A New Shape for Peanut Butter and Jelly--The Old Lunchbox Standby

I hear it all the time. "My gluten-free kid won't eat sandwiches. She hates them."

For all kids, whether they're gluten-free or gluteniverous, they're drawn to food that's pretty to look at. Want to punish your kids? Try applying green food coloring to everything they eat! Want to make them whine about tasting something because they want it so bad? Make it gorgeous!

When I send my daughter a PB&J in her school lunch box, I dress it up. There are two ways to do this:

1. You've heard of the cookie cutter sandwich, right? Make an ordinary peanut butter and jelly sandwich on gluten-free bread. Then use a cookie cutter to cut the sandwich into a fun shape, like a bear, a star, a Christmas tree, whatever you like.

2. Try PB&J "Lunchables". A lot of celiacs just don't like bread. But our celiac kids still have to have their daily grains/starches from the required food groups. So put peanut butter in a mini-Tupperware and different flavors of jelly in another mini-Tupperware; send different kinds of crackers and a plastic knife in their lunchbox too. Now they can make their own do-it-yourself PB&J "Lunchables". It's important, once again, to make the whole thing PRETTY. We own, for example, Tinkerbell snap-tite containers for our crackers. I also sometimes include sliced pickles for peanut-butter-and-pickle and/or honey, because let's face it, kids love to get sticky! Be sure and pack your gluten-free wipes with that lunch!