Phew! Back to the blessed routine again!
Now, don’t get me wrong…I do enjoy the winter holidays: having my kids around all the time, having my husband around most of the time, not hearing the alarm every morning…and I look forward to school/work holidays every time. But I’m always ready to go back to the routine when it’s all over. Everyone just seems to function better when they know what’s in store every day, you know? Mom, Dad, kids…we all know what the expectations are when we’re back to routine.
But the flip side of this newly-regained order is a lot more work – mostly for mom. Which brings me to the point of this entry…kitchen tips for preparing school lunches and snacks, as well as ideas for after-school snacks & quick family dinners for those busy weekday evenings.
Some of the tips I’ve garnered include:
Plan out the week’s meals in advance – before you shop – and involve the kids in the planning, shopping and prep. I was amazed how much less uneaten food came home in their lunchbags when I finally started involving my children.
Prepare school snacks & lunches the night before, so that you’re not racing around in the morning. If you know the school snacks & lunches are ready and waiting in the fridge you can deal with last-minute momergencies like: "I need you to brush my teeth", "I have no clean underwear", "I can’t find my library book", etc. If your kids come home for lunch, prepare the ingredients the night before so that all you have to do is assemble the pieces the next day. This will help you avoid the panic of "oh my gosh! The kids will be here in 2 minutes and I don’t have lunch ready!!!"
So, what are some easy, kid-pleasing meal ideas? Well, when my kids started school we did a lot of experimentation to find out what worked for lunches, since the old standby of our mothers, PB&J, was out of the question, with most schools being,if not peanut-free, at least peanut-aware. We tried some losers (canned cinnamon spread on whole wheat pita being the worst) and I’ve saved a few of the winners for you to download here:
Download veggie-wrap.doc
Download pita_pizzas.doc
Now, my apologies for going out-of-order here, but I thought I’d put the recipes in the order that I usually prepare them. Lunch in advance the night before, breakfast when we wake up in the morning, after-school snack next, and then, finally, dinner. So, what do we do for brekkie? Well, of course the cereal card gets played regularly, and if I’m really up early, I’ll make the pancakes I featured in this post. But sometimes the natives are restless and we’re strapped for prep time, and that’s when I pull out this guaranteed child-pleaser:
Okay, so you’ve done whatever it is you do while your children are away at school (for me it’s a full day of work in my home office) and it’s time to start thinking about an after-school snack. Because you just know they’re going to be hungry when they walk in the door. I try to give my kids a bit of protein at their afternoon snack, because I want (and need) them to stay full until 6:00, when their dad is home and we have our family dinner. If they don’t fill up at 3:30 or so, they get really, really hungry by 5:00, then snack again, and don’t want dinner! So here’s one that I offer up at least weekly, and it never fails to please:
Download cheesy_carrot-dip.doc
And now, finally, your beloved offspring are (hopefully) doing homework or (more likely) watching TV, and your thoughts turn to dinner. I’m sure we all once-in-a-while resort to takeout or prepared meals, but how about an idea for a quick, family-pleasing meal that’s homemade? Thought so. Here you go:
Download sweet-honey-chicken.doc
Serve it up with veggies and rice, and you’ll have an instant hit.
Thanks to member Monica for her suggestion to make the recipes downloadable and in index card format.
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