Monday’s Portrait: Portrait of a Lunchbox

Bread and Jam for Frances

School starts this week.  I just made my third trip to Target in as many days for last minute school supplies, socks, and Sterilite containers.  The containers are part of my ambitious project to organize my pantry, which is a spin-off of my ambitious project to organize my recipes, which is a spin-off of my most ambitious project: This year I told my kids they can only have hot lunch once a week.  The rest of the days I am sending them to school with a lunchbox.  My motivation for doing this is that I want them eating healthier food.  This means that I can’t just throw peanut butter on bleached white bread and add a bag of chips and a twinkie.   But I have to make my kids believe that what I pack is as awesome as the aforementioned meal, or they’ll be wishing they could go back to hot lunches.  I have told myself a hundred times over the last few days to calm down, I don’t have to get stressed out about this. I can find some simple, healthy things for their lunchboxes.  But I AM stressed out.  And I have located the major source of that stress:  one of my all time favorite books as a kid: BREAD AND JAM FOR FRANCES by Russel and Lillian Hoban.

The premise of the book is that Frances only wants to eat bread and jam.  Ever.

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast,

Jam is the thing that I like most.

She quickly learns, though, that there are all sorts of delightful things to eat besides bread and jam.  How does she learn this?  Thanks to the AMAZING lunchboxes the mothers in this book put together for their kids.  Take Albert, the little badger who sits next to Frances at school.  When she asks him what he has in his lunch box, here is the answer:

“I have a cream cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread,” said Albert.  “And a pickle to go with it.  And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that.  And a thermos bottle of milk.  And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine.  And a cup custard and a spoon to eat it with.”

The next two pages give a detailed description of how he relishes every bite of this delectable lunch, carefully taking one bite of each dish so that the sandwich, the pickle, the egg, and the milk come out even.  Who wouldn’t want a lunch like that?  Frances decides that SHE does.  So here is what her Mom packs for HER. 

“I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup,” she tells Albert the next day, “And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread.  I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery.  And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries.  And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with.”

Albert responds with the understatement of the year: “That’s a good lunch.”  He doesn’t say anything about the paper doily or the tiny vase of violets that come out of her lunchbox for a fancy little place setting.  Now, I have hunted down a pink thermos and tiny purple containers for grapes and cottage cheese.  I have cute little ice packs to keep things chilled, and even found a Japanese egg mold to make hard-boiled eggs into the shape of bunny rabbits, but I haven’t even THOUGHT about place settings.

So I’m a little stressed. Honestly, my kids would probably be just as happy with Frances’ original bread and jam – but wouldn’t it be great if I could teach my kids the lesson that Frances learns?

“I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks.  I think eating is nice.”

(Does anyone know where to find a loaf of rye bread anywhere near Alpine, Utah?)

 

About these ads

« Monday’s Portrait: Portrait of Red Dawn

Thursday’s Book Review: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin »