The Best Homemade Kids' Lunches on the Planet: Make Lunches Your Kids Will Love With More Than 200 Deliciously Nutritious Meal Ideas by Laura Fuentes | Cookbook Review

Pros:

• All the "recipes" are super-simple and call for only a handful of ingredients that you're likely to have on hand.
• The entire cookbook works from a only a handful of ingredients that you're likely to have on hand.  (No tracking down weird foods/spices that you can only find at a Mediterranean specialty shop, for instance.  I'm looking at you, Martha.)
• I feel like most kids truly will love most all of the meal ideas.
• No bento-boxing.  No tracking down cutesy little cookie cutters to cut your cheese into stars and flowers.  These lunches can be assembled in 10 minutes or less.
• Photographs of about 1/3 of the recipes.  I like photographs so that I can know how things are supposed to turn out.  And a majority of the "recipes" in this book are sandwiches, so you don't really need photos.
• Almost all the meal ideas are nut-free, or could easily be adapted to be nut-free.  I know someone who has to pack nut-free lunches for one of her kids and this might help get her creative juices flowing.

Cons:

• All the recipes are super-simple and kind of no-brainers.  Like, I don't need a cookbook to tell me that putting cream cheese between two slices of blueberry bread would be a delicious sandwich idea.  Also, that peanut butter, honey, and whole fruit slices works.  I already know that.
• Photographs of only about 1/3 of the recipes.  The more photos you put in your cookbook, the higher I'll rate it.  Yes, they're sandwiches and probably don't need photographed, but still I stick to my guns:  photo it all!!!
• I found ONE new-to-me thing to try in the whole frigging book.  Like I said above, I already do most of the sandwich ideas.  And I'm not even stretching my brain when I do them.

The one thing I tried?  Pinwheels.  Puff pastry sheet sprinkled with meat and cheese, rolled up, sliced, and baked.  I actually tried one of the variations on the recipe as written in the book, so I did shredded cheddar and crumbled bacon.  They're pretty tasty!  The hubby had some last night with dinner, and I brought some for my lunch today.  They were also super simple to make, so it's something I could regularly keep around.

So overall, this cookbook was "meh" for me.  I could definitely see how it could help actual moms pack actual kids' lunches (as opposed to this grown up packing a grown up lunch) so I'll give it 3 of 5 stars.

*I received my copy of The Best Homemade Kids' Lunches on the Planet from my local library.