Filed under: Lunch, Books, Lists, Slashfood Ate

Lunch is often overlooked by busy, working adults, but school-age kids have time in their day set aside to make sure they eat. Sometimes they might buy lunch, but the best lunch is always going to be a homemade one. Making lunches day in and day out can be challenging, especially if you don't want to make the exact same thing over and over again. Most cookbooks are not set up to offer recipes that would be appropriate for school lunches, though they have plenty of lunch recipes. These books are, on the other hand, geared only towards brown bag lunches are a great way to get some ideas - for your own lunches, as well as for kids.

Brown Bag Lunch Cookbook is packed with healthy recipes that can be prepared in advance with easy to find ingredients and minimal fuss. It's as good for kids as it is for working adults.

Brown Bag Success has lots of menus to help you plan and creative ideas to put twists onto old favorites to make them more appealing and add some variety to lunch.

The School Lunchbox Cookbook aims to provide lunches that are delicious, but as healthy as possible for kids. Most of the recipes are nutritionally balanced, but still are things that kids will eat, and there are lots of good tips for keeping lunch fresh until lunchtime.

The Healthy Lunchbox not only provides great, easy recipes, but it has a good deal of information on the nutritional needs of children and the logistics of lunch-packing. Most of the dishes could serve either grownups or kids, and all come with a complete nutritional breakdown.

Lunch Lessons has a little bit of philosophy along with its well-tested recipes, lamenting about the state of the school lunch system in most places and discussing ways that parents and educators can help reverse the trend towards unhealthy eating habits in kids.

Lunch Box: Creative Everyday Lunches is a book that is aimed slightly more at adults than kids, even though it provides nutritional information for the whole family, but the photographs that accompany the recipes should be enough to tempt even the pickiest eaters - perhaps even teens who don't think it's cool to bring a lunch.

Not every single morsel that passes through our mouths has to be ultra-healthy. Mom's Big Book of Baking has 200 easy-to-follow recipes that promise to get you through any bake sale, slumber party or birthday party that might come up. Almost every recipe in the book, from cookies to cakes, will pack well and would be a welcome treat in any lunchbox.