Episode 43: My top 10 family dinners!

Episode 43: My top 10 family dinners! reflect on lessons learnt both a mum and a paediatric dietitian.

Today I’m sharing my top 10 “go-to” dinners, to make planning dinner a whole lot easier! These are meals that I regularly cook for my family – they’re healthy, simple, and, most importantly, they work!

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/3-week-feeding-kids-reset

Highlights:

Introduction (00:00.00)
Managing Dinner Time: A Personal Perspective (00:32.206)
Discussion on Junk Food and Government Intervention (02:52.814)
Parenting and the Impact of Fast Food on Health (05:16.586)
Cheat Meal Recipes (07:35.724)
Family-Friendly Meal Planning (09:59.5)
Satay Recipes and Vegetarian Options(12:16.322)
Damo's Curries: A Recipe from Brunswick (14:40.622)
Kids' Curry Recipes and Pizza Ideas (16:59.148)
Pizza Recipes and Schnitzels (19:13.462)
Quick and Easy Meals (21:37.122)
Stir Fry Recipes (23:52.972)
Promoting New Foods and Eating Habits in Children (26:00.652)
Variety in Dinner Recipes (28:21.486)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

Episode Highlights:

1. Cheats Pasta - Simple, quick, and always a hit with the kids.

2. Poke Bowls - A versatile meal that can be customised for each family member.

3. Satay Chicken - A one-pot wonder with secret additions to boost the nutrition.

4. Easy Green Curry - A simple yet flavourful green curry that can be adjusted to suit various taste buds!

5. Homemade Pizza - Get the kids involved in making their own pizzas with whole grain bases and various toppings like cheese, veggies, and lean meats.

6. Schnitzels - either homemade or I share my favourite shop bought option!.

7. Stir Fry - a fast and healthy dinner option, served deconstructed or mixed!

8. Sushi - a favourite with the kids!... and/or rice paper rolls!

9. Soup! - including little hacks to make it more fun and increase acceptance!

10. Wraps - either Mexican or a simple chicken wrap... for those nights when you need something super quick.

I hope these dinner ideas inspire you and make mealtimes a little easier and more enjoyable. Remember, there's no judgement here – some weeks are scrappy, and that's perfectly okay. The goal is to get some nutritious food on the table without the stress.

For more recipes and tips, visit Nourish with Karina . Let me know which dinner is your favourite and if you have any go-to meals you'd like to share!

Happy cooking!

Introduction(00:00.622)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number 43, 10 things that I would cook for dinner.

Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learnt all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed podcast.

Managing Dinner Time: A Personal Perspective (00:32.206)
Hi there, I hope you're really well. I hope that you're having a great week, if it is a weekday, or I hope that you are having an awesome weekend, if you're listening on a weekend. Today I wanted to record a segment to make your life easier around dinner time. Well, not really dinner time, it's more whenever you think about what you're to have for dinner. I tell you, sometimes I leave it until, it's probably a good five o 'clock, until I'm thinking, my gosh, what are we going to cook for dinner tonight?

I don't even like thinking about it first thing in the morning, but it's probably smart to think about it first thing in the morning. It's actually probably smarter to think about it on a Sunday. That's what I say, right? Practice what you preach, Karina. I recommend actually menu planning and having three or four meals that you are planning on cooking for the week, then going and getting them will probably even easier doing an online order. So you've got those ingredients ready.

for those three or four meals for the week. And then the other few are scratch meals that you kind of throw together. It might be eggs on toast. It might be, you know, beans on toast. It might be leftovers. It might be frozen food that you defrost. You know, there's no judgment. We can't have these perfect meals all the time. We can't have these perfect meals even half of the time. Sometimes, sometimes it's a really scrappy week. But I'm here to try and make your life easier. And I've got 10 dinners that I would cook.

relatively regularly for my family because they work, they're healthy, they're pretty easy. You know, as long as I've got the ingredients, we're pretty home and hosed. So, you know, there is no judgment though. Some weeks are just a disaster and some weeks, you know, honestly, there's been a week or two, I remember where we have had takeaway, least three times a week, if not more. And that's when life just gets so crazy busy. And you know what?

