Background: I was tempted to just write “can’t.” But in all seriousness, sometimes you just can’t make dinner. You cycle through your family’s go-to takeout places to give yourself a break. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t have to just be pizza again when you are so pizza’d out, but the kids are not. The fact is, places that cater to kids don’t always have what adults are looking for, whether it be spicy and adventurous or healthy and lite. We have a move in our house called DD&D for the initials of a northern Thai place and an old- school burger joint that are right next to each other and on our route home. If we time it right and order strategically, we can get several meals out of one mine. Here’s what we do.
1. Order the adult meals from the Thai place.
2. Order burgers and/or chicken strips from the adjacent burger joint.
3. Make substitutions and additions to stretch the meals through the whole weekend.
Why It Works
1. We order enough of the things that reheat well to last several meals.
2. The kids never eat all of their meals, so they have leftovers, too.
3. We make strategic substitutions and additions to make more meals. Subbing a side of ranch instead of gravy with chicken strips means we’re halfway to a salad. Ordering extra sticky rice with the Thai food means the kids have an extra base layer for another dinner, and they are sorta kinda getting exposed to other cultures. Sometimes, they eat sticky rice with mango. That counts as a serving of fruit in my book.
Mods:
1. Any two adjacent places that y’all like on your route home can work. Just map it out.