• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS

Dish up the simple joy of healthy, down-home foods your family will LOVE… tonight.

Join 12,000+ families served since 2010!

  • Join Now
  • About
    • About Wardee & TCS
    • Our Team
    • FAQs & Help
    • Contact
  • Recipes
  • Blog
    • Recipes
    • Archives
  • Podcast
    • #AskWardee
    • Know Your Food with Wardee (retired)
  • Shop
    • Bible-Based Cooking Program
    • Print Textbooks
    • eBooks & eCourses
    • Recommended Tools & Supplies
    • More Books We Love
    • Complete Idiot’s Guide To Fermenting Foods
      • Errata
  • Login
You are here: Home » Food Preparation » Recipes » Allergy Friendly » GAPS Recipes » 10 Easy Ways to Pack More Fermented Foods in Your Child’s Lunch

Make a healthy dinner in 30 minutes or less... while spending $0 extra! Click here for the FREE Eat God's Way “30-Minute Skillet Dishes” formula!

10 Easy Ways to Pack More Fermented Foods in Your Child’s Lunch

We only recommend products and services we wholeheartedly endorse. This post may contain special links through which we earn a small commission if you make a purchase (though your price is the same).

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

10 Easy Ways to Pack More Fermented Foods in Your Child's Lunch | Fermented foods pack a nutritional punch for any meal. But, what to pack and how to provide variety? Here's how to make the most of your child's school lunch with fermented foods -- without adding lots of prep time. | TraditionalCookingSchool.com

Ah, schooldays. Public school, private school, homeschool, unschool, field trips, sporting events, and extra-curricular activities. This time of year, it seems like parents everywhere are thinking about what to eat while on the go.

Whether you’re packing a lunch to go or preparing lunch to eat at home, midday meals tend to necessitate the need for quick, tidy, and portable food. If you’re the parent of a child who deals with food allergies, or you have to pack for a specific healing diet such as GAPS, or you just want to provide a wholesome, nutritious meal for children away from home — packing a lunch can feel like an absolute chore. Especially as the school year marches on.

Fermented foods are one of the best ways to pack a nutritional punch in any meal. And they’re an essential part of many gut-healing diets, so adding fermented foods to a school lunch is a simple addition. The problem lies in knowing what to pack and how to provide variety.

This post will help you make the most of your child’s school lunch with fermented foods — without adding lots of prep time.

Many of these foods take less than five minutes to prepare and are truly grab-and-go (such as the yogurt cups). Most of these require just a small amount of time to plan ahead and make (such as the apple chutney or homemade string cheese). However, some do take at least 30 minutes to prepare (such as the crackers or dosas). I’ve included these anyway because one batch supplies several lunches, so if you have enough time, they are worth it.

Here’s to easy, healthy lunch packing!

If you’d like to know more about fermented foods or learn how easy it is to prepare them, check out all the fermentation class here at Traditional Cooking School, our Lacto-Fermentation eBook, or Wardee’s book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods.

Fermented Finger Foods

  • Dilly Carrot Sticks (definitely a kid favorite!)
  • Pickled Asparagus (my kids love these)
  • Pickles
  • Olives (or check out recipes in our class or Wardee’s book)
  • Pickled Radishes (or Radish Pods)

Fermented Beverages

One note of caution about sending kombucha in school lunches: kombucha can have a very small alcoholic content (typically about 0.05%), and according to the Healthy Home Economist, there is at least one documented case in the US of a child being suspended from school for bringing alcohol to school. This is rare, but I would be remiss to not mention the potential legal ramifications.

  • Water Kefir Tea
  • Ginger Grapefruit Kombucha
  • Chai Kombucha
  • Refreshing Fermented Coconut Water

Cultured Dairy

  • Homemade Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yogurt Cups
  • Cottage Cheese
  • Frozen Kefir Pops (freeze milk kefir in leak-proof popsicle tubes)

Cheese

  • Homemade String Cheese
  • Feta or Queso Fresco Cheese Cubes
  • Kefir or Yogurt Cheese Balls
  • Cheddar Cheese Curds

Cured Meats

  • Salami (This salami is an excellent purchased option — sustainably-raised beef without any nitrates or other preservatives, additives, or colorants)
  • Pickled Salmon
  • Lox

Lacto-Fermented Salads

  • Probiotic Chicken Salad
  • Wild Red Salmon Salad with Lacto-Fermented Mayonnaise
  • Probiotic Potato Salad
  • Cultured Waldorf Salad

Lacto-Fermented Fruit Sauces

  • Fermented Cranberry-Orange-Apple Relish (my kids eat this with a spoon, but it’s great as a dip or relish too)
  • 5-Spice Apple Chutney
  • Fermented Cranberry Sauce
  • Fermented Raspberry Preserves

Fermented Breads, Wraps, and Baked Goods

Please note that when baked, soured baked goods are no longer probiotic. However, those microbes make your bread more nutritious and digestible overall, so it’s still a win!

  • Sourdough Sandwich Bread
  • Dosas: Scrumptious Lentil Wraps or Sourdough Crepes
  • Sourdough English Muffins
  • Sourdough Hot Dog Wraps
  • Peanut Butter and Jelly Sourdough Pancakes (feel free to substitute another nut or seed butter if your school needs to be peanut-free)
  • Bite Size Cranberry-Orange Sourdough Muffins
  • Sourdough Pretzel Bites with Lacto-Fermented Honey Mustard
  • Reuben Picnic Buns
  • Sourdough Crackers
  • Sourdough Pizza Crust for mini pizzas
  • more recipes in our Sourdough eBook

Probiotic Dips

If you don’t have time to ferment, stir fresh whey from yogurt or dairy kefir into the dip. The probiotics won’t be as a prolific but they will certainly pack a punch!

