To make a "packed lunch" dinner

[PearlyWhites]

My dc's all have a hot dinner either at school or nursery and my dh has a canteen at work. Evenings can be very stressful due to dd2 hfa. WIbu to serve sandwiches etc on paper plates for dinner monday to Friday and only

We always did this, picnic tea it's called in our house, always good fun and if the weather is nice easy to take outside too, bit of kitchen roll (prob cheaper than plates), rug down, in fact we used to do it indoors too, so exciting when I was younger, why not!

Lawner do you have any experience of families with sn children? we don't have a spare few minutes it may sound unbelievable but it is true especially when combined with th needs of 11 month old and 2.5 year old.

sandwiches for tea every night might be a bit tedious but there are loads of other simple things you can do like jacket spuds, beans on toast, pasta in sauce

Just out of interest why aibu?

Sounds fine to me!

We live in a hot country and I can't remember the last time mine ate a proper hot meal (meat and 2 veg/cottage pie type thing). Tea is mostly 'picnic tea' - sandwiches/wraps/cold meats/salad maybe some samosas or spring rolls with it. Either that or scrambled egg/beans on toast or soup.....

They both seem to still be growing and thriving so the lack of hot dinners has done no harm at all!

Sandwiches every day could get a bit boring, but there is nothing better in 'hot' food over cold food. A chicken sandwich and some carrot sticks isn't exactly worse than hot chicken and cooked carrot!

You could mix sandwiches up with other really simple things tho? Stir fry all from packets so no chopping required, beans on toast, baked potatoes and cheese/other topping, pasta and pesto etc

I'm loving the names 'choose' and 'buffet' tea. We call it picky tea in our house, as in you can pick what you like (not that we're being picky). Cherry toms, cucumber, pepper, a few crisps, sarnies, cocktail sausages, quiche, grapes a bit of cheese, boiled egg (not all of those by the way). Yum. DS has a main mean at lunch time at school so picky tea it is. Sometimes at the weekends we have GRAND picky tea which just means there's more of it, and we call that a main meal!

Cold collation... thank you. Now I know the proper name for it

we call it a party tea
the kids get all excited about it

If it makes your life a little easier to use paper plates and bin them do it without a second thought!

They can go in recycling anyway.

We do this on a Friday with my nephew, it started when were we due to have a picnic and the British weather let us down so we had an indoor picnic and now it has become a Friday treat even if I don't pick DN up from school DH and I still have picnic tea!

Also DH plays football twice a week so we have quick meals I.e jacket potato, scrambled eggs and bacon, toasties and salad, so you could try and vary the menu.

My DD eats a hot lunch at school every day. The supervisor tells me she eats well (including veg) and she's never famished when she returns home so I've always given her a picnic dinner, even in winter. She's fit and healthy.

As long as there is plenty of food available, I'd say that a tea of sandwiches or salad or similar (slices of quiche, cold chicken legs, cold sliced meat, fritata (or whatever that spanish omlette is called) etc) would be fine.

Or perhaps dinners that can be cooked ahead so you only have to serve - lasagne, sheperd's pie, fish pie, chicken and mushroom pie etc. Or even the occasional chicken nuggest/fish fingers/battered fish/chicken kievs and oven chips/potato wedges - of which you can have the less healthy freezer aisle option or the more healthy homemade option depending on your time available earlier in the day.

I only got to the end of p.1 so far, but if the issue is the washing up etc, could you have the prep work done and cleared before they all get in, and leave dinner plates stacked neatly out of sight in a washing bowl (or a dishwasher if you have one) until MUCH later when ALL dc's are in bed?

Or perhaps clear prep dishes out of sight (have you space to designate a cupboard so your DD doesn't SEE it, so it's not an issue for her?), and use paper plates that then get binned for the meal.

I mix her picnic dinners up - some days sandwiches, other days picky tea. Always with various salads.

why does it matter if the food is hot or cold as long as it is healthy go for it.

My mum used to give us cereal quite often in the evening. However, this was when there was only one choice for school dinner and a dinner lady stood over you until it had all been eaten.

Certainly no need for food to be cooked twice a day if diet is well balanced.

Not sure why a packed lunch every day would be deemed ok but having a cold tea isn't. Of course it's fine. And you can tell if children aren't eating enough at school because they tend to say they are hungry when you pick them up. Please don't worry.

I don't see the problem. When I was a child it was quite usual in Ireland for families to eat their main meal in the middle of the day and then just have a light meal in the evening such as sandwiches, or a salad and cold meat with some bread. I would actually think it more unusual to have two cooked meals in one day.