Don't beat yourself up over it. It is what it is. Yeah, it's not the best option, especially if they're not as healthy options and they're costly too sometimes. Having said that, I was sitting at the traffic lights the other day with my daughter, the son, can't even remember who's in the car. It was my daughter, I we were going to soccer. It was. And we were sitting there at the lights and she's like, wow, that's cheap. And it was a McDonald's meal. It was two burgers plus a fries.

Discussion on Junk Food and Government Intervention (02:52.814)
and a drink for 6 .95. It was incredible. And then I used that as an opportunity to have a chat to her about how it's really sad that junk food is so affordable and so accessible for people. And we had a conversation about that's why people that perhaps don't have as much money do have more junk food because it's so accessible and affordable for them to have.

you know, a full meal for such a cheap price. And I, at that point said to her, that's why really a government needs to step in. And I think it needs to apply a junk food tax. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about it. Perhaps no one's ever heard of it because if the government doesn't do it, there really should be a tax applied to junk food because at the end of the day, it's just making everybody sick.

And it's making people sick as they get older and then they're more reliant on the healthcare system and they're more unhappy because they are sick and they develop diabetes and whatnot. So, and then my daughter said, but yeah, mummy, but then if you made junk food more expensive, then what would they eat? And I said, well, then it would force people to move to things like tin baked beans and tins of tuna and rice and force them to go for those cheaper options, but still.

healthier options, I think it's just because it's so convenient. They're so tasty because they know exactly how to switch on all your pleasure senses with salt and fat and sugar. And it's so cheap. And so it's so easy for people to go down that route and kids love them too, which is a nightmare for us parents because they're like, we go to Maccas? And I'm like, my gosh, no, no, no, no, let's go get sushi or let's make something. But I can see why it's so appealing.

to so many, especially if you're watching your budget. Yeah. I mean, it would be great if there was a tax on junk food. It would be great if more people were opting for cans of baked beans and scrambled eggs on toast for dinner even. And that's probably going to cost the same as a McCappie meal, but actually be cheaper than a McCappie meal with a side of tin peas and a bit of carrot. But it's not as appealing, I don't think, and it's not as convenient.

Parenting and the Impact of Fast Food on Health (05:16.586)
or easy. And so we have this dilemma, this, it's a societal disaster from a healthcare perspective because we have too many dinners being full of junk. And I think, you know, the big fast food industries have a lot to answer for there. So as a parent, sure, you're going to have those weeks when you do rely on more convenience foods, but hopefully

your convenience foods if possible, you know, takeaway pizzas and, you know, maybe even like a rotisserie chicken and chips and salad or something that's perhaps a little more well -rounded than just chicken nuggets and fries. But look, there's no judgment. We get McDonald's when we go on family road trips. My husband's sort of made it a thing now and now my kids expect it. Well, you know, which is fine. It's a sometimes food, but...

When it starts to creep in to be a more everyday food or weekly food, I think that's when it becomes a problem. And so I think that's when you got to try and pull it back and go hang on a minute. Let's come up with some other quick, easy cheat nights that is not really, really heavily processed like a, know, McDonald's happy meal. So what are the 10 things that I might cook for dinner? Well, my cheats pasta is right up there. So really what that is, it's I cook up some spiral pasta.

And at the moment, my favourite go -to is the organic spiral pasta, just from Woolworths. So that's what I would cook up. Once it was cooked and I would try not to overcook it, because if you overcook it, then it just becomes a bit too mushy. I actually tried to cook up the little dinosaur pasta the other day and it does not take long to go from normal shaped dinosaurs to complete mush to the point where it looks like that alphabet pasta, but

with no alphabet letters in it. was just much. But anyway, so I'd go for the spiral pasta. I'd cook it for, you know, 10, 12 minutes until it was al dente. And then I would strain it. Then I pop it back in the pan, olive oil, a little bit of salt, and literally I grab a jar of Barilla, either Napolitana or my favourite is the olive one, depends if you like olives or not. It could be the basilica one. Literally tip a jar in.

Cheat Meal Recipes (07:35.724)
And that's the pasta, the jar sauce, some olive oil, and you can do salt, you can do pepper, you can do a bit of extra oregano if you want, probably not. Cause you choose the one with herbs in it. The Napolitana has got some veggies in it, but literally it's three or four ingredients done, dinner done. No, there's no protein in it, well, you know, it's a quick, easy dinner. You can always put a little bit of protein with it if you want, if you've got some leftover chicken in the fridge, or you can grab it in the tuna and mix that through it. You can literally grab a handful of cashews and put that on the side.

