Every year I obsess about the first few weeks of school. Not because I'm worried about my children's teachers — I'm more concerned about lunchtime.

My kids do purchase the stuff made at school, but there are also times when they're fortunate to have fabulous food prepared for them by their gourmet cook father. Yes, we do send leftovers and those wonderful Thermos containers that keep food hot are a godsend. But all too soon there will be days when a quickly made sandwich ends up in the bag.

What causes me consternation is not that my kids will get odd looks when they bring a frittata or curry soup that might not appear on a regular school lunch menu; rather it is that the kind of sandwich my children prefer always gets a comment from a new teacher or another child in class who isn't familiar with our sandwich filler choices.

My kids like Nutella. For those not familiar with it, Nutella looks like a chocolate spread, so to the untrained eye my children are eating a chocolate sandwich. In these days of hyped up healthy eating-isms, chocolate is bad!

At some point, early in the year, I find myself explaining:

This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.