A Gluten and Sugar Free Lunch with #HartleysYourLunchbox

Take lunch to the next level and keep it healthy with the #HartleysYourLunchbox Challenge!

Yield: 1 super fun, healthy kid's lunch
Prep time: 5 minutes + time for the jelly to set

A Gluten Free and Sugar Free Lunch with #HartleysYourLunchbox

When you're gluten free, lunch can be one of the most challenging meals of the day. Especially if you're 4. But, having a few go-to products that you know are gluten free, don't taste horrible and aren't laden with sugar is the key to creating quick, gluten-free lunches your child will devour!

I'll admit, in our gluten free lunch battles, I completely overlooked jelly. When he was younger, Callum was completely freaked out by the texture of jelly and wouldn't touch the stuff. Somewhere along the way, he's grown to love it (that was news to me!) and couldn't get enough of these Hartley's No Added Sugar Jelly Pots!

Making a lunch suitable for a child with coeliac disease can be a challenge. Doing it quickly, keeping it easy and nutritious can sometimes seem like a nightmare! Your usual fast lunch staples of wraps, pasta salads and sausage rolls aren't options when you can't tolerate gluten. Gluten free bread at its best is often oddly textured, crumbly and dry.

Naturally, one of our biggest hurdles was getting Callum to consistently eat his lunch. I realised that I needed to disguise the gluten free bread. While I couldn't make it taste better or give it a nice texture, I could use cookie cutters to cut his sandwiches into fun shapes, avoid the crusts and give him a reason to smile when he opened his lunch box. Plus, using cookie cutters to give his sandwiches fun shapes meant every day there was a new surprise inside and it cut down on the amount of not-always-appetising bread there was for him to eat!

Tip: If you're using a cookie cutter, for your child's sandwich, cut the filling (cheese, ham etc) with the same cookie cutter so everything fits in perfectly!

We're big on being healthy in this family, but with moderation. We're not hard-hitting organic-eating vegans but we do care about what we put into our bodies and we do love a cheeky indulgence, too. So Callum's lunches are always a balance of healthy things and a few treats and these jelly pots are the perfect addition! Their scrummy fruit flavours and no nasty ingredients are just the kind of thing I want Callum to eat and enjoy.

Ingredients:

Inside Callum's Lunchbox:
1 Hartley's No Added Sugar Jelly Pots
1 airplane shaped cheese sandwich
1/2 pack of healthy crisps
1/4 of an apple or other fruit
1 no added sugar juice drink

#HartleysYourLunchbox with No Added Sugar Jelly Pots

The Hartleys Your Lunchbox Challenge isn't just for children with food intolerances, perfect as it may be for them! It's a campaign that seeks to motivate parents to try creating brilliant lunches while giving your child something delicious to look forward to each day. The Hartley's Jelly Pots perfectly fit in lunch boxes and if your child collects 12 of the special edition green lids on promotional packs of Hartley's jelly, they can receive their own yellow lunch box with two sheets of stickers for decorating!

Callum loves to put stickers on everything from the doors in our house to the walls along the stairs, so it was nice to watch him put stickers on something else for a change!

After letting the jelly set overnight, the next day at lunch, it was time to put the Hartley's No Added Sugar Jelly Pots to the ultimate test -- the taste test!

And they went down a treat! Even if it was a bit tricky getting the wibbly wobbly jelly to stay on the spoon sometimes!

I couldn't make this stuff up - this is his natural reaction to the jelly. I'd consider that a big hit, wouldn't you?!

Callum and I would like to thank BritMums and Hartley's for the opportunity to create memories with healthy food! This post is an entry for BritMums #HartleysYourLunchbox Linky Challenge, sponsored by Hartley's Jelly.