You chuck some pine nuts in it, that will be yummy, that adds some protein. So you can add protein if you want, but a cheats meal, doesn't always have to be perfect. It's just getting some food on the table, right? So that's a really good quick cheats meal. Often I will get those Clevers organic Frankfurt sausages, so they're 80 % beef and I'll boil up a couple of those for my son, put them on the side. And so that's a couple of sausages worth of protein. It's 80 % beef. So yes, they're sausages, but they're

the best of a bad bunch really. So yeah, I think that's a good option for a cheat's meal. My daughter who wouldn't eat the sausages, I could also defrost some edamame pods and pop them on the side of the pasta just to go with it for some added protein. Look, the pasta does have a bit of protein, but just not a huge amount. And the extra virgin olive oil that I use at the moment is really the cheapest. I go for Australian extra virgin olive oil. And I literally look at the cost per hundred meals at the moment because

In the past six months, olive oil has at least doubled in price. You know, it used to be less than $20 a litre and now it's often over that per litre. It's crazy. So my advice would be to look for extra virgin olive oil, like cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and buy the Australian version and just find the cheapest one you can get.

If you have the choice, I wouldn't go for the European version. Not that it's not going to be healthy for you, but I feel that the Australian extra virgin olive oil, will probably be fresher and therefore even higher in antioxidants and polyphenols and all the good things that are in extra virgin olive oil. Okay. Moving on to number two, have poke bowls. Now poke bowls are brilliant because you can really adapt them to the whole family. So.

Family-Friendly Meal Planning (09:59.5)
You can have all different bits and pieces that you can just add to it based on your preferences. So for our family, I would cook up some basmati rice. Then I would have some tinned corn, diced tomatoes, chopped up baby spinach for my husband and the kids prefer chopped up iceberg lettuce. You might chop up avocado. What I really love is a bit of a black bean salsa. I do.

A tin of strained black beans with some of that Mexican spice seasoning. might be burrito mix or something like that from Old El Paso. And a tin of pureed crushed tomatoes and mix that together in the pan. As I said, you can cook some onion up first and then do the black beans with the Mexican spice and the tomatoes. But I really love that to go with poke bowls because that's yummy. My son prefers just chopped tomatoes. Then I'll often cook up chopped up chicken in a Mexican spice as well for my husband and my son. And I'll often use that as well.

My daughter won't eat the meat because she's vegetarian, but she will have edamame. So that's another really good way. And in that situation, you don't really want the pods. You want the ones that have already been, I don't know what it's called, de -potted. There would be a word for it. You probably know it and you're probably saying it out loud now. I can't even think of it. Sorry. Where you've just got individual edamame beads and you can buy them in the back somewhere as well. Then my son would like grated cheese. So he will often do.

rice, grated cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a bit of chicken. My daughter would eat a mami. Actually now she's been doing grated carrot and what she's been doing lately, cause she doesn't have the Mexican spice with the, she won't eat the black beans and she won't eat the chicken. So she'll put soy sauce on it. So she'll turn hers into a bit of a Japanese style poke bowl. So my son will have the Mexican. My daughter will have the Japanese style and then he'll put corn chips with it. So we have little corn chips and she might do that as well, but.

It kind of doesn't go with the whole Japanese theme as well. And then my husband and I would just have the beans and the spinach and the chicken and the corn and the tomato and yeah, whatever else is on the avocado. So it's a great one because you really can, everyone can put what they want in it and it's quite balanced. And yeah, you can really put whatever vegetables you want. If you want to add extra things in there that I haven't discussed, like, you know, bamboo shoots or sprouts or.

Satay Recipes and Vegetarian Options(12:16.322)
You know, whatever takes your fancy, whatever floats your boat. So yeah, that's a really good one. So that's number two. So Poke bowls. So number three, have satay. So I've got this satay sauce that I buy. It's a Taylor's satay sauce, but really you can use any satay sauce that you wish. Always check the ingredients for, you know, the smallest number of ingredients possible. I always like to add a good couple of dollops, like big tablespoons worth of peanut butter.

