Brown Bag Success: Making Healthy Lunches Your Kids Won't Trade

Inside-Out cheese sandwich??? Two slices of cheese, mayonnaise and a piece of bread??? Cheese slice wrapped around a pickle??? These are hardly ingenious, mouth-watering recipes! Peanut buttered popcorn?? And by the way, have these two registered dieticians heard that about 75% of all schools across the country don't allow peanut butter because of all the kids that are allergic to nuts?? I feel like a really dummy for buying this book - don't do the same!

Although this book has a few useful tips
I was disappointed with the recipes
Such as Pickle Roll.
Piece of cheese and a dill pickle.
Roll cheese around pickle is the recipe.
Tell child how to wrap pickle around cheese and eat.
Or "prepare ahead of time"
I was disappointed I paid money for a book to tell me to wrap a piece of cheese around a dill pickle and called it a recipe.
Also I noticed repeat recipes.
Even one side by side on two pages. (pg. 40)
Peanut Butter sandwich with some orange juice.
Next page, exact same, but add some raisins.
Seemed to be nothing more than a page filler.

I hope to spare some other mothers who are looking for healthy lunchbox ideas from buying this book! The recipes are not what I would describe as nutritious ("Chilly Cherry Fruit Soup" uses a 16 oz. can of cherry pie filling as the base for the soup), nor are they original. Some of the tips include such big ideas as "pack the night before" and "use a frozen juice box as a freezer pack". One word for that...duh! This book actually recommends making snack chips out of pie crust and cinnamon sugar. If you want to turn your child into a diabetic, by all means buy this book. If not, buy any cookbook by Annabel Karmel, she's much healthier and more creative.

I first checked this book out at my local library. I found enough information in it to be worth a trip to Amazon to order my own copy. None of the information was particularly "new" to me, but it's a great all-in-one source to help me with what I need. I've recommended it to several other mom's around me too.

I have to agree that there are too many recipes for peanut butter in this given the current level of allergies in our schools but there are also plenty of other options in the book that more than make up for that. It is also a nice way to varry the pb&j when my children are at home with me. There is enough here to help me add variety for my children and to even make some good lunches for my husband. I found the book to be very down to earth and practical for real people.

Brown Bag Success, written by Sandra Nissenberg and Barbara Pearl (both registered dieticians), contains great tips for packing lunches safely, how to make healthy food selections, how to be creative so the lunches will be more fun for your children to eat and how to even get them to help prepare the lunches... as well as a 4-week menu with great recipes! Although I do not feel this book is for the family who doesn't have any trouble packing a great variety of healthy lunches every month, it would definitely be a great help for families (and moms!) who are stuck on packing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with chips and an apple, day after day! It's also for those very special moms who are so busy and have no clue what to pack that they often give in to purchasing those cute little prepackaged lunches that cost a small fortune. Brown Bag Success is a great little book, we're going to try making the homemade tortilla chips next! Also, out of the twenty planned lunches that are featured in the 4-week menu, only a handful of them include peanut butter. If your child is allergic to nuts you can easily substitute items from the other menu suggestions, there are plenty of creative ideas here! - Michelle Jones, Founder of BetterBudgeting.com