Evening Activities+ Dinner Ideas
When your kids have evening activities, how the heck do you get everyone fed?
Until recently, I’ve never had to deal with a very specific dinner dilemma.
When your kids have evening activities, what do you serve for dinner?
Specifically, we’re out of the house from 5:45pm to 7:45pm on some nights for my daughter’s swim practice. This makes dinner time tricky.
My hungry 8 year old wants to eat early. My older kid doesn’t want to eat right before sports practice, which means she eats at 8pm. My husband gets home from work around 7pm. I tend to eat a little before her swim practice and a little bit after.
I thought taco/burrito night was the perfect solution. Turns out I was wrong.
If we all ate dinner at different times, then half a dozen containers filled with taco ingredients were pulled out of the fridge 4x. Each time, the kitchen counter was littered with strands of cheese and tiny black beans and smudges of sour cream. By the very end of the night, at 9pm, the kitchen looked like a disaster zone.
On the other hand, if we all ended up eating at 8pm, there were four people crowded in the kitchen trying to make and warm up their own taco/burrito/quesadilla at the same time. Dinner felt chaotic and exhausting.
Plus, at some point during the day I had to find time to grate cheese and lettuce and chop onions and cilantro and prepare meat or fish or beans for the filling.
After a month or so, it became very clear that taco night was not the solution.
My new strategy is a meal that’s fully cooked, easy to serve and warm up, and dirties as few dishes as possible.
The most obvious solution is a slow cooker or Instant Pot soup, stew or chili. I can prepare it early in the day, and everyone can ladle themselves a bowl when they’re hungry.
This is a little tricky since my family doesn’t love chili. Also, because it’s 92 degrees today and soup is a hard sell for much of the year in LA.
I’m curious how all of you get your family fed when the kids have evening activities. Is it chili night, fast-food dinner night, grilled cheese sandwich night, or what? You can leave a comment and share with everyone, or email me at jenny@kitchenskip.com
More Ideas for Weeknight Dinners on Activity Nights
Instant Pot pork adobo + rice
Instant Pot pulled pork + coleslaw + potato chips
Instant Pot mushroom barley soup + bread or salad
Instant Pot vegetarian chili + corn chips
Instant Pot ground turkey and white bean chili + cornbread
Fajita pasta bake + salad
Cold tuna and orzo pasta salad + sliced cucumbers
Cold macaroni salad with chicken and green goddess dressing
Cookbooks
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Everyday Slow Cooking by Kim Laidlaw is a cookbook full of slow cooker recipes. Surely I can find something my family will like! Maybe meatballs and tomato sauce or Korean-style short ribs?
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
Monday: The kids didn’t have school and the weather was warm so we grilled outside, salmon + zucchini, mushrooms and red onion.
Tuesday: A repeat dinner I’ve been making a lot lately, broiled tofu + Glory Bowls, which are basically rice + shredded cabbage, beets and carrots and other veggies. Everyone can make their own bowl and choose to add dressing, or not. I always make enough so Sorin and I can have tofu veggie bowls again the next day for lunch.
Wednesday: Crock Pot Beef & Barley Stew. I stored leftovers in small freezer bags, so I can pull out individual portions for my lunch.
Thursday: Sheet-pan soy sauce chicken and broccoli.
Friday: Baked ziti pasta, from Smitten Kitchen. I love a baked pasta on Friday night so that we have leftovers for the weekend.
I’m flying up to Seattle this weekend to see friends and soak up some rain. I can’t wait! I hope you all have a good weekend, wherever you might be.
xo
Jenny
P.S. I thought this essay by Molly Wizenberg was a good read about the division of labor in marriages. Her perspective is especially interesting because she was once married to a man and is now in a same-sex partnership. In both cases, she acknowledges that “marriage is a maddeningly complex arrangement of affection, devotion, economic entanglement, emotional support, and dependence.”