How do I plan meals around school dinners?

Valli

We have staff at the school where I work who have children in school who bring packed lunches. I have always used the schoolmeals service because I used to work in the evenings - so could do a lighter meal in the evening to suit me and I am too idle to pack lunches - but just my personal choice.
So you would be paying £25.00 when they are both at school full time - that's £150 a term - £900 a year:eek: (and that's assuming 6 week terms...then there's uniform, trips, charity days, fundraising :eek:)

onetomany

yea my oldest can buy hot dinners but my youngest carnt so i send them both with pack ups as im gonna cook anyway

fernliebee

Could you maybe give DS1 a bit more of a substantial lunch? Maybe get a food thermos and give him hot pasta, chunky soup, rice etc as well as his usual packed lunch. Then they could all have a normal evening meal with you but a bit less of it iyswim. Only you will know what is best for your little ones but as long as the things your feeding them for dinner are healthy, I can't see that them having two 'main' meals would be a problem.

spendingmad

Could you ALL have something like egg on toast/beans on toast/soup and sandwiches and fruit a couple of times a week for your evening meal on the days when kids are having school dinners. You could have a more substantial lunch if needs be? I dont think having 2 lighter evening meals a week would do you any of you any harm

Keeping_Motivated

I don't see anything wrong with having two 'main' meals a day? They sre growing children so will do them no harm especially as you say you cook everything from scratch.

They are going on dinners not at their request but because you OH is a governor so I don't think they should be penalised by food becoming an issue at home. The extra cost will have to be 'stood' and forgotten in my opinion as it is yours and your OH's choice to put them on dinners.

Good luck with it.

Theo_Cupier

Hi. OP's OH here.

I just wanted to make clear that they are NOT taking hot school dinners ONLY because I'm a governor. Infelicitous wording in Mrs Cupier's post, perhaps? They're having school dinners because we're both reasonably confident that the price is a fair one for a good product and is something that will add value to their day. They all tried them at school last week and enjoyed them a lot, as did almost all the children who tried it.

I have to say that at £2.50 per meal, the economics don't necessarily immediately stack up for us. What surprised me was the number of parents in the school whose response was "wow, that's a lot cheaper than I make a packed lunch." Makes me wonder what we (or, more likely, they) are doing wrong? But despite the raw economics, hot lunches at school are something we feel is sufficiently important to us that we want to find a way to make them work.

Rest assured that if we get negative feedback from our children on the meals they are receiving, for whatever reason, I'll have no hesitation in backing up Mrs Cupier's decision to stop hot meals for them. I'm lucky that in addition to this personal sanction, I'll also be able to back it up with some serious questions of the meal providers.

Anyway, that wasn't what I came in here to say...

Much as I wouldn't pretend to speak for her, I think that all Mrs Cupier was looking for here was some feedback from anyone who had done this sort of thing before - gone from all packed lunches to some having hot lunches. How she might expect the dynamic of family mealtimes to change if an additional hot meal was added in the middle of the day for some of the family? How might our use of the monthly food budget change as a result of this. Sorry if that didn't come across.

I'm working on the theory that - assuming we keep doing our usual hot meals as a family at tea time - we might expect a slight decrease in portion sizes for the children who have had a hot meal. So, potentially, it might enable us to get 4 meals out of a chicken which might previously have only stretched to 3 meals, and so on.

Does that sound reasonable?

Perverse as it may sound, I think that would probably suit our food dynamic better than just shifting the "light" meal to teatime - if for no other reason than DS1 still needs a "proper" meal after a packed lunch. We have tried a thermos with HM soup or casserole or whatever - despite some resistance from his school - and for various reasons it doesn't quite suit him.

Patchwork_Quilt

I have always cooked a hot meal at "teatime" for our family, with a home-baked dessert afterwards, whether they were having school dinners or sandwiches, mainly because I knew that they were having something decent for at least one meal a day. I certainly don't recommend doing different meals for different children - someone is bound to feel excluded. I do agree that school meals can be a huge chunk out of the budget but I tend to let my children decide what they would like to do, and that tends to be what their friends are doing. They do sometimes feel excluded at school because no-one else they know is on that sitting or in the sandwich room. In the end, you may find that most parents take up school meals because it is easier than making packed lunches and so that's what your children will do. Then, when they get home, they have the opportunity of a big family meal at the end of the day. Put everything on the table in dishes and let them take the portion they need. All you have to do then is bag up the left overs for other meals.

Bronnie

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

I have always cooked a hot meal at "teatime" for our family, with a home-baked dessert afterwards, whether they were having school dinners or sandwiches, mainly because I knew that they were having something decent for at least one meal a day. I certainly don't recommend doing different meals for different children - someone is bound to feel excluded. I do agree that school meals can be a huge chunk out of the budget but I tend to let my children decide what they would like to do, and that tends to be what their friends are doing. They do sometimes feel excluded at school because no-one else they know is on that sitting or in the sandwich room. In the end, you may find that most parents take up school meals because it is easier than making packed lunches and so that's what your children will do. Then, when they get home, they have the opportunity of a big family meal at the end of the day. Put everything on the table in dishes and let them take the portion they need. All you have to do then is bag up the left overs for other meals.

Sensible reply.
It's putting food in tummies at the end of the day. Not rocket science.
A friend of mine years ago used to try and rigidly control family mealtimes, two potatoes each, half a slice of bread per person on the table etc. It seemed bizarre to me as I came from a family that was not well-off, but well-fed and we could always fill up on bread and butter! She learnt her lesson when a dear friend and her family came to visit for the weekend. Her friend's ravenous young sons, in all innocence, made a mockery of her attempts at rigid meal-planning and portion control and and she learnt her lesson after that embarassing experience.
Whatever our budget, family meals should be pleasurable and really not worth fretting about and trying to over-control.

PasturesNew

I always had school dinners and a hot meal in the evenings... because mum/dad hadn't had a hot meal in the day.

Eating two was normal.

Gingham_Ribbon

Will you know at the beginning of the week what the school dinners will be? If you can find out, it might be worth keeping a note, so you don't give them the same meal at the end of the day that they had at lunch time. Otherwise I don't think there would be much difference in how hungry the children will be and how much they'll need at dinner time. The packed lunches will represent similar things to the school dinner - ie protein, carbs, fruit and veg.

the only other thing I can think of is that perhaps if you're used to having a hot pudding in the evenings, it might be worth changing to fruit and yoghurt etc if the one having school meals will be eating pudding every day?