You Won't Believe How Long It Takes TikTok's Jessica Woo To Make Her Kids' Lunches - Exclusive
How long should it take to pack a kid's school lunch? Maybe five minutes, if you're slapping together two pieces of bread with some PB&J; even less if it's one of those busy mornings that requires packing Lunchables. Unless, of course, you're Jessica Woo, the viral TikTok content creator who wows fans on the reg with her elaborate bento box lunches she continually comes up with. Packing lunch for her kiddos might involve making rainbow pasta — linguini with food coloring in red, yellow, green, blue, and purple — and then adding in fruit skewers that have raspberries, tomatoes, grapes, and blackberries, alongside a treat of rainbow-colored candy. And let's not forget her thoughtful, handwritten notes on homemade stationery. So, how long does this all take?
In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Woo admitted that she's certainly spending a lot more than a few minutes to assemble the daily meals. "I try to keep my lunches under 40 minutes — the time limit I give myself — because I don't want to wake up too early," she said. But, depending upon what she's preparing, it can take longer than that, which means Woo will have to do evening prep work, too. "If I know they want something special — sometimes they'll give me special food requests, lunch requests — I'll just have that ready the night before," she explained. Calling these requests "special" might be an understatement; Woo recalls the time when she made "a really bougie bento box for my daughter" (seen on TikTok), which involved wagyu steak topped with a quail egg.
Jessica Woo doesn't pack elaborate bento boxes every day
If you're wondering how Woo has 40 minutes every day to pack lunch for her three daughters, the answer is, she doesn't! "There are times where I'm like, 'Okay, no, I'm going to give myself a break, like one or two weeks.' My girls are really good about packing their own lunch, too," Woo explained in her exclusive interview with Mashed. "They like it! They're like, 'I'll do it, Mom. You can take a break.' ...Obviously, they like it when I do it every day, but sometimes I'm just like, 'I can't. I'm too tired.'"
So, what do Woo's kids eat when they don't have a bento box filled with rainbow pasta or wagyu? Sometimes they just buy what's fresh and ready in the cafeteria. "My middle one, Maxine, she's seven [and] in second grade. She loves school lunch, especially their pizzas," Woo said. "So when it's pizza day, she's like, 'I'm good. I'm going to get school lunch.' But my oldest one loves my lunches. So she's like, 'No, I don't want school lunch. I want your lunch.' Or she'll be like, 'Can you just drop me some Taco Bell sometimes?' We get that, too!" Not only that, but sometimes Woo's "bento box" creation for the day is a store-bought one that all busy moms will recognize: "I throw Lunchables in there, too!" she admitted.
Follow Jessica Woo's amazing bento boxes on TikTok.