Quick and easy dinner ideas for after school

[helsbels03]

hi any ideas for very quick / make ahead after school dinner ideas? I work til 4.30 and dd's usually in bed by 6.30(age 3&5) so it doesn't give us much time!

Also dd1 very fussy as she will not eat anything with a sauce

Thank you

[vmcd28]

This was in the asda magazine, it worked brilliantly. And it's open to adapting easily. ..
Spread a layer of either ready-made or fresh mashed potato in a casserole/lasagne dish. Also spread round the edge to form a kind of pie casing.
Stick in some hotdog sausages (we used halved normal sausages) in an upright position.
Pour a can of low salt/sugar baked beans around the sausages.
Crack 4eggs onto the top of the beans, with one yolk in each corner.
Cover with grated cheese.
Bake at 175 for 20mins or so.

It comes out beautifully - potatoey, cheesy, beany yum, with a whole baked egg each, and sausages sticking up out the top.

I don't know how your dd copes with baked bean sauce, but she could have a ramekin dish of her own without the beans? Or a baked egg with mash and cheese, or whatever?
Once you've made this once, it's really quick to chuck together

[vmcd28]

Or do they like veg?
My ds is fussy, but likes sweet potato and butternut squash. So I make the following - put sausages or meatballs in a dish, with bitesize chunks of red onion, parboiled sweet potato, red pepper, courgette (and anything else u fancy). Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and sprinkle over dried basil and/or oregano.
Bake for 40mins, then serve the kids sausages and sweet potato, and the adults have a bit of everything. Great with parsnips/carrots etc in winter, and Med veg in summer.

[vmcd28]

Oooh, also!
I made (hundreds of) sweetcorn pancakes for my 10mo weaning ds and froze them, but he didn't like them much. So we've been thinking of things to do with them. (Recipe on babyledweaning website)
We had the most amazing dinner the other night -
2thawed-out sweetcorn pancakes each, lightly grilled, topped with a homemade burger (I go through phases of making homemade things so we have a few meals ready to thaw out). Top with grated cheese and sour cream and salsa. Ds had his without salsa or cream. So tasty.

[vmcd28]

In fact (I'm on a roll now), spend a couple of hours on a day off making homemade burgers, chicken goujons and fish nuggets. You can add blitzed cashews etc to the breadcrumb mix, so there's loads of good stuff in there. Freeze everything uncooked. You'll b able to prepare loads of stuff that will you can use 3 times a week for the next few weeks, and use some ready-made things other evenings (eg fishcakes or pasta or whatever). Let me know if you need recipes for them.
Also, buy pizza bases and keep them in the cupboard. Once a week the kids can make their own pizza, adding sweetcorn, ham, chicken etc.

[helsbels03]

Thank you so much for all your suggestions- def going to try the sweetcorn pancakes and the homemade burgers and chicken and fish goujons. I also have 8 mth ds and he eats what we eat ( love blw don't know why I didn't do it with the other 2!!)

I will be making an octonaughts birthday cake tomorrow but next fri I will get cooking - is it best to freeze before or after cooking?

[vmcd28]

weirdly, i typed a reply, but it appears to have vanished.
Anyway, freeze them all BEFORE cooking, i.e cut up chunks of chicken or fish, roll in flour, dip in egg, and coat in breadcrumb/cashew/cheese/herb blitzed mixture).
They can all then be cooked from frozen, as needed (or take some out of the freezer at breakfast time to stick in the oven at dinnertime).
I do a 2hr prepare-a-thon every few weeks, so theres always some prepared HEALTHY food ready to go. But then a few days a week we have processed food .
Wuth baby led weaning (which I'm not 100% sure what it even is, tbh!), what do you feed your ds when you're having something not very healthy, eg takeaway or pizza, or processed things? Do you just give him some, or do you prepare something separate? Or do you not eat unhealthy food?

[lucamom]

2 easy meals I do:

Cook pasta, add frozen peas/sweetcorn 5 mins before end of cooking, stir in pesto & cheese (alternatively, cook pasta and stir in a bag of 'steamfresh' veg from the microwave, then add pesto & cheese)

Chests risotto - heat butter/tsp oil in pan, add risotto rice for 1 min, add stock all at once, and either throw in small, diced butternut squash at this point, or add frozen peas/sweetcorn 5 mins before end of cooking. Add parmesan when cooked

[helsbels03]

When we are having 'ketchup dinner' I.e something from freezer and chips/ pizza etc, I usuallygive him oven chips- 5%fat ones, and a bag of 'steam fresh' veg and either some meat left over from the day before or a fish finger.

He usually bangs his tray if he realises he is having something too different from us as we all eat together!