not to make the DCs a cooked meal in the evening?

[undercovasanta]

DD has school dinners, and DS has a cooked lunch at nursery. As a result I just give them a 'lunch-type' tea in the evening, not a hot meal.

The sort of thing they have at home in the evening is beans on toast, sandwiches, egg and toast, jacket potato and cheese.

I thought this was fine. I know that school meals aren't huge but DD is only 4 and she doesn't seem particularly hungry for a cooked meal in the evening.

However, it seems that almost all of the mums at school give their kids a cooked meal in the evening even though they have a lunctime cooked meal. Is this the norm? AIBU and not feeding my DCs properly? There were some shocked faces when I mentioned that my kids were having sarnies for tea tonight!

varies, sometimes its a light meal sometimes more proper.

i have lots of ramekins and made lots of mini shepherds pies which make for a good tea option (quite a small portion as they have had meat/fish lunch at school. others days just soup / sandwich.

onepieceoflollipop - do you have a herb garden?

No, why? :)

(actually, we do have a tub of chives but to call it a herb garden would be a slight exaggeration)

The chinese 5 spice was from a jar.

personally i think its fine, although if they have sandwiches @ lunch should have something hot. i can imagine some people would be outraged by this non cooked dinner thing (my mil im sure!) but technically how is any different from doing it the other way round and having a normal lunch like sandwich etc and then a cooked dinner??

OOH mini shepherds pies in ramekins sound great

I would love that for dinner myself.

That's often our dinner here. DH is German and it's fairly typical at his parents house to have bread and a selection of cold toppings (cheeses, ham, spreads) to go with it. I bake bread weekly and often our evening meal is something along those lines. I also do a lot of stews/soups/chilis in the colder months which we have alongside.

YANBU.

Mine always had hot meal at night when they had school dinners but only because they were always hungry when they came home from school. I also cook a hot meal for myself dp and dd2 so would feel a bit mean tucking into shepherds pie whilst they made do with sandwiches.

They had a smaller portion of what they would normally get anyway and it was rarely wasted/

Meant to say, lunch in Germany is often a full hot cooked meal, hence the smaller dinner.

|Don't any of you remember the quality of school lunches. Mine have always had a proper cooked meal in the evening and since DD was 6 I have worked full time. They had cottage pie, yorkies, jacket potatoes, broc and green beans this evening.

Where we are the school lunches are fine. :)

(when I was a child they were awful, burnt spaghetti hoops counted as a vegetable, meat was gristly, mash had black lumps in it etc)

Onceamai - where I live(Devon) the quality of the school meals is now excellent - locally sourced and freshly cooked meat and vegetables etc. It has changed a lot in the past few years - when my eldest daughter started school 10 years ago it was all turkey twizzlers and potato smiles - my youngest daughter has never encountered either of these items - but she does get freshly made shepherds pie, stew, lentil bake etc. OP yanbu at all. I do cook from scratch every evening, but now my children are older we all eat together anyway and one or two of them have usually had a packed lunch. When they were younger I would happily give them beans on toast or sandwiches. Actually even now we sometimes all have soup and a toasted sandwich.

There is a real 'obsession' with hot dinners from a lot of mums - one of my friends always cooked meals like 'chicken nuggets and chips' for her childrens' evening meal whilst I would often serve up bread, cheese, cucumber sticks, fruit and yogurt etc - I am confident about what is the 'healthier' meal. A meal does not have to be 'hot' to be nutritious .

Ragwort - you're right - salady stuff is fine - as is soup and toasties - but it's minus something here right now. Still not convinced mine got great food at primary - seemed to be a lot of spicy/veggie stuff they wouldn't touch. At secondary have no concerns about DS's school and DD is very happy with sandwiches, etc., at lunchtime (am much more confident with her having that than what was available at primary actually). However, with activities and other distractions such as clubs and (swotting vocab for tests that should have been done the night before) I know they sometimes skip lunch and will survive on a Twix and a drink - .

Ladyglencora - i used to live in devon and my dd's school dinners were brilliant - well before Jamie Oliver they sourced meat and mil etc from local farmers, and everything was homemade. Parents could book to go and have lunch with the children, and the food was delicious.

They still had chips on friday

at chips.

Ds had oven chips on his school menu for the first time in 3 years!!!

YANBU and I'm jealous because DD's school doesn't do cooked lunches. Apparently they're planning to at some point and I will jump at the chance to not have to cook for her in the evening!

As a child, I always had cooked dinners at school and then sandwiches etc for tea. (Hence I still think of them as being 'dinner' and 'tea' even if they're respectively a cold then hot meal)