I’ve shared our real life family dinners quite a few times now starting all the way back in October and then sporadically when I felt like it, or as an easy way to create blog content. Since I’m driving the honesty agenda a lot at the moment (had you noticed?) I thought I’d share last week’s dinners, which are nothing at all to be proud of but they might make you feel better about yourself.
Last week was my last week of maternity leave and we spent a couple of days in Belfast to visit family and spend some quality time together before the madness got going. Holiday time always brings unusual (OK, bad) eating patterns.
Eating out with kids is always a challenge with the same limited choices, and even if there are wonderful and unusual things they’ll ask for the usual suspects. My strategy here is to try not to stress about it as its for a short time frame, it’s holidays, I don’t follow the same diet guidelines myself when I’m on holidays so why should they.
Here’s the special Easter holidays edition of last week’s barefaced dinners. (Not much in the way of photos as my phone camera only decided to start working again on Friday!) We are a family of five, the boys are 3 and 5 and the small girl is 10 months.
Monday
Chicken Satay
We ate in the hotel bar, I chose the chicken satay with rice, the boys had pasta with tomato sauce and chicken goujons and chips respectively. Laoise had pasta, tomato sauce, cucumber and rice scraps from our plates. We all had a scoop of icecream afterwards, sure we were on our holidays.
Tuesday
Fancy food- Seabass!
The “D” part of our “DBB” deal in the hotel restaurant. I had crabmeat salad to start, followed by seabass with garlic sauté potatoes and asparagus.
The boys had tomato and basil soup and then cheese pizza and chicken goujons. They both devoured the soup with bread dipped in and Laoise demanded that they share. I’m not sure if the restaurant floor will ever recover. We wouldn’t order starters for the kids normally but it was included and we felt the soup might get some veggies into them, which it did and they ate less of the junk.
Wednesday
Junk
We ate at Burger King en route home from Belfast. Bleurgh. There were toys, quite cool ones in the kids meals, they barely ate anything and two hours later at home they had ham toasties. Laoise had a jar of Hipp Organic babyfood and vowed to have a homecooked meal the next day!
Thursday
Spaghetti Bolognese
Mam made this while minding the kids. Cathal refused to eat it as “my Mammy didn’t make it” despite it being one of his favourites. Ciarán had seconds, Laoise ate a lot and wore nearly as much.
(Good) Friday
Seafood Pasta One Pot
This was a big hit, a pasta and fish one pot in a tasty tomato sauce, and recalibrated us after the junk all week. Cathal picked out the fish but ate the rest. Laoise begged for more !
Saturday
Chipper chips and a battered sausage
It was the bank holiday weekend, we’d nothing left ready for consumption at home so on the way back from a day out we swung by the chipper. Laoise had a defrosted baby sized shepherds pie from the freezer stash when we got home.
(Easter) Sunday
Roast lamb, stuffing, loads of veggies and sides and a choice of desserts.
A gathering of the clan at my parents’ house for Easter saw 14 of us squash around a table for this feast. Ciarán said if was the biggest family party ever. I neither cooked nor washed up, just ate. Thanks Mammy.
Are you curious what other people really eat in an average week? Are you interested in sharing YOUR dinners in return? Your real life, barefaced, no holds barred ones? Next week I plan to host a blog linkup, and a place where real life people can share what they and their families REALLY ate for the week. I’ll tell you all about it on Sunday, but if you’re interested in being involved comment below, tweet me or send me an email to bumblesofrice[AT]gmail.com
