When feeding kids, keep it simple

With lunchtime sandwiches, children are creatures of habit. But it's the rare child who doesn't crave a little variation now and then. The hidebound peanut-butter partisan might accept apple butter in place of grape jelly. The turkey devotee might appreciate a slice of avocado. The tuna exponent might go for a wrap instead of a traditional sandwich.

For the start of school 2010, we sought sandwich-shaking-up advice from three lunch-making parents who also are professional chefs.

Turkey is the go-to sandwich meat in Lauren Chattman's kitchen. A former pastry chef, Chattman has written many cookbooks, including "Cake Keeper Cakes" (Taunton, $17.95), "Panini Express" (Taunton, $18.95) and the upcoming "Cookie Swap!" (Workman, $14.95). Her daughters, Eve, 11, and Rose, 15, bring their lunch to school every day, and that means that their mother "is making sandwiches every morning."

"What's great about turkey," Chattman said, "is that it's so bland, it pairs well with other things," particularly cheese or another, saltier meat.

While she usually does not cook her own turkey, Chattman insists that it be roasted in the store she buys it from. "Otherwise, it has this slimy texture," she said, "and doesn't seem entirely like meat."

It's all about peanut butter when Mitch SuDock makes sandwiches for his 9-year-old daughter Jessica, a fourth-grader in New York. "And let's get one thing straight," said the chef/owner of Bistro M in Glen Head, N.Y. "It has to be crunchy peanut butter."

Jessica isn't a huge fan of whole-wheat bread, but her father has had great success with sandwiches made with white whole-wheat bread. ("White" wheat has a lighter taste than conventional wheat and thus whole-wheat bread made from it tastes very similar to regular white bread. Trader Joe's and Pepperidge Farm both make such loaves.)

All in a can

It's not surprising that tuna is a popular sandwich filling at the home of Michael Meehan, chef at the seafood restaurant H2O in Smithtown, N.Y. Not only is dad a fish-o-phile, but it's one protein that his food-allergy-prone wife and red-meat-avoiding daughter, Heather, 16, will eat. (Sons John Henry, 10, and Jesse, 6, eat pretty much everything.)

Meehan looks for tuna that is labeled "dolphin safe," which means that a third party has ensured that the tuna producer followed established practices for avoiding harming dolphins while fishing for tuna. "Chunk light" is his tuna of choice.

Sandwiches are a good way to "sneak" vegetables into the mix -- as long as that doesn't prompt the kids to trade their sandwiches for something they consider more desirable. If you've got slices of cucumbers, leaves of lettuce or even some sliced or shredded carrot, add it to the combo for a healthier mix.

Want to assure that your kids will eat a homemade lunch? Have them help make it. There's nothing like a little vested interest in the meal to make it seem desirable.