On the long list of meals that I love to cook (and approach with excitement and enthusiasm) the brown bag lunch is pretty low towards the bottom. There are the parameters of what will travel well, what is appealing to eat at room temperature, and what the kids might embrace at home but think is "weird" to dig out of a lunch bag and spread out on a table in front of their peers. Also, there's the constraint of what I am willing to put together in a handful of minutes, while simultaneously making breakfast and urging my children to "find that other sneaker this very second!" And, full disclosure: I don't have to pack lunches for my kids every day during the school year because they eat there (insert sound of angels singing). But I have been packing lunches for day camp for the better part of a decade, and plenty of other to-go lunches along the way. Prufrock measured his life in coffee spoons; I measure my summer in Ziploc baggies (what did people do before?).