This post is written in partnership with Dietz & Watson. All opinions, sandwiches, and questionable parenting decisions are my own.

There’s a moment every August where I do the math on school lunches and immediately wish I hadn’t. One school year. Three kids. Roughly 180 days. That’s a lot of mornings standing at the counter in my robe, spreading mayo before I’ve had coffee, while somebody behind me announces they don’t want crusts anymore, as of today, permanently.

So this year I tried something radical. I taught them to make their own.

Not in a “good luck, figure it out” way. In a “here are three sandwiches that are genuinely good, let me show you how they go together, and now you’re in charge” way. Because here’s what I’ve learned about kids and food: they will eat almost anything they made themselves, and they will eat almost nothing you made that they didn’t get to watch.

We spent one afternoon at the kitchen island with a cutting board, a stack of Dietz & Watson meats and cheeses, and about forty-five minutes of chaos. They made a mess. One of them buttered a piece of bread on both sides for reasons that were never explained. But all three walked away knowing a sandwich by heart, and I have not made a school lunch since.

Here they are.

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First, the reason I’m especially glad these are in my fridge

I want to tell you about Pack It Forward before I get into the sandwiches, because it’s the part of this I keep thinking about.

Dietz & Watson has teamed up with No Kid Hungry this back-to-school season to help end childhood hunger, and here’s how you participate: every time you buy Dietz & Watson meats and cheeses, you help provide meals for kids in need. That’s it. No code to enter, no form to fill out, nothing to remember at checkout. You buy the turkey you were already buying, and it does a little extra work on the way home.

If you haven’t heard much about No Kid Hungry, they’re a campaign of Share Our Strength, and school meals sit at the center of what they do. They work to get kids fed at breakfast, because a kid who starts the day hungry has a much harder time focusing, reading, and learning — and kids who eat school breakfast tend to do better in reading and math and show up to school more consistently. They work on lunch. And then they work on all the hours that aren’t school at all.

That last part is what gets me.

We talk about school lunch like it’s the whole story, but for a lot of kids, the school cafeteria is the most reliable food in their week. So what happens on a Saturday? Over winter break? All the way through June, July, and August? For kids who depend on school meals, summer can be the hungriest stretch of the year. No Kid Hungry works with schools and community organizations to keep afterschool and summer meal programs running so those gaps get covered — free meals at schools, libraries, parks, and community centers, and in rural areas where families live too far from a meal site to get there, delivery and pick-up options that bring the food closer.

It’s not glamorous work. It’s the same kind of unglamorous, repetitive, absolutely essential work as packing a lunch, just scaled up to millions of kids.

And I think that’s why this partnership landed for me. I spend a real portion of my life making sandwiches and quietly complaining about it. Making lunch is small and boring and endless. It is also a privilege to have the stuff to put in it — to open a fridge and find good bread and good meat and a jar of pickles and know there will be more next week.

So if you’re going to be in the deli section anyway, and you are, because it’s September, grab Dietz & Watson. That’s the whole ask. And if you want to do more than that, you can donate to No Kid Hungry directly on their website.

Okay. Sandwiches.

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Turkey + Cranberry

This is the gateway sandwich. It’s the one my most skeptical eater agreed to try, and it’s now the one she requests every week. It tastes a little like Thanksgiving got a summer job.

• White bread
• Dietz & Watson Turkey Breast
• Dietz & Watson Provolone
• Butter lettuce
• Fresh tomato
• Sprouts
• Cranberry sauce
• Homemade mayo

Creamy, fresh, a little sweet, and SO good.

Teaching note: mayo on one slice, cranberry sauce on the other, and don’t be shy with either — a scrape of cranberry does nothing. The butter lettuce goes down against the bread as a raincoat so the tomato doesn’t soak through by lunchtime, and the sprouts go on last.

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Ham + Honey Dijon

This is the one my son is weirdly proud of. He makes it like he’s on a cooking show. He announces each ingredient out loud as he layers it. I let him.

• Honey whole wheat bread
• Dietz & Watson Ham
• Dietz & Watson Muenster
• Dietz & Watson Pickle Spears
• Thinly sliced red onion
• Arugula

Honey Dijon Mayo: honey + Dijon mustard + mayo

Sweet, tangy, crunchy, peppery—the easiest way to make a ham sandwich feel fancy.

Teaching note: the honey Dijon mayo is a stir-together, and it’s worth making a small jar of it on Sunday so it’s ready all week. Fold the ham instead of laying it flat so the sandwich has some height. And slice the red onion thin enough that you can almost see through it. Thick red onion is how you lose a kid on a sandwich forever.

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Roast Beef + Sweet Horseradish

This one’s for the kid with the big palate, and also for me, at 2pm, when I’m working and forgot to eat.

• Ciabatta roll
• Dietz & Watson Roast Beef
• Dietz & Watson Cheddar
• Dietz & Watson Sweet Horseradish Pickles
• Pickled red onions
• Pepperoncini

Sweet Horseradish Mayo: mayo + a splash of the sweet horseradish pickle juice + Worcestershire sauce

Savory, sharp, tangy, a little sweet, and LOADED with flavor.

Teaching note: the pickle juice is doing most of the work in that mayo, so don’t let anyone drain the jar before you’ve made it. Taste as you stir. And ciabatta needs a serrated knife and a gentle hand — we lost one roll to enthusiasm.

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So what’s it gonna take to get your kids making their own lunches?

Make it together the first time. Not a school morning, obviously. A Sunday afternoon when nobody’s rushing and a mess doesn’t cost you anything. You’re not supervising, you’re building one next to them.

Then show them the possibilities. This was the part I underestimated. Once they saw three completely different sandwiches come out of the same pile of ingredients, they started asking what else would work, and suddenly it wasn’t a chore I was handing off, it was a thing they got to have opinions about. Within ten minutes each kid had claimed a favorite and gotten territorial about it. They weren’t learning my sandwiches anymore, they were learning theirs.

Do one prep session and coast on it. Monday night I make both mayos and get the produce ready for the week — greens washed and dried, pickles and pepperoncini in little containers so nobody’s fishing around in a jar. Slice everything thinner than you think you need to, especially the red onion. Thin enough to almost see through is right. Thick onion is how you lose a kid on a sandwich forever, and a thick slice of anything makes the whole thing slide apart on the first bite. Twenty minutes, once, and after that everything’s sitting in the fridge ready to slap together. The only thing I don’t prep ahead is the tomato, because sliced tomato turns to water by Wednesday.

And build the sandwiches the night before. This is the one that saved us. They get made after dinner, when the kitchen’s already a disaster and everyone’s already standing in it, instead of at 7:15 in the morning when we’re all looking for one shoe. The trick to a sandwich that survives until lunch is keeping the wet stuff away from the bread — sauce on the bread, then a lettuce leaf, then tomato and pickles and anything juicy in the middle where they can’t soak into anything. Fourteen hours in a lunchbox will find every weak spot.

Keep good things in the fridge too. Half the reason this worked is that the meat and cheese were worth reaching for. Kids notice.

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Before you go

If you’re grocery shopping for back to school this week, pick up Dietz & Watson. Every purchase supports No Kid Hungry through Pack It Forward, which means the sandwiches getting made in your kitchen help make sandwiches happen in somebody else’s.

That’s a good trade for something you were already putting in the cart.

Thank you to Dietz & Watson for sponsoring this post. #DietzAndWatson

Learn more about Pack It Forward at dietzandwatson.com/packitforward, and about No Kid Hungry at nokidhungry.org.