If you’ve ever wondered why I advocate stainless steel lunch containers — particularly for children — this is it.

Sure, stainless is easy to clean, dishwasher-safe and won’t leach any chemicals into food the way plastic can. And those reasons are high on my list. But let’s face it… The No. 1 reason is that stainless is nearly indestructible.

I foolishly varied from my usual LunchBots stainless steel gear yesterday because I’d made Parker tortilla chips and none of those containers were large enough.

So I used a large orange container made of what I considered to be pretty durable plastic. And I packed it inside his padded, insulated, seemingly safe lunch box at 7:30 a.m.

This is what I got returned to me at 3:30 p.m.

How did this happen?

Wait for it…

You know what’s coming…

You’ve all heard it a million times…

“I don’t know.”

Of course not.

Lesson learned. Metal rules.

For breakfast today I decided to be creative. What was I thinking?

I had a bit of ground turkey in need of using up, so I browned it in one half of a skillet. In the other half, I cooked some egg whites. Add some shredded cheese and wrap it in a whole-wheat tortilla. Seemed to me a great breakfast burrito.

Clearly I was mistaken. You’d have sworn I asked Parker to eat slime…

He finally ate it once I’d extracted the egg. I’d planned to make a second one for his lunch, but that obviously would not have gone over well. So instead I made a ground turkey and cheese quesadilla. Basically, a flat version of his breakfast, minus the egg.

For a side, I made him a creamy corn and carrot salad. All I did was whisk together dollops of sour cream and plain Greek nonfat yogurt with salt, pepper and a minced clove of garlic. Then I added the kernels cut raw from an ear of corn and a few chunks of raw carrot. Raw corn is insanely delicious in salads. If you haven’t tried it yet, be sure to this summer.

Add some strawberries and that’s good enough. Here’s hoping nothing comes home smashed.

Read the original on: Lunch Box Blues