School lunches advice from an expert: Kate Gosselin, mother of 8
If you want to learn about something, ask an expert.When I wanted hints about packing school lunches, I asked Kate Gosselin, the mom in TLC’s reality series Jon and Kate Plus Eight, who is speaking to food writers on behalf of the Grains Foods Foundation.
Granted, Kate’s got only two children in school — 7-year-old twins Mady and Cara are in the second grade — but she’s also got 4-year-old sextuplets at home. Aaden, Joel, Collin, Hannah, Leah and Alexis are in preschool three afternoons a week, which means that Kate and the kids must sit down to lunch at 10:50 a.m. on those days. Planning and organization are obvious necessities for the Gosselin family, but Kate’s also concerned with nutrition and variety.
She asks the older girls each evening what they’d like for lunch the next day, then gets to work as soon as she’s done with dinner. Nine times out of 10, Cara and Mady get sandwiches. “They rarely agree on what kind of sandwiches,” Kate says.
“I cut out the sandwiches in shapes sometimes, change the bread,” she says.
Each lunch also includes yogurt or a cheese stick, a piece of fruit and something crunchy, such as popcorn or an oatmeal-raisin cookie. Finally, she tucks in a note. “Just my way sending love along with them to school,” she says.
None of her kids are picky eaters, although Joel went through a phase where he wasn’t interested in dinner. “For about a month, we had to tell Joel to pick up his fork or he didn’t,” she says. To compensate: “I bulked up his breakfast and lunch.”
Kate says she’s always thinking about new and different recipes. “I’m constantly at the store looking for things that are healthy but kids like,” she says. “It’s kind of my hobby. I like to fill them with healthy calories.”
She buys bread in bulk, “a whole flat of bread that the bread man brings in,” because her family goes through a loaf a day. She has three chest freezers (and two refrigerators). “The advantages of having eight kids is nothing has a chance to go bad or get stale,” she says.
Here are some recipes that Kate Gosselin developed for the Grain Foods Foundation:
FALL HARVEST SANDWICH
2 slices whole-wheat bread
1 tablespoon honey mustard
1 slice Cheddar cheese
2 slices honey ham
1/2 Granny Smith apple, sliced thin
Top 1 piece of bread with mustard, then cheese, then ham, then apple slices. Top with the remaining piece of bread. Cut on the diagonal and serve.
PB & APPLE
2 slices whole-wheat white bread or oatmeal bread
Peanut butter
1/2 apple, thinly sliced and drizzled with a tiny amount of lemon juice
Spread each slice of bread with peanut butter. Place thin apple slices on one slice. Close sandwich and cut into triangles.
CREAM CHEESE ROLL
1 slice whole-wheat white bread
Light cream cheese
1 slice smoked turkey
1/2 cucumber, sliced lengthwise
Trim the crusts of the bread and gently roll out the slice so it resembles pastry. Spread with light cream cheese. Place the turkey slice in the center of the bread. Add cucumber slices. Roll the bread similar to a sushi roll and cut into mini rolls.
CREAM CHEESE ROLL (FOR ADULTS)
1 slice whole-wheat white bread
Light cream cheese
1 slice smoked salmon
1/2 avocado, sliced
Trim the crusts of the bread and gently roll out the slice so it resembles pastry. Spread with light cream cheese. Place the smoked salmon in the center of the bread. Add avocado slices. Roll the bread similar to a sushi roll and cut into mini rolls.
HANDY HUMMUS WRAP
2 or 3 leaves lettuce
1 whole wheat or whole-wheat white wrap
2 to 3 tablespoons hummus
1/2 cucumber, sliced lengthwise
1/2 red pepper, cut into long strips
Place lettuce leaves in the middle portion of the wrap. Top with hummus. Add sliced cucumber and red pepper. Roll and cut in half.
(107 votes, average: 2.48 out of 5)
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Judith Evans is the food and travel editor for the Post-Dispatch. 
This is hilarious! Kate Gosselin, an expert on anything?? Are you aware that this family has tons of help and is gifted from many companies with many freebies, on a regular basis? As far as taking her advice on how she cooks for her family, and organizes, you might be interested in knowing that the family has a personal chef and an assistant.
