How much do you cook nice meals?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids have activities that have evening hours, and those hours are not the same as each other. When we are all home, probably one night Mon-Fri, we all eat together. Whoever is home around 6-6:30 eats together. No one in my house can wait to eat until after 7, everyone gets hungry. So different combinations of us eat at different times. We are a family of five, and sometimes this is nice so DH and I get to focus on just one or two kids at a time, while kid #2 or #3 is at an activity.

We always eat together at home on Sunday nights, and usually it ends up one or two other nights a week. It's just not possible the other nights. (I have a dancer- so to "prioritize" family dinners would mean she could not do her activity at all based on when classes are held).

I grew up similarly and I managed to have good table manners and the ability to make dinner conversation. And when we do sit down together I am certainly not dealing with cloth napkins!

How old are your kids? Bc if they are middle school or up, they CAN wait to eat; they are just unwilling.

We have 1 HS kid and 1 MS kid, but play multiple sports, theater, band. Dinner is usually on the table around 9:00 PM. Some nights at 9:30

That means there's always at least one person that is at home waiting for dinner. But we wait, bc family dinner is important

It's good that it works for your family. But my 11-year-old is asleep by 8:45, and her 13-year-old sister by 9:15.

For what it's worth, I didn't always eat with my parents growing up. There's never the option to telework back then, and they often came home late on weekdays from their jobs. They told us to just eat at a normal time like 6:30. We did it all together on weekends. We are all very close now, and I'm actually the PP who eats with her parents once a week with my own family.

[Anonymous]

It's OFTEN, not much. How OFTEN do you cook?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are nice meals?

Wondering this as well.

I also WAH and so does my spouse with teen kids in sports pretty much every evening.

I go for quick and simple.

Tonight: salmon filet under the broiler, bag salad and broccoli off of Whole foods hot bar and shoestring fries.
Also:
1) meatball pre-prepared WF butcher (but raw) or their meatloaf, side veg, pasta, etc.
2) pork chop broiler, veggie
3) the family meal-just heat from Whole Foods--has two sides and chicken
4) Roast a whole chicken with carrots/leeks/onions in roasting pan--5 min to prep and then just goes in oven 1.5 hours (easy when you WAH)...
5) Rachel Ray pasta carbonara--very quick

This is the kind of stuff I do. I don't do fancy recipes with a zillion steps and chopping. Fast, simple--protein, vegetable, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are nice meals?

Wondering this as well.

I also WAH and so does my spouse with teen kids in sports pretty much every evening.

I go for quick and simple.

Tonight: salmon filet under the broiler, bag salad and broccoli off of Whole foods hot bar and shoestring fries.
Also:
1) meatball pre-prepared WF butcher (but raw) or their meatloaf, side veg, pasta, etc.
2) pork chop broiler, veggie
3) the family meal-just heat from Whole Foods--has two sides and chicken
4) Roast a whole chicken with carrots/leeks/onions in roasting pan--5 min to prep and then just goes in oven 1.5 hours (easy when you WAH)...
5) Rachel Ray pasta carbonara--very quick

This is the kind of stuff I do. I don't do fancy recipes with a zillion steps and chopping. Fast, simple--protein, vegetable, etc.

Oh and we eat between 5 & 5:30pm. HS kids come at 3pm. Leave at 6:30 and 7pm for practices.

It was a little harder when they were younger and practices started at 5pm. I think I actually cook more than back then. Husband worked out of the home back then and I was juggling driving them and then coming home after and trying to get something going later. I did a lot of hot bar stuff back then.

[Anonymous]

We also eat late waiting for DH to come home from work. So 9 or 9:30 is not atypical for our family either. Also have high school kids. They generally don’t come home from practice until 8:30. So it works out. No different than what families do in Spain where dinner is not typically eaten until 10pm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We also eat late waiting for DH to come home from work. So 9 or 9:30 is not atypical for our family either. Also have high school kids. They generally don’t come home from practice until 8:30. So it works out. No different than what families do in Spain where dinner is not typically eaten until 10pm.

Yup, and then on nights that are free, it feels normal to have dinner at 8:00. Which makes the late afternoon so much more enjoyable.

[Anonymous]

Rice cooker, slow cooker, salads, roast potatoes/tofu/veggies in the oven. The more you practice the easier it gets. It's like taking a shower. 'How do you find time?' You make time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are nice meals?

To me it's everyone sitting together and having a meal I made at least partly from scratch.

Agree with this. We do “nice meals” once or twice a week.

Insane evening schedules have killed family meals.