Three healthy back-to-school lunches using the same ingredients

SALT LAKE CITY — School is just around the corner, and if you’re looking for a quick, easy, and healthy back-to-school lunch for your kids, here’s three of them.

Intermountain Chef Christopher Delissio uses a few staple ingredients to create a honey mustard chicken wrap, an apple bacon salad, and an apple bacon sandwich.

“The idea is definitely quick and easy,” Delissio said.

For the honey mustard chicken wrap, he first starts with the chicken — browning it, then finishing it off in the oven.

While it browns, he starts on the dressing for both the chicken and the salad. It’s a honey mustard with vinegar, honey, and brown mustard.

“You’re making stuff for your kids, but you as mom and dad, you can take a little bit of this cherry flavored honey — it could make a great salad dressing for you,” he said.

Once the chicken is cooked, he chops it into small pieces and puts the chicken into the lettuce wrap.

“I’m going to add different ingredients that I think my child would like or that I want them to try,” he said.

With the same lettuce from the wrap, you can chop it up it for a salad. Delissio added a little bacon, cheddar cheese, apple, and the same dressing from the wrap.

Then with the apples, bacon, and cheddar cheese, you can also make a sandwich, using the apples as the “bread.”

“It’s another way to try and entice the child to eat it with it being in sandwich form,” he said.

Delissio said introducing healthy foods to your kids at a young age is crucial.

“We learn as we grow up, we learn habits, and if we learn bad eating habits as a kid that carry into adulthood, it will be that much harder to relearn healthy ones,” he said.

He also shared a healthy desert alternative — trail mix.

Delissio added unsalted cashews, pumpkin seeds, dried peaches, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, marshmallows, popcorn, blueberries, mixed with flaxseed oil and topped with caramel.

“Food is medicine — what we put into our bodies matter. What we put into our children’s bodies matter,” he said.