What do you do your children for tea/dinner ?

[cowboym]

We're a super busy family juggling businesses, work life, school life and afterschool clubs, I have one very beige eating child and one that actually is quite open and adventurous when it comes to food, our typical tea is sandwiches, pasta maybe a sausage and mash thrown in, my two have hot school dinners,

I'm starting to feel rubbish like they should be eating more varied but I really struggle with the juggle, any ideas or mums in the same wagon

My child will have something on toast, so beans, spaghetti or eggs. Or cheese on toast. Or bagels with Philidephia. Or soup and roll/toast. Or a sandwich. Try and do cucumber or cut up fruit on the side.

I'm in the same boat! BBC good food one pot meals are brilliant.i like the cajun chicken pasta and the creamy garlic chicken. Chilli is also a good one and can be cooked in a large portion and frozen. I also do like a Mexican dinner,, wraps, rice, salad, nachos and chicken fajita or chilli and everybody helps them selves and makes burritos. That is popular.

We all eat together and always have. (Although occasionally now they are teens that doesn't happen) only occasionally when DD was very young did she have tea before DH got home if she was to tired, but I always made tea a bit later at lest 6pm for all of us.

Tea is anything from, pasta bake (different types), backed potatoes, sausage and mash, chicken with breadcrumbs and chips occasionally. Mince and dumplings, spaghetti 🍝 , fresh burgers from our butchers. There are more but can remember everything.

Slow cooker helps a lot! Taming Twins, Bored of Lunch and Poppy Cooks books have loads of easy slow cooker stuff that’s pretty kid friendly: lasagne, pasta bakes, mild curries. If you can take 5 mins in morning to put the stuff in, then it frees up a lot of time in the evening.

It’s a MN cliche but meal planning really helps too. If we don’t have a plan then we inevitably end up having porridge or something for dinner.

How could I forget wraps and my slow cooker 🙈. So yes we do that to.

I mostly do little random plates, tonight was a cut up soft boiled egg, a scoop of avocado, some olives, a few cheese cubes, sliced red pepper and then banana on custard.
Then I switch a few things out and rotate through the week, the next night might be cheesy pasta, cucumber & fruit, then hummous on toast with sweet potato, red pepper and olives.
I prep the veg for a couple of days at a time so it’s easier to lift out of the fridge and assemble.

Omelettes are good. Jacket potatoes with butter and cottage cheese, fish gujons and potatoes, broccoli

I’ll do-
chicken, mash, veg , gravy
spag bol
jacket potato cheese and beans
sandwIch , crisps and carrot sticks
tuna pasta
chicken wrap and rice
sauage and mash
omlete and chips

All can be done in 30 min

Always some sort of cooked dinner from school age onwards as I never felt that school dinner at primary school was that great. By yr 8, DC had a lot of lunchtime secondary school clubs and was taking a packed lunch.

Pasta, stir fry, pre prepped and defrosted home cooked most weekdays. Ommlette or fishcake and salad for quickie family weekday meals.

One of my kids is autistic and will only eat a few select dinners. One evening a week we will have shepherds pie as everyone will eat that, another evening we will have lasagne as everyone will eat that.
The evenings that swimming lessons etc are on, the kids will have a quick pizza in the oven or spaghetti with a homemade tomato sauce with chicken dippers etc and carrot sticks on the side, the other evenings DD will eat things like sausage and mash,roast dinner, fish fingers etc while DS will stick to leftover shepherds pie etc

We eat as a family so we make one meal for everyone. It’s usually things like pasta bake, spag bowl, cottage pie, fajitas, curry, homemade pizzas, but sometimes we can’t be bothered to cook properly and it’s chips or frozen pizza.

my 7yo is as beige as beige can be. His dinners are: pizza, chicken dippers, fish fingers, sausages, pies, sausage rolls. So it’s always one of them, with alphabets or potato waffles, and then either peas or cucumber (the only vegetables he will eat.) they are literally the only dinners he will eat and won’t try anything new. And it’s all from the freezer. It used to get me down but I’m over it now - fed is best.

My kids have packed lunches so always try to do a substantial tea (I'm northern) for us all. We all eat together around 6pm.

-Chicken Curry (Thai green or Korma) with rice and green beans
-Fish pie with garden peas
-Roast dinner (on my non working day!)
-make your own pizzas with tortilla wraps as the base
-meatballs and spaghetti or spag Bol
-halloumi burgers
-chicken kebabs with salad and flatbread
-pasta bake
-full English!
-cottage pie
-grilled salmon with rice or mashed potatoes and veg

these are the more regular meals. Sometimes I throw in a new recipe.

Eating together doesn’t work well for us Tuesday-Friday as DD has a light tea at wraparound at 5pm so doesn’t want much when home (they have very good hot lunches).

She has pasta salad, on toast things, omlette, sandwiches, toasties, jackets, fishfingers or nuggets. All with salad as she is a salad fiend and fruit.

We have a family meal Sat-Mon though.

We always had our evening meal together, for all sorts of reasons.

Slow cooker was definitely my friend.
Curries, chilli, casseroles, spag bol.
We'd sometimes have things like cottage pie or lasagne made the night before then heated through.
Sometimes have 'oven tray' meals - fish or kievs and chips with peas and sweetcorn. Or Pizza.
Pasta in various ways - with a tomato-y sauce and bits of ham or bacon or sausage, or carbonara, or a jar (like Chicken Tonight), or pesto.
Jacket potatoes (start them in the microwave to halve the cooking time - with cheese, beans, or tuna.

My dc are 6 and 9 we tend to eat the same meal but dh and me usually eat later than the kids unless the meal makes that impractical.
We have jacket potatoes with cheese and beans
Spag bol
Cottage pie
Meatballs and pasta
Pie and mash
Sausage casserole
Lamb tagine
Chinese chicken curry
Steak and noodles
Enchiladas
Pork chops sometimes with pesto pasta sometimes with herby potatoes
Pasta bake
Risotto
A chicken version of spag bol
Sausage and mash
The youngest will sometimes have fish fingers or nuggets but the eldest doesn't like them.
No one else but me likes stir frys or salad but i sometimes make them for myself when dh is eating elsewhere.
I don't use jars of sauces ( the chinese is a powder though) but i find i can still cook most meals in less than anything from 20 to 40 minutes