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One of my personal challenges: lunch. It’s easy to just serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which can get tedious after a while. I’m not the most creative food person on the planet either. That said, I’m rather proud of my Butterfly Lunch Wrap.

All you need is a tortilla, slices of lunch meat and cheese, and a little mayonnaise. (Mustard or even cream cheese would work too.) If you want to get really healthy, a nice bit of lettuce or other greens would be lovely. I stuck with the basics for my “not-gonna-eat-leaves” boys.

Start by spreading the tortilla with some mayonnaise, then laying the rectangular lunch meat on top of the tortilla. Cut off two sides of the tortilla so that it is the same width as the meat. Save the two slices for later – they’ll be our butterfly wings. They should each look like a semi-circle about an inch wide at the center.

Next I cut the cheese slice into strips and laid them across the ham, spaced evenly.

Roll up the tortilla, wrapping the meat and cheese inside. A little mayo on the starting end can help keep things glued together.

Lay the roll on its side and cut into half-inch slices.

Lay the slices out flat in a row and run a skewer through each slice crosswise.

Once you have all the slices skewered*, lay the food on a plate. Take the two semi-circles you cut earlier and lay next to the skewer, forming the wings of a butterfly.

There are plenty of variations you can do on this theme: add lettuce to the wrap, use cream cheese instead of mayo, and even decorate the wings with cucumber or tomato pieces (use mayo or cream cheese as glue).

So what do you think? Do you have anything fun and creative that you do for lunches?

*If you’re serving this to young children, take a moment and cut off the sharp end of the skewer. You can also just lay the slices out to make the butterfly. My boys were old enough to handle the skewers safely.

This post was submitted to Scribbit’s June Write-Away Contest.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want fun lunch wraps.