Super Sandwiches

Lunch at home, particularly sandwiches, can get pretty boring. So, here are some ideas to make your sandwich lunch visually appealing for your 'lunch crew'. 

1. Give your kids an assortment of small food items (M&Ms, carrot sticks, olives, chocolate chips, cucumber slices, etc.) and let them make a face on their sandwich bread. Then, they get to eat it off! Slightly gross in concept (LOL), but it gets them to try foods they might not, ordinarily.
2. Use cookie cutters to cut sandwich bread into shapes and then add fillings. This works well with fillings and/or cheese...ham and turkey, not so much. 
3. If you usually serve fresh bread for sandwiches, try grilling or toasting. Just a subtle change can make a difference in the flavor of the sandwich.
4. Try some new flavor combinations or new fillings. Pimiento cheese, chicken salad, tuna salad, rye bread, pumpernickel, even pita pockets...these are all out there waiting for your child to try! 
5. If all else fails, slice the sandwich differently. I like to cut my sandwiches into fourths on the diagonal when we are serving soup. I place the soupbowl in the middle of the plate and the sandwich fourths around the edges. If you are not planning on serving soup, you can also try what we did for lunch yesterday. See below!

When we ate at McAlister's this past week, I noticed how their sandwiches are displayed on the plate. They cut the bread diagonally and then cut one of the halves in half. The large half stands up (sliced side down) in the middle of the plate, and the two smaller halves are placed at a perpendicular on the plate. One neat feature of this is that it divides your plate into fourths, so you can sneak carrot sticks, celery, chips, etc. onto the plate and it is neatly divided. NOTE: This works best with toasted or grilled sandwiches, as fresh bread won't stand up! (Yes, I learned this from experience.) :o) Enjoy!