As always, photos are snapped in real-time and no fancy food photography is allowed. Dinners around here are not complicated and, in most cases, the dinners you see below did double duty and leftovers worked well for lunches for me and Ryan as well. You’ll see a mix of one-dish casseroles, simple salads and easy throw-together pasta. And it’s my hope that at least one of our meals below will pop out at you and give you some dinnertime inspiration the next time you’re trying to figure out what to make at the end of a long day.
Week of Weeknight Meals: September 2024
Also, I’ve included notes about what our boys ate each evening as well. For anyone new to our dinnertime approach with our kids, yes, they do often eat different meals than we do. And yes, I am very much okay with how we handle feeding our kids in our house. It’s not much extra work because they will often eat some part of our dinner paired with a fruit or veggie that takes very little time to prep. (Believe me, I’ve read plenty about only offering your kids what you eat. And we do still offer them our dinners and new foods to try all the time.)
Feeding our kids used to be an extremely stressful thing for me, especially as a first-time mom to a smaller child. I let go of a lot of the guilt and anxiety that surrounded their meals years ago (this blog post by a dietician blogger friend did wonders to shift my mindset). I kindly ask for your respect regarding our choices and how we feed our children. You may not agree with it and it might not be the way things are done in your house and that’s okay!
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Monday: Pizza Spaghetti Squash Pie
I’ve been making this recipe for years and years and we never get sick of it! It’s semi-time consuming but still very easy to make and leftovers taste fantastic! I always make sure to use hot Italian sausage in the recipe as I think it give it more flavor. We ate ours with Dave’s Killer Bread rolls and some watermelon on the side.
On our boys’ plates: Dave’s Killer Bread rolls with butter, Publix Greenwise frozen pizza, green beans, watermelon
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Tuesday: Chicken and Chickpea Salad
This meal was inspired by the leftover chicken we had on hand from last Saturday’s cookout and the produce we had that was on its last leg. Basically, Tuesday’s dinner was born from my desire to use up the food we had in the fridge before it went bad! Chicken and chickpea salad to the rescue! Though a decent amount of chopping is involved to make this salad, it’s otherwise an easy recipe, And also a fantastic one to have on hand for leftovers the next day. It ended up being my lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, too!
On our boys’ plates: Chickpeas, cucumber slices, Applegate organic chicken nuggets with ketchup, string cheese, strawberries
Sometimes I have to be reminded of my own recipes to remember to make them again! This one pot chicken cabbage bowl is one of my absolute favorites. But I honestly forgot about it over the past few months until Brittany made it and tagged me on Instagram after she served it for dinner one night. It was time to make it again! I used rotisserie chicken in this dish to make it come together quickly. And loved the flavorful broth and cabbage in this dish so much. It needs to happen more often in our house. Especially as cooler temperatures are on the horizon.
On our boys’ plates: Eggs with butter and honey toast, bell pepper slices, blueberries
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Thursday: Chicken Sausage Sweet Potato Bake
We still had a solid two bags of apples from Saturday’s apple-picking adventure on our hands on Thursday. So I was determined to use a bunch of them in Thursday’s dinner. I made one of my favorite busy weeknight meals — my chicken sausage sweet potato bake — and it felt like fall in a bowl! This was Ryan’s favorite meal of the week and made the whole house smell amazing. I also whipped up some oatmeal apple crisp to serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert.
On the boys’ plates: Chicken sausage, apple slices, carrots and a Dave’s Killer Bread roll with butter
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Friday: Ravioli with Shortcut Bolognese Sauce (Part 1)
Friday night was soccer game night so we kept dinner nice and simple and dug into spinach and ricotta ravioli (from the freezer section at Whole Foods) with shortcut bolognese sauce (aka ground beef browned and mixed with a jar of Rao’s marinara). After topping the ravioli with parmesan cheese, we dug in!
Part 2 of Friday’s meal was Shake Shack cheeseburgers and milkshakes a little before 9 p.m. when we were all hungry again after Chase’s soccer game!
On our boys’ plates (part one): Same as our dinner
Question of the Day
What is one thing you’ve been making for dinner lately that’s been a hit in your house?
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Hi Julie! I love your week of weeknight recipe posts. My oldest son (now a sophomore in college) never ate the same meal as the rest of our family. There was a time when he only ate grapes and popcorn. He has severe sensory issues and the texture of some food just could not be tolerated. The sound of pasta being stirred would make him gag! Your kid’s meals look perfect. That chicken cabbage bowl sounds amazing. It reminds me of an eggroll. I cannot wait to make it.
Thank you for this encouragement, Kelly!! I’m so glad you like these posts and really appreciate you sharing more with me about your son. <3 Hope you have the best Wednesday and that you enjoy the chicken cabbage bowl recipe if you decide to give it a try!
Kelly, can I ask how your son eats now? Was there a point when thing started to shift for him and he started eating a wider variety of foods? My 5 year old gets what I call a “vegetarian snack plate” for dinner (Triscuits, baby carrots, fruit, sunflower seeds, milk) because he won’t eat any dinner food. We’re on a wait list for feeding therapy but I’m just so weary!
Julie, I agree—I think your boys plates sound wonderful.
Yum!! That’s for sharing and giving me some ideas 🙂
Thanks for sharing how your kids eat! Right now we feed our kids (4, 3, and almost 2) our same dinner because they are so hit or miss with eating, even food that they specifically request! Glad you found something that works for your fam! Also, every time you share that cabbage bowl, I put it on my list to make and inevitably forget. Printing now!
This is reminding me of recipes I haven’t made in a while. Time to make my grocery list for next week.
Love seeing how you do dinner for grown ups & kids! Thank you!!
I have stopped planning our meals around what our daughter will eat or likes. I’d never put onions in anything if it were up to her. I would completely skip the onion if I could be assured she’d eat the meal but often I’d make the accommodations and she would not eat it. I prepare a meal and offer it to her. Sometimes a particular item appeals to her and she’ll go with that.
I love your honesty about how your kids actually eat! I feel like, especially since school has been back in session, I’ve been prioritizing just getting food in their mouths after a long day at school. It’s definitely a mix of their favorites and our adult favorites, but if they don’t eat, life is just too hard.