Photo: Supplied / Wick Nixon
Wick Nixon is passionate about fuss-free healthy lunches.
The early childhood teacher and graphic designer has followed up her award-winning 2015 cookbook The 21 Day Marvelous Lunchbox Makeover, with the new book Healthy Lunchbox Love.
When parents find something healthy their kids like, they’ll tend to put it in their lunchboxes for the next month, only to have the child turn around in a couple of weeks and say they don’t like it anymore, Nixon says.
She wanted to offer a variety of healthy, easy options in this book.
A lot of parents don’t realise how useful their food processor can be for preparing healthy food, she says.
Many food processors come with a slicing blade – useful for thinly slicing potato and kumara to make Nixon’s homemade chips.
These are much healthier than bought ones and kids love them, she says.
The book also includes a recipe for spring rolls – which apparently aren’t tricky once you get the process down.
“Once you learn how to do them, they honestly take five minutes. I really promise.”
It’s much easier if you use square rice papers rather than round and be sure to keep them moist by laying a damp paper towel over them in the lunchbox.
Healthy Lunchbox Love includes some treat foods.
Nixon uses the more nutritional raw cacao instead of cocoa and swaps cane sugar for coconut sugar, which has a higher nutritional value and a lower glycemic rating but the same amount of calories, she says.
“Do remember the treats are still treats – they're just a healthy alternative.”
Recipes
Lunchbox: Banana Oat Cookies
Dinner: Chickpea Burgers with Roasted Cauliflower
Dessert: Buckwheat Crackles
You can find more of Wick Nixon’s recipes here. And to get a copy of the book go to Wick's website