Neither Kate nor Jon has an outside job, only their weekly show. I am disappointed that Kate would be held up as an example of an “expert” on anything but money-grubbing. Do your homework, please.
I love watching the Gosselin’s on TV and I appreciate that the family needed to go to the media route to earn enough to take care of that brood and be there with them. I’m not sure I approve of IVF, but that’s what Roe vs Wade was all about, a woman’s right to privacy and choice.
The meal ideas are spot on. The only things I did differently with my family was to substitute the bread with non-grain foods as wraps, substituted non-dairy choices for cheese, elimintated any taint of meat, and made my own raw, sprouted chickpea hummus.
Kate doesn’t cook. She has a personal chef and a personal assistant. Why you would choose to feature the world’s greediest couple is beyond me.
Wow - aren’t we rude LOL! Whether or not Kate has help, she and her husband do a lot themselves. You’re probably jealous b/c you don’t have help or can’t come up with ideas yourself. Lighten up and enjoy that fact that regardless of where the bag lunch ideas come from they are helpful. You must be an expert at this yourself or don’t have any children yourself. Hopefully I won’t see your rude comments again.
I begrudge no one an honest living when it doesn’t hurt anyone else. There are 8 wounded victims here and worshipping this woman will only prolong the children’s suffering.
These might be interesting if they weren’t a replay of a dozen or more mothering cookbook lunch suggestions. Sorry, but I haven’t seen Kate prepare anything yet that the recipe wasn’t already published somewhere. I wouldn’t care if she’d just admit it and quit making remarks like real cooks don’t need recipes and then slavishly follow a recipe for pancakes.
Jealous? I think that’s number three on the Kate defense list of attacking someone who doesn’t think Kate walks on water.
I’m sure the Gosselin personal chef has submitted the recipes to Grain Foods Foundation. What else is this money making machine trying to pull off to the public?
Have you ever seen Kate Gosselin hang out with other moms, have you seen her go to the park with her kids and hang out with other moms? Have you ever seen her kids have friends over?
NO, NO, and NO!
Kate thinks other moms are beneath her. She is rude to them in public.
She doesn’t really like to be with her kids except on the show (caching!)
And her kids aren’t allowed to have friends or talk to the kids in their
neighborhood!
She is a narcissist who has cut all family and friends out of the kids lives.
Kate’s “recipes” are all back of the boxers. She doesn’t have an original thought in her head.
Having grown up in the restaurant industry and being around chefs all my life I must say that Kate’s recipes are plagiarized and mediocre at best.
Since Kate has a private chef and no longer cooks she can’t be instructing women on how to cook for their families.
Since Kate has a gardener, a housecleaner and paid laundry service she really can’t instruct women on the products to use or helpful home care hints.
Since Kate has a paid nanny she can’t instruct women on how to care for their kids when she is in bed on her laptop all day and Jenny is playing with her kids.
Since Kate has a personal assistant she can’t complain she’s exhausted all day.
Since Kate is given everything FREE including all of the above, she cannot instruct Mothers in this economy how to save money.
And since she really does NOTHING for her kids, house or family finances you can say that she is NOT A SUPERMOM!
Kate Gosselin is a freeloading mooching baby p!mp!
NOTHING to be jealous of.
Please pinch me and tell me I am dreaming. Kate Gosselin would not know how to cook her way out of a brown paper bag. Expert?! Puhlease! Are you all wathcing the same show I am? We see two grapes and three crackers on a paper plate for lunch. A chef prepares and delivers dinner. Kate in a grocery store? Only when the cameras are rolling, folks… otherwise we have Jon and Jenny the personal assistant for that. This is such a sham. Please do your research next time and don’t give a platform to these scam artists.
Wow, did she “develop” PB&J too? I’ve seen these recipes a million times before. Check out numerous sandwich places and you’ll find those same sandwiches. Guess you have to have 3 freezers and 2 refrigerators to keep all the freebies. I wonder how many pictures of their kids they had to sell to afford those?