Food rules our life, really; be it having to be home in time for dinner or finding a snack before the children have an epic meltdown! The best part of my day-to-day planning involves worrying about the amount and diversity of produce we have at home. Although, luckily, my children get a warm and freshly-cooked lunch at the after-school care facility coupled with an afternoon snack, breakfast, morning snack (to bring to school) and dinner are still on us.
So here we go, what my children consume in a week.
SUNDAY
I’ll start with Sunday evening in preparation for the week ahead. Having spent the afternoon in the park playing till late, time constraints made me decide to go down an easy road. So bread it is! I topped it with some melted Emmental, added some veggies and in-season cherries for dessert. There was a small bowl of salad for Mia as well since she asked for it . What an eccentric child, I know!
I brought some blue cheese and a chunk of aged gouda to the table, mainly for the adults. However, the children loved both, so they were added to their menu, as well.
MONDAY
Week-day breakfasts are usually eaten on the go, walking to school. Therefore, it has to be something mess-free, while also being nutritional. Though I do sometimes venture into baking, mostly a combination of a piece of fruit and some biscuits do the trick. Monday started off with a banana and a bag of hummus chips, which I have been waiting a long time to make them try.
I always make sure their morning snack consists of fruit. Since it has been brought to my attention more than once that my children are left starving after finishing their snacks, I accompany the fruit part by something heartier, as well. So this time they got some left-over cherries and a plum, coupled with a few apple-flavoured rice cakes.
Dinner’s ready! We’ve made spaghetti and used all the left-over veggies we could find in the fridge for the sauce, ending up with a tomato sauce into which cherry tomatoes and peas were thrown. It went down smoothly and with great speed, the end result being no pics at all.
TUESDAY
It was berries and nuts’ turn on Tuesday morning. What I usually do, is wash and chop everything the evening before, put it into a bowl and leave it in the entrance hall for the children to start eating in the 5 minutes I take to get ready, then finish off while walking to school.
I packed apples and nut (again) butter for snack. It is Anna Saccone Joli who mentions the combination often in her vlogs but instead of peanut butter, my choice usually falls on the almond one. It is absolutely delicious and utterly wonderful!
In our family we love cous-cous. It’s tasty and incredibly fast to make. Usually, I have a few portions of the sauce stored in the freezer, but this particular evening Marko stepped up and threw together a few of the veggies to end up with this delish dish. Just to pack an extra punch of veggies, an additional chunk of a red pepper was placed on each plate.
WEDNESDAY
Bananas followed by what was meant to be rice cakes but turned out to be spelt, instead, was Wednesday’s breakfast. It is the quick way out when breakfast is forgotten to be planned for the night before, which might or might not have happened on this particular Tuesday.
Although usually on Wednesday I’m still on snack duty, today the children spent the day in a local forest with school, where snack and lunch were provided.
However, while driving home it was suggested I make a detour to pick up some sushi for dinner. I was on my way to the shop before the call was over! 🙂 For a long time, my children were served strictly sushi with no raw fish and have just recently graduated to salmon makis and tuna sashimis, which makes it all the more fun now!
THURSDAY
Party tiiiiime! Only breakfast to plan for! Although I usually tend to offer fresh fruit, I do sometimes venture into cereal bars, especially after an exciting visit to a German supermarket just over the border. Biscuits and milk is what I feel breakfast should be all about so I was genuinely excited when I found these small tetrapaks of milk in the grocery store.
I have a vivid memory of despising asparagus as a child and my mother trying to convince me what a delicacy they were. It took me a few decades to get there, but today it is one of my favourite veggies while history repeats itself – my children disliking them and me repeating over and over again how luscious they actually are. At least total despise hasn’t entered the picture this time around!
Scrambled eggs with white asparagus was our Thursday dinner, a slice of bread to make sure no tummies were left empty. Strawberries were added to make the pictures more colourfull. 🙂
FRIDAY
Apricots were offered this morning to munch on. Somehow, it sufficed. I’m convinced some carbs followed an hour or two later at school, which is how the two pups managed to survive till lunch.
Friday night is pizza night!! We’ve introduced the rule for a few reasons, one being that for one evening I don’t need to plan, think and shop in advance, worrying about dinner. Also, I wanted to have a family tradition my children will remember with fondness. It certainly helps that we have a wonderful pizzeria as our next-door neighbour. We vary a bit, trying to opt for at least one veggie pizza, with our staples being prosciutto e funghi and a rocket-cherry-tomatoes heaven of a pizza. Jakob usually picks off all the rocket ‘cos he doesn’t like ˝the green stuff˝.
SATURDAY
Being lazy and sleep-deprived just like any normal parent I know, my trick for getting a few more z’s in during the weekend is leaving my children some pre-breakfast snacks so they don’t starve to death until the real deal comes along. Having invested some time already into teaching them how to access and navigate Netflix, my Saturday mornings have become much more enjoyable. 😀
In the morning, some redcurrants awaited my offsprings. Half a croissant and a small pack of raspberry & blueberry bear paws for each were put on the platter as well, together with some filtered water. A meal fit for a king!
I also left a banana to be shared between the two just in case, although lately, bananas have become very unpopular in our house. Sure enough, it was left untouched.
So when we get up, the tv is turned off and some oatmeal is served. We sit together as a family and try to organise the day ahead.
Zucchini quiche was our choice for lunch and the children actually helped make it. They cut the zucchini with their crinkle knives, arranged the slices onto the though, and after preparing the egg mixture, poured it all over.
Mia, again, requested a bowl of salad, while Jakob got a few carrot sticks. Fresh pineapple was added to finish it all off.
Bananas were offered for snack and by some miracle, they actually ate them.
Dinner was thrown together in a matter of minutes. Hot summer days are perfect for a caprese salad, which both my children adore and frequently demand. Some diced tomatoes together with cubed mozzarella and fresh basil leaves is easy-peasy to pull off so we gladly oblige.
We follow the same pattern on Sunday – some early-morning snack left for them on the dining table, followed by oats.
For lunch we had another staple of ours, a bowl of lentil salad – the only cooked ingredient is the lentils, all the rest is just chopped and thrown in. A generous amount of olive oil, aceto balsamico and dijon mustard vinaigrette is poured over it. Capers and pickled onions are at the disposal of the bravest, as well. I discovered it years ago while dining out in a local Pret-a-manger-style chain, reinterpreted it to our taste and have been regularly serving it since.
Having served in-season watermelon for the afternoon snack, we have come full circle in our week-worth of meals.
In the end, I would like to point out that although there was no meat mentioned in the post, we are not vegetarians. Since mostly all four of us, but certainly the children, get meat or fish every week-day for lunch, I try to avoid serving it for dinner or during the weekend, managing to do so some weeks better than others.
Hope you enjoyed this foodie post. I’m sure more will follow!