  • Lacto-Fermented Ranch Dip
  • Lacto-Fermented Salsa
  • Lacto-Fermented Ketchup
  • Herbed Kefir Cheese (or Yogurt Cheese) Dip
  • Lacto-Fermented Hummus
  • Roasted Red Pepper Lacto-Fermented Hummus

Use Fermented Spreads

Use a fermented spread on sandwiches or crackers in place of nut butter or other condiments.

  • Lacto-Fermented Fig Newton Butter
  • Lacto-Fermented Mayonnaise
  • Homemade Cream Cheese or Labneh (Yogurt Cheese)
  • Lacto-Fermented Honey Dill Mustard
  • 43 Fermented & Probiotic-Filled Condiments

What are some of your family’s favorite fermented snack foods? Any tips for packing them in lunches or on the go?

Want to make your own Kombucha at home, but need a scoby (starter)? Here’s the one we recommend.

Don’t forget! There’s more info in the fermentation class here at Traditional Cooking School, our Lacto-Fermentation eBook, or Wardee’s print book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods. Plus, these gut health support freebies from two of our partners:

  • Free gut-healing meal plans from nutritional therapist Lydia Shatney (click here, then scroll down a bit until you see the image for these, then click on it)
  • Free 30-Day GAPS Guide from GAPS practitioner Melanie Christner (click here, then look near the top of the page for the signup)

This post was featured in 82 Ways To Heal Your Gut.

We only recommend products and services we wholeheartedly endorse. This post may contain special links through which we earn a small commission if you make a purchase (though your price is the same).

Posted in: Beverages Cultured Dairy Fermented Condiments Fermenting & Culturing Food Preparation Fruits & Vegetables GAPS Recipes GAPS Tips Health & Nutrition Healthy Living Main Dishes Main Dishes (Gluten-Free) Meats Recipes Side Dishes Side Dishes (Gluten-Free) Sourdough Superfoods & Supplements

About Kresha Faber

Kresha is the primary writer and blog editor at NourishingJoy.com, a website dedicated to real food, sustainable living, natural homemaking, and joyful parenting. She is the mother of three young children, the wife of one handsome organic farmer, an opera singer, a cloth diapering instructor, and an avid researcher. She and her husband share a passion for living life thoughtfully and intentionally in response to God's grace in their lives and she loves to share good meals (and good wine!) around a very large table.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jennifer @ GrowingUpTriplets.com says

    November 19, 2014 at 9:21 pm

    This.Post.Is.Awesome!!!! My triplets are only 3 but I’m bored stiff with our lunch items. Can’t wait the probiotic potato salad!!

    Reply
  2. Whitney Lemons says

    August 17, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    We love many of these and I’d love to pack them in lunches, but is it really safe to put fermented foods in stainless steel? At home we would use glass, but that’s not a great lunch box option. We have a lot of stainless containers, but I’ve always hesitated to put LF pickles, fermented drinks, and yogurt in them for the 4 hour storage time between lunch making and lunch eating. Thoughts? Thanks!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Hi and Welcome!

I’m Wardee Harmon and I help Christian families who know they should eat healthy but are tired of complicated, time-consuming, weird-tasting, and unsustainable “healthy” diets…

…who want to look and feel better, save time and money, and have more energy for enjoying family life and serving Him fully!… like I was. Click here for more…

Recently on the Blog

  • Fizzy Apple Cider Switchel (VAD)
  • VitaClay Review & Buyer’s Guide
  • How to Make Healthy Cookies #AskWardee 006
  • Bean and Barley Soup (Instant Pot, Stove Top)
  • Soaked Spelt Banana Bread (VAD)
  • Ancient Grains 101
  • How to Heal Digestive Issues Naturally (Leaky Gut, SIBO, IBS, Celiac & more)
  • How To Meal Plan In 4 Easy Steps (KYF103)
  • Debunking 4 Sourdough Myths (& How To Overcome Them)
  • How To Use A Pressure Cooker 101

Recently Commented

  • YTmp3 on Homemade Sauerkraut In A Stoneware Crock
  • Ali on Rhubarb Salsa
  • Leif on Amish Butter: Really?
  • Makenzie Reed on How To Make An Herbal Eye Pillow For Relaxation & Headache Relief
  • Missy on How To Make An Herbal Eye Pillow For Relaxation & Headache Relief
  • Anonymous on 3 Dangers Of Cast Iron #AskWardee 137
  • Fran R on What’s Your Daily Sourdough Routine? #AskWardee 018

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Before Footer

g-NOWF-glinz

…are what we eat! God’s Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season.

We love working with other Christian families who love good food and want to eat according to God’s design…

Not only because we believe it’s the healthiest way, but because we want to give Him glory for creating good food as the best medicine!

Learn more about GNOWFGLINS here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOcH27DM1dI

Eat God’s Way Cooking Program

Our Eat God’s Way cooking program is for Christian families who know they should eat healthy but are tired of complicated, time-consuming, weird-tasting, and unsustainable “healthy” diets…

…who want to look and feel better, save time and money, and have more energy for enjoying family life and serving Him fully!

Join 12,000+ families served since 2010! Learn more here…

Copyright © 2025 Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS • About • Help • Privacy • Partners