals ever. Although one of the best things (that I may have loved even more than GC) was when we had pizza day at school. We’d pay like $2, and get two slices of Dominoes pizza for lunch. It was so fun.

  • Kirsten W.

    peanut butter & banana sandwich. mmm! Thanks for the giveaway!

  • Kate

    Pbj sandwich, carrots and ranch, cookies!!!

  • Heidi Williams

    pasta with meat sauce, always a winner!

  • Zak

    My favorite thing to eat for lunch as a kid was lunchables!

  • Kathy

    PBJ, of course. Loved apple juice too. It is ashame that so many kids are allergic to peanuts these days. I lived for PBJ as a child.

  • Leslie

    Every other Thursday was pay day for my parents so I always had ham & cheese sandwiches with mustard on the Friday. Beat the warm tuna salad or PB I had the other days! My mom also made us home-made brownies from scratch which were awesome (even though I always wanted the shiny boxed mix kind everyone else had!)

  • Elizabeth

    Being raised Catholic, Fridays in Lent meant no meat on sandwiches but I always looked forward to these days. Instead of the normal ham or turkey, my mom would make my siblings and I cream cheese and strawberry jelly sandwiches. It was like having desert for lunch!

  • Diana

    It sounds terrible now, but my school cafeteria served hot pretzals with cheese…or should I say “cheese.” Man, were they tasty!

  • Mary

    I loved the hot school cafeteria lunches because they always had the junk food that my mom never made: chicken nuggets, fries, pizza. I still dream about the chicken patty dipped in mashed potatoes and gravy. I was a strange child!

  • Niki

    french fries and chicken nuggets – those were the days! 🙂

  • Jessica L.

    My mom would always pack me the best lunches when i went to elementary school. She used to make hot dogs and put them them in cute cases. and turkey sandwiches with cheese and chips. but my favorite will always be bean and cheese burritos. i could live off bean and cheese burritos for the rest of my life!

  • Sarah

    mini baguette and chocolate milk, on my birthday!

  • Sarah

    PB&J on white bread. Smooshed and cold. Still one of my all time fav comfort foods.

  • Glenn

    I used to absolutely love tater tots, to the point of obsession.
    A plate of those with a corn dog and I was set for an entire week’s worth of giddiness.

  • Jill

    Ham and cheese bunwitch with chocolate milk. Lunch of champions, I say.

  • Laura Milner

    I loved when the school had pizza. Friday was pizza day, you would see the entire school run to the lunch line on Fridays. I’m pretty sure it was the worst pizza in the world. But at 8 years old it was the BEST thing ever!

  • whitney

    omg school supplies are the best.
    when i was in elementary school, i would always trade with my friend kevin so i could have his sandwich. what was on it, you ask? CHOCOLATE FROSTING. on white bread. this is what his dad made for him everyday. by the end of fourth grade, he started bringing two every day so he could give me one.

  • christine

    Pizza days at the cafeteria were always popular, but a special treat, when we lived in Nebraska, was “runza” day. It’s a ground beef/onion/cabbage filling in a yeast dough. Kind of a Mennonite/Eastern European calzone.

  • Megan

    I’m pretty plain jane, but my mom would jazz it up a little and put pb & j on crackers so they were like mini sandwiches…loves it! I would wash those bad boys down with some capri sun- pacific cooler!

  • Erin

    I used to l-o-v-e Nutty Bars. My friend’s Mom gave me a box of them as a gag gift when I was in 4th grade because I kept guilting my friend into sharing them with me when I was a kid. My Mom was a little horrified when she found out.

  • brandi l-b

    definitely peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread. i love when the jelly bled through the bread! i am in grad school and still take pb&js to class with me (although i’ve upgraded to wheat bread).

  • Alanna

    At my grade school, we had to pack our lunch. My mom was (and still is) a health guru, so I would always have boars head turkey and organic cheese on whole grain bread, some sort of fruit, a granola bar, and milk. I would LOVE days when she would put in swiss cake rolls, dunkaroos, or nutty buddy bars (about once a week). Those were always my favorite lunches.

  • Lisa

    In high school (is that still a kid? yeah…) every Friday was pizza day. Mostly we had the rectangular slices of traditional school pizza, but sometimes the cafeteria would order from a pizza place and those were great days!

