If you have a cooked lunch, what do you have as an evening meal?

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We’ve fallen into a rut of sandwiches, cheese on toast or crappy snacks for dinner and I need inspiration please!

The DC almost all have a cooked lunch at school and they say they don’t want another big, hot meal they’re happy in the rut. I’m not!

Maybe a fritatta, or a salad - caesar being one option or a pork belly and walnuts/apple.

Or I made farinata the other day which was fab - it's a thick pancake made with chickpea flour - you could have a picnic tea with farinata slices, hummous, halloumi, salad, slow collapsed courgettes, green beans and feta

Do you use Instagram? If so, look up 5 O'Clock apron -she's fab for family food - she has some cookbooks too - her real name is Claire Thomson - thoroughly recommend!

Soup!

If I’m having lunch it needs to be a hot meal, similarly for an evening meal. If the only option for either is a cold snack, I’d rather not eat anything as I do not like cold food as a meal. Ok I know I’m weird, no need for any such comments though 😀

A cooked dinner? Some days I even have 3 hot meals a day if you can believe it! A cold lunch is really only if I have to grab a sandwich or sushi on the go. Otherwise, most days I’ll have some variation on ramen (I mean like that I actually make, not pot noodles) or cheese/roasted veg (leftover from dinner) on toast or soup.

Then for dinner, it’s just whatever is for dinner: past 2 nights we had roast/leftover roast. If I’m going a quick meal because everyone is busy, it’s jackets with filling and salad, quesadillas with creme fraiche and salad, or fried eggs on crumpets, sometimes with bacon or sausages or sometimes just fruit salad.

I really don’t get this ‘hot meal’ thing. What difference does the temperature of the food make?

I’m in France. At work for lunch I have 4 courses (starter, main, cheese, dessert). In the evening I have a meal with my family. It’s usually simpler. usually it’s ‘hot’ (pasta, soup, fish, quiche, wraps etc), sometimes it’s ‘cold’ ie salad. I’m not very sure what the difference is - they are all meals 🤷‍♀️.

Cook a chicken can be cold for sandwiches/or salad or with rice/noodles/jacket potato/cous cous. Just thinking of something that wouldn’t be too much effort/work to adapt.

Winter time, I want all my meals hot! Dont need to be large, just hot. Scrambled egg on toast is perfectly adequate, as is soup.

Let your kids crack on and you have something else if you're bored.

I don’t like ‘lunch foods’ like sandwiches etc, so my lunch is usually leftovers from dinner the night before. So I have 2 cooked meals a day. Not sure why the temperature makes any difference though! Today I had leftover prawn stir fry for lunch, and Thai curry for dinner.

Soup
Omelette
Something on toast
Salads
Wraps

Salads
Quiche
Soup
Pancakes
Scones
Crumble

Lunch is soup and crusty bread, beans on toast or nowt. I'm not doing on demand lunches.

Dinner is the gousto meal for that day usually with added green veg such as broccoli/courgette/kale to flesh it out.

That's it, eat it or not in my house. Decent large healthy meals are offered, I'm not cooking random food for individuals when I work full time.

This. I'm also from France! Just have a smaller portion if you're not that hungry. Evening meals are usually simpler, a slice of quiche and salad, soup,, my favourite ATM veggies (onion courgette aubergine, tomato, mushrooms, spinach) chickpeas and feta, fish and veg, frittata, sardines on toast, stew from the slow cooker with bread, pasta

And it can feed everyone for five days.

It would need to be an enormous chicken to do my (greedy) lot for 5 days 😂

DH and DS have a “main meal” for lunch and supper - a protein, a carb and some veggies. That might be spaghetti bolognaise (carrots, onions, celery, tomatoes for veg), or a curry with rice, or tray bake. I’m not a big evening meal person, so I like to just have maybe some frittata or scrambled egg on toast, or maybe some soup and a toastie.

Tonight they had penne amatriciana, garlic bread and salad. I had some Jewish penicillin with matzo balls in.

I prefer hot meals to cold. So dinner would be something like a protein based curry with either rice or naan, noodles with protein, fish dinner etc. On a non meat day, mixed lentils, veggie pizzas, or fried vegetables with a saucy pasta.

I had banana pancakes for lunch, delish by the way, and a yoghurt for dinner as was still stuffed.

This seems to be a unique to mumsnet thing. I've never heard of it outside of here. Literally everyone I know just makes a normal meal in the evening regardless of the temperature of the midday meal. When you think about it a hotel and a cold meal can easily have the same amount of calories and nutrition. It's bonkers.

Some great ideas here, thank you!
The hot lunch, cold dinner is something me and DH grew up with so neither of us have been inclined to change that much. So stuck in our ways are we that the DC seemed to complain for hours on the rare times we’ve mixed it up!

When someone writes 'cooked meal' or 'hot dinner', I tend to read it as 'a full dinner'.
Personally, I have breakfast, one 'cooked meal' / 'hot dinner', and one 'lighter meal' a day. It isn't about the temperature, it is about the quantity of food.

So for my "not full dinner" meal, some of the things will still be hot :
Egg on toast
Toastie
Beans or spaghetti on toast
Soup
Omelette
Boiled egg and soldiers
Bacon butty / sausage sandwich
Jacket potato

Others - sandwiches, wraps, cheese and biscuits, Salad (in Summer)

Sometimes there might be some quiche or something left over, or a smaller portion of left over dinner which I might occasionally have to use up.

I can have three hot meals a day and be happy. I just adjust the quantities. Well, in theory I do. In reality I just eat loads!

What about a wrap? Soup with bread?

Although in my family it's usually 3 cooked meals a day.

Well seeing as most of my lunches are leftover dinner from the night before, dinner is a normal meal and the same food as tomorrow's lunch.

Good to see so many people saying broadly the same thing as MN would usually have you believe that hot food more than once a day isn't allowed, the number of times people say they'd 'only have a sandwich' if they eat a hot lunch.

But I also don't understand how the temperature food is served at is related to the content, size, filling power or nutrition provided by a meal.

Hot or cold food can equally be as nutritious and/or 'big' as you make it.