Menu For Wednesday And Thursday
So, our custody exchange schedule is 2 days on/2 days off, with alternating weekends. Meaning that we have all four kids in the house from Wednesdays after school until Fridays’ school begin and then we either pick them back up after school on Friday and keep them until Sunday evening, or the Ex-spouses pick them up on Friday after school and keep them until Sunday evening. This week is one of the latter kind. Therefore, I am only required to plan out two full days of food for six, unless I want to add in Sunday’s dinner, Monday’s breakfast, and Monday’s lunches as well. I usually don’t, because I’d much rather buy something fresh before plus, I already know that the fresh meat at ALDI is slim-pickings this week, so I’ll probably wait.
OK, back at home I will slice one of the packages of mushrooms as well as one of the packages of sausage, sauté (I am cringing as I’m misspelling a French word that is misused in the English language ;)) them in a bit of olive oil, add one can of diced tomatoes, and throw in a couple of handfulls of the spinach. One of our local stores recently had Barilla pasta on sale at 10 for $10, so I’ll serve this mixture over one cooked package of whole grain pasta. Our kids absolutely love the warm baguette and butter and they would like me to only serve it alongside the pasta. But for a starter, I will toss half a bag of the garden salad in a minimal amount of dressing, add a couple more of the spinach leaves, and serve 2 spoonfuls on small plates with ONE piece of the warm baguette to each of them. Us, too, naturally.
The pasta will be the main course with another piece of baguette per person and the cantaloupe will be served sliced with a piece of prosciutto draped over each slice for dessert.
Dinnertime on Wednesdays is tricky because our older daughter has gymnastics until 19h00, which puts dinner out to 19h30 instead of 18h30 or 18h45, which is what I usually shoot for. Only to serve dinner at 19h00, I’m afraid to admit because something invariably always comes up that I feel I have to deal with mid-slicing, cooking, or sautéing (oooh là là, there’s the usage of that word again LOL). This is where the pears and the peanut butter crackers come into play: At 16h00, after the kids got home, have put away their stuff, washed hands, and have put in a good 20-30 minutes on their homework, they get to stop for goûter. In case you haven’t heard of goûter; it’s what we call the afternoon snack for kids (and often, the afternoon espresso for Mom) in France. It’s to stop anyone from being hangry and also meant as an energy boost, so we typically feed them something sweet or carb-loaden at that time. Une chocolatine, or, as Americans call it, a chocolate croissant, is a popular choice. In Germany, for really little kids, it’s often ein Milchbrötchen, a soft chewy roll that sometimes has chocolate chips or raisins in it. With goûter, kids may or may not have fruit, too. Again, it’s quick sugar so they’ll get over any afternoon slump.
On to Thursday morning: I did pick up a banana at a different store the other night, so I’ll throw banana onto cereal with milk and send them off to school with their sandwiches: 2 slices of whole grain bread each, with a slice of Butterkäse (a German mild cheese that’s less processed than American cheese but tastes very similar), a slice of prosciutto or the other cured lunchmeat from that container, thinly sliced cucumber, and a couple of spinach leaves. All four kids eat this, but James’ kids always give me a hard time about mayonnaise, so I’ll only put mayo on my kids’ sandwiches. I usually have a bag of mini-chocolates and a bag of veggie sticks from Costco that lasts us for at least a month, so I don’t feel the need to add that cost to this post. However, I usually do throw one of the chocolates and a couple of veggie sticks into their bento boxes, too.
And off they go. When they get back, they’ll have goûter and, to mix it up, I’ll probably give them sliced apples with peanut butter to dip. For dinner, I’ll make the ground turkey with the other package of mushrooms, throw in frozen peas which we always have in the house and toss all of that with rice and some egg as a Chinese fakeout/takeout deal. The baguette and salad will be the same routine as Wednesday night and hopefully, there will be cantaloupe left for dessert. However, if there isn’t, my kids would probably be quite happy to have another piece of chocolate for dessert instead 😉
On Friday morning, they’ll have cereal, this time topped with the leftover blueberries and strawberries from last weekend. And for their school lunch, it’s peanut butter and jelly on the Fridays that they go back to their other parents because we can pack it into brown paper bags without ice packs. Unfortunately, not everybody is good about sending our belongings back, so we had to recently resort to this option. I absolutely despise compromising our children’s nourriture for this, but I didn’t have the energy anymore to keep track of four lunchboxes, four ice packs, four refillable water bottles, in at least three different houses (that’s excluding any grandparents’ or new life partners’ houses) plus two different schools. Non, merci!
However, it really does help keep the food budget to a minimum 🙂 And I do make sure that the kids still get some vitamins in their lunches by sending fruit cups that don’t have to be refrigerated and cost less than 40 cents per fruit cup at ALDI. That’s both dessert and vitamins. Plus, the fruit is in 100% fruit juice, so it’s extra hydration for the kids.
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
