Car dinners-Sports Parents

[Anonymous]

Any seasoned sports parents have dinner/meal accessories you can’t live without for traveling and eating? I’m realizing we’re in this for the long haul and seeing some things like electric bowls for soup etc- not sure if worth buying. What have you found best keeps stuff warm/cold?

[Anonymous]

Long time sports parent here - no electric soup bowls in my house. They eat some when they get home from school and again too late at night. I cook a lot on the weekend so there are easy leftovers. We go through drive throughs too often.

[Anonymous]

I would take a burrito tortilla, fill with rice, leftover meat and cheese.

Wrap in aluminum foil.

Chef salad
Subs/sandwiches
Cold pasta salad with chicken


Doesn’t need to be warm.

[Anonymous]

We don't eat on the road. We eat right after school (very early) and have snacks at night. Not home from practice most nights till 945pm. Working from home has made this work. Not sure what would have happened if it weren't for that.

[Anonymous]

I would try really really hard not to regularly eat on the road. We do a large snack before and dinner after.

[Anonymous]

Same as some of the posters above.

Mine eat a meal after school, and again later in evening after practices- at home.

If a school team with practice right after school, they just eat when they get home. They keep protein bars, crackers etc in their bags and will snack between classes or before practice.

[Anonymous]

I do hot dinner in a thermos, sometimes multiple ones. We live in an area with tricky geography where it can be very difficult to get places in the evening and I hate getting takeout.

Anything foil-wrapped goes into a thermos that’s been warmed with hot water first. Mainstays for us that aren’t too messy are sausage and peppers with roasted potatoes, gyoza + stir fry and rice, green curry with chicken and tofu over rice, barbecue chicken with vegetables and mashed potatoes, etc. My drive to pickup is in traffic and takes 45 minutes or more, but food stays hot enough that sometimes my child will save things until they get home because it’s too hot. We have an instant hot water dispenser and a warming drawer that were in our house when we bought it which makes this kind of meal prep much easier.

Things like very saucey or messy food (soup, crunchy tacos) are saved for dinners at home.

[Anonymous]

My kid eats in the car a lot especially in the spring/fall when it’s soccer season.
If she’s eating cold food I use a plastic bento box, you can get them on Amazon with 2-5 compartments. I have like the ones with 3-4 spaces.
Sometimes she’ll have a combination of hot/cold. I’ll put chicken or something in foil in the largest compartment then fruit/veg and then chips/nuts/cookies in the others.

We’ve done a Thermos too if it’s gonna be longer from when I make something to when she eats it. You preheat it with hot water and put whatever you want in it.

[Anonymous]

Same here - the kids eat 2 dinners, one around 4:30 and another around 9. I usually eat only at the early dinner and DH eats only at the late dinner. We do meal prep earlier in the day, thanks to WFH, and eat leftovers a couple days per week.

[Anonymous]

I’m the above PP. my kid is usually hungry right after school. So we eat dinner on the way to the sport even if it’s 430 that we’re in the car. Then she has a snack at home between getting home and bed.

[Anonymous]

Nothing should come before family dinners IMO. It's the only time we have together. No sport or activity is more important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing should come before family dinners IMO. It's the only time we have together. No sport or activity is more important.

Wrong topic. No one is saying this isn’t important but how family dinners happen change. I am one of the early posters and often eat with my kid at 4:30 for their first dinner. DH often travels for work and isn’t home anyway. Sports or no sports, all of my teens are hungry again and eating dinner #2 or 3 after 9pm on any given night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing should come before family dinners IMO. It's the only time we have together. No sport or activity is more important.

Kindly exit this thread stage left Gladys. No one asked for you opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We don't eat on the road. We eat right after school (very early) and have snacks at night. Not home from practice most nights till 945pm. Working from home has made this work. Not sure what would have happened if it weren't for that.

Same.

[Anonymous]

I’m not doing full car dinners. My car is not a restaurant.

I have a substantial meal ready when they get home from school and they eat a second round of it after sports.

If it is necessary, I’ll pack some simple non-messy sandwiches for the car.