If your kids have hot school lunches...

[goldpendant]

.... do you feed them a further hot dinner when they get home, or is it something lighter for tea? I want to start meal planning as we need to start budgeting better. Both are in FS/KS1 so get their school meal free, which as it stands with the Covid limited menu is:

Monday Sausages
Tuesday Bolognese
Weds Roast
Thurs Pizza
Fri Fish and chips

None of this is wildly healthy and there's a pudding too, so I'm tempted to do a standard-ish tea that would resemble packed lunch, sandwiches or wraps, veg sticks, fruits, yoghurt pudding.

Does this sound ok? Do others do anything similar?

Mine get hot school lunches and a full, proper dinner in the evening. School lunches aren't very tasty according to my kids. Very basic and not nearly as flavoursome as proper home cooking. They're also teeny portions my kids reckon and they're not big eaters really

I think it's about quantities rather than hot vs cold. My kids have always had school dinners, but at primary they were still always ravenous by tea time - I don't think primary school portions are that big. So they always wanted a filling meal in the evening, regardless of whether hot or cold, particularly once they got to KS2. I generally just tried to avoid the same type of meal for lunch and dinner, though many was the time that I managed to serve double sausages or double pasta by mistake. Now that my eldest is at secondary he finally comes home fairly full!

Mine don't mind if it's a repeat. Pasta then pasta for example, because as they say,
"Mum, whatever that was, I'm telling ya, it was NOT pasta and sauce"

They don't rate school lunches much unless it's Panini day.

Sandwich tea here! Typical example is cheese sandwich, crisps or mini cheds, cucumber sticks and pepper strips.
Pud Miller rice or yog

Hmmm yes I get the point that it's probably not as nice as actual home cooked food. Wish I could see the portion size! DS doesn't seem to mind the pizza/fish and chip days! Though he did recently tell me the sausages taste like play-doh!

Perhaps a combo of 'picnic teas' and something more substantial on swimming day, PE days would suffice?

My kids always ate with us at 6.30 in the evening despite having a hot lunch - we had pay back then

I don’t understand the issue with 2 hot meals a day? Why must one meal be sandwiches? I’ve heard it several times on here and it baffles me!

Yes, most of the time DS gets another hot meal soon when he gets home.

This is because the school lunch is quite early, so he’s understandably ready for another proper meal later... and because his dad does night shifts so this early (4.30ish) dinner is the family meal before his dad leaves the house for work. However I feel 90% sure that even if his dad didn’t work nights we’d still be having a proper cooked meal in the evening.

Definitely serve a hot meal here.

The kids school use those awful airline tray things. Great for the little ones who cant manage multiple plates in one go. However, when you get to year 6, the portions are minuscule, the kids resent having to eat using 'toddler plates' (dd and friends words) and they come home ravenous. Dd can come home at 3.45, make a sandwich and then have a full tea at 6pm. I'd like to see 2 fish fingers, a serving spoon of chips and a tablespoon if beans fill any y6 child!

Mine has a cold tea and is actually very put out if he ends up with 2 x hot meals! There's no magic extra nutritional value in a meal just because it's hot, I don't see why a cold tea is considered inferior/ less filling, it just depends what you put in it.

I agree with PP’s, small portions and give a hot dinner. Often ours eat something different to us as it’s earlier and needs to be quick, jackets with tube/cheese/beans. Pasta bake with veggies, prepped earlier, noodles with broccoli, pizza made using a wrap as a base. All super cheap to make and healthy with veggies.

@Sexnotgender I have no issue serving a hot meal! I love cooking for them, just trying to make our evenings a bit easier (I'm now wfh and it's zoom calls all day long, we've had to let go of our nanny etc), and I guess I'm just flipping the idea of the packed lunch they might have for tea!

I might try it twice a week and see if they complain! I suspect they might enjoy the novelty!

@Mixingitall sounds like I need some ideas for quick, healthy teas I can throw together for them.... your ideas are good.

Cold tea sounds fine but they will need big portions with plenty of veg as school dinners are tiny and not especially nutritious, even when offering a full menu. Off topic but what are they expecting vegetarian kids to eat?

There's basically a meat or veg option.

Eg it's veggie sausages, tomato pasta, 'soya strip' roast. Very uninspiring. We are told it's a temporary menu but it had been going downhill last year pre Covid. Luckily the caterers contract runs out soon I hope the school will explore other options!

My two infant school children’s brains would explode if I tried to persuade them that sandwiches were dinner. Sandwiches are an after school snack as far as they are concerned!

For quick dinners this week they will have leftover roast chicken with a) veg fried rice b) pasta and cheesy sauce with veg c) quesadillas.

The weather is getting colder a nice hot dinner each night is what my kids get maybe in the spring/summer they would get a picnic dinner but not every day.

I thought I may be able to get away with not having to do another full meal but DD returns from school starving so it’s usually a sandwich and fruit straight after school and a normal hot meal. School meals are not dinner sized meals

Lots of schools cut costs to the absolute minimum with outside catering. Ours certainly does and my kids despise the school food. Both became thin because I thought they were eating "hearty meals" but in reality they were picking at a small portion of grim food and going hungry. I think it's quite a scandal actually, supplying food that looks alright on paper but kids are not actually eating or enjoying.