  • Ellie Cortez

    I think it’s gotta be the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich

  • Dede

    All I can remember in elementary school was my mom giving my liverwurst with red onions on wheat bread, hated it! In high school my favorite lunch was an apple, Twix, and a Diet Coke

  • Trish

    hmm, that is a hard one. I liked …and still do…just about anything. I am not a picky eater at all…(we would go hungry if we were).
    but i think i like the golash left over mom always put in. it was like christmas, you never knew what you would have until you opened it at lunch…most of the time it was the left over spaghetti concoction she made-yum.
    i know i have to think of weird ideas for my daughter…she doesnt like sandwiches-she is not a bread eater-
    I need your kind of imagination, my youngest only eats meat, cereal, and PB sandwiches…my oldest latley hasnt wanted much meat…and my middle doesnt eat bread.
    so i make a dinner, give my youngest my oldest’s meat and he eats her noodles..lol well at least i didnt make something different for each of them…lol

  • Sasha

    i ate lunch at home or a sitter’s house until 7th grade but they were usually quickie lunches. i’d have to say Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese was my favorite and still is one of my go-to comfort foods.

  • Emily Jean

    I was such a picky kid, so I’d love a thermos full of still-hot soup! Yum.

  • Krisla

    I love school supply shopping! Pens are fun. My mom used to pack me leftover spaghetti. yumm

  • Jamie Hunt

    Lunchables. My mom never really made me a fresh lunch, but sometimes I got lunchables. I used to love the pizza ones, but there will always be a special place in my heart for the cracker stacks. And I would never share unless someone wanted a whole stack, because I would not give someone just the cheese and have to eat a stack with only cracker and meat. I needed all the flavors, in each bite.

  • Amy Akers

    My favorite, my Mom would come home from work to meet as home on our lunch. We lived the block behind our school, and she would have fruit all cut in to wedges, cheese slices, carrots, broccoli, peanut butter in a dish, yogurt in a dish, and little cut up sandwiches. Loved it! sometimes apple slices, sometimes grapes, kiwi, always oranges, Always made the few of us that came home for lunch feel very special!!

  • JenMarie

    I never liked delimeat sandwiches, until I later had them on thick sub bread. So, I perpetually had PB&J until my mom thought up putting a hot dog in a thermos with a little warm water. So, that was my favorite lunch. Hot dog in a thermos. I would cut it up with my plastic fork and use a packet of ketchup. Yum.
    Still love it to this day, bunless. 🙂
    Awesome.
    Totes.

  • Liz Oakeson

    I was the kid that always had a box lunch. lame. So to make it more interesting in third grade, i would take a Reuben sandwich or whatever with one side of the sandwich white bread and the other slice pumpernickel. the look on kid’s faces was great. ‘what is that sandwich?’ pair that with green tomato pickles and you have a full out riot.

  • jordan

    My mother packed my lunch all the way through high school. (! Should I be embarrassed?! In no way shape or form am I!) Always a brown paper bag with stickers & and “I love you!” on it. She used to own a sandwich shop so she was pretty spot-on come lunch time. My favorite was a chicken salad wrap w. bacon, avocado, sprouts and scallion cream cheese. YUM.

  • Lauren

    My favourite was probably grilled cheese. I’m the same way. Love shopping for school supplies. Definitely something I’ll miss whenever I finish school.

  • Lucy

    I hope I’m not too late! I was totally a bologna & yellow mustard on white bread kinda girl. So glad I’m not any more!

  • Kathy

    I loved book covers and covering, then decorating my books!

  • amanda

    My favorite thing was of course tater tots (duh) and though I may have never stored them in my pocket after lunch, I can’t say that the thought never crossed mind. Also, cafeteria mac and cheese is kind of the bees knees. Side note- I have just returned to school full time for nursing, and I am aching for some brightly colored school supplies to accompany my 8,000 paged Pharmacology book ; )

  • Nicole @ The Dirty Oven

    My favorite lunch was probably being able to actually buy the hot luches provided at school. They had these french bread pizzas that all the kids liked. Looking back they were pretty gross, but as a kid they seemed wonderful. It was really a treat when you were able to actually help the lunch lady. Now I know that screams fun!
    Great idea on the give away!

  • Rita D.

    My mom always packed a lunch and I especially loved it when she would sneak in a candy bar as a special treat.

  • shelly

    Peanut butter and honey!

  • SCHOOL SHOPPING GIVEAWAY WINNER! › shutterbean

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