What we eat for lunch + all about my childhood homeschooling

Hi Kristen!

I just read your latest five frugal things and you had leftovers for lunch–I always try to make sure there are leftovers for lunch but I’d love it if you wrote a post on what you have for lunch when you don’t. I really enjoy your cooking posts and style–you feed your family as well as you can for a reasonable price.

A lot of lunch ideas seem really complicated and no one has time for that!

Thanks,
Mary

I am so with you there.   I always feel like I’m doing well to cook a meal at dinner each day, so the idea of doing anything fancy at lunch is totally not appealing to me.

If there are leftovers, then yep, we try to make a point of eating those so as to avoid food waste.

If there aren’t leftovers, then here are some things we eat:

-sandwiches
–homemade yogurt with fruit
-fried eggs
-ramen (if we have some in the house! I buy it for making Japanese Ramen soup, and Sonia loves to eat the extra packages for lunch)
-fresh fruit
-bananas with peanut butter
-a green salad (sometimes I make a salad topped with leftovers, like roasted veggies, cooked protein, ends of a cheese block, etc.)
-smoothie
-microwaved sweet potato, topped with butter and salt
-cucumbers, sliced and sprinkled with salt

Of course, we tend to be home for lunch because we homeschool.   So, not everything we eat needs to be packable and we have the freedom to heat or cook things in the microwave/stove/oven.

Mr. FG mostly eats leftovers or salads packed in his lunchbox.   And when Joshua and Lisey need to eat lunch at college/tutorial, they generally pack a sandwich, with fruit or maybe crackers & cheese.

Hello Kristen-
I am a total wannabe homeschooler. I like our public school (in fact, I am our PTO’s president) but I don’t love the lack of individualized education that my kiddos get. I found it fascinating that you were homeschooled growing up. Can you share more of your experience growing up as a homeschooled kid?

-Dana

Sure! My mom started homeschooling my siblings and me back in 1984, when I was in first grade and when homeschooling was very unusual.   This makes my experience super different from my own kids’ experience.

For instance, in 1984, homeschooling wasn’t illegal, exactly, but it also wasn’t exactly legal either. Now we’ve got laws on the books explicitly stating that it’s legal to homeschool, which is nice.

Also, when I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of homeschooled peers.   There just weren’t that many people homeschooling! Now there are so many more homeschooling families, and most people have at least heard of homeschooling.   It’s not quite as fringe as it used to be.

Another big difference now is that there are far more options for homeschoolers.   When I was a kid, there were just a few curricula to choose from and now there are almost too many! Plus now there are a lot of homeschool classes available for extra-curriculars, and there are also plenty of tutorial options for families that want to do more of a hybrid kind of schooling.

I’d say that I was a happy homeschooled kid. I’ve always been kind of a homebody, so I didn’t mind staying home.

And I liked being in charge of my time.

When you’re homeschooled, if you work more efficiently, you can get done earlier and have more free time to do whatever you want.

So, that motivated me to work hard, and I had lots of free hours to play with my sister and with my neighbors, play at the park, practice piano, babysit, cook and bake (favorite hobbies of mine), ride my bike, rollerblade, and read.

My mom did some school subjects with us when we were younger, but as we got older, we did most of our work on our own, which is typical of homeschooled kids.   Mom is there to answer questions and correct work, but she’s not right by your side every moment of your school day.

I feel like my homeschool life prepared me really well for adult life. I did very well on my SATs and when I got into college, I didn’t have any trouble integrating into the classroom, and I maintained a 4.0.

I’ve always done just fine at socializing with people (though I’ve been asked the, “What about socialization?” question approximately 1123291813759 times. Ha.), I’ve held down a traditional job, and I’ve also had several successful self-employed jobs.

Basically, I think I’m pretty normal. 😉

(Oh, and since everyone wonders about prom: there were no homeschool proms in my day, but I did get asked to a private school prom by a guy who played in a piano concerto competition with me.)

I know not everyone has as positive a homeschooling experience as mine, but I really have no complaints about my experience, and I’m grateful my parents chose homeschooling.   Had I grown up in a super strict, super conservative homeschool environment, I might feel differently.   But I think one reason my experience was positive is that my parents weren’t really homeschooling my siblings and me in order to keep us in a bubble or to prevent us from getting sullied by “the world”.

That’s a topic too huge to explore here, though!

I hope I addressed the things you were curious about, Dana.   If I missed something, let me know in the comments and I’ll answer there.

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