Or you could use almond meal, could use cashew nut butter just to boost the nutritional value of the meal, especially for my daughter, because she will eat it with the vegetables. We just pick out the chicken. Okay. So what I'll do is I'll cook the onion and then I'll put, actually what my sister -in -law does, and this is a really good idea, is she will take that sauce and she'll blitz it up with extra peanut butter and a bit of water. So you can do that, or you can just literally mix it well in the pan.

Then you can pop in the meat and the veggies and extra water and then cook, simmer it down. And that's a really great meal. And as I said, by adding the extra peanut butter or almond meal or cashew nut butter really boosts the protein and the nutrition of the meal. And then if you've got, you know, vegetarians, well, maybe you've got a vegetarian that won't eat it with the meat cooked in that you probably have to cook it separate. But for most, you can just serve it as, I usually do broccoli and snow peas in there.

Broccolis, I haven't tried it. You've got broccoli and snow peas and red capsicum you can put in there. And it's just a quick and easy, literally just a one pot and then just cook some basmati rice and you're one and done and it's great. And you can also add in raw cashews as well into that mix. So that's a really nice one as well. So that's the satay dish. On that same theme, I like a curry as well. In fact, my husband, now you've just reminded me, well, you haven't reminded me, I've reminded myself through talking about this.

He's asked me to make a curry tonight and you know what? It's actually not going to happen because we've got a busy afternoon and I haven't been organised with this one. This is where you need that Sunday afternoon to plan. But funny story. So I learnt this recipe that my husband has asked me to make. It's called Deimo's Dal. I met Deimo when he was living with my brother back in years and years years ago down in Melbourne. And he was a vegetarian and he probably still is.

Damo's Curries: A Recipe from Brunswick (14:40.622)
And he cooked these delicious curries from scratch. He made all of these amazing curries and I got him to handwrite for me a couple of these curries. And I've still got his handwritten recipe from many moons ago in, I think it was Brunswick in Victoria. I've not seen this person for over 20 years now, but I'm still very grateful for his recipes and my husband loves them. And so this green curry recipe, which he wants me to make, which I'm not even going to

you the recipe because I can't even remember it off the top of my head, but it was to do with red lentils mixed with a whole lot of spices and cooked down, down, down, down, you know, hours. And then I think I put some zucchini in it and coconut milk. Anyway, it's made from scratch, right? So it's delicious. And that's a great recipe when I can remember exactly what I put in it, but it's a combination of paprika and cumin and turmeric and salt and pepper and...

green curry leaves and basically you mix that all together with red lentils and you cook it down with water and then add in like whatever veggies like zucchini and whatever and red capsicum and then you eventually add the coconut milk. That's right. And right at the end, you chop up these onions with brown mustard seeds and you cook them off in oil and then you add that to the red lentils. Am I spinning you out right now? Probably.

Anyway, that's not even the curry that I was about to say. That's not number four, but that was just a little digression, a little story about Damo from Brunswick. shared this amazing curry recipe with me, but you can always experiment, right? You can make your own Damo's curry. can make your paprika, cumin, turmeric, salt, pepper. And then you basically mix that through red lentils that you've rinsed and strained in the pan. And then you basically cook it in water.

Add the coconut milk, add the onion and the brown mustard seed and away you go. Anyway, one day I'll sort that one out and share that with you. But for now, a simple curry recipe for dinner, which was my number four, is buying a jar of green curry paste or red curry paste and literally using a couple of tablespoons of that with coconut milk. Depending on how your children like spice is how much you add basically.

Kids' Curry Recipes and Pizza Ideas (16:59.148)
And to your kids' meals, you could always reduce the spice by adding extra yogurt or extra milk to their serve. So it helps dampen the spice. And if you guys, parents like it spicier, then you can either put more paste into yours or you keep the strong stuff and take a little bit into a separate pan and add extra milk or coconut milk or a bit of yogurt into their curry dish before you serve it.

So that's a little curry recipe and red curry, green curry. You can serve it with poppadums, you can serve it with pita bread that you've popped in the oven and that's literally simple because all you need is the green curry paste and you need the coconut milk and you're done. as I said, if they don't really like spice, you can add the extra milk, yogurt, you can also grab some cucumbers and serve them up because they're also good to help reduce the spice so they have like a mouthful of curry and a mouthful of cucumber.

So that's a way to manage the spice as well, but it's good just to mix it up and get them to try different things. So curry is a great one there. Okay. Moving on to number five, we have homemade pizza. So homemade pizza is great. I think you can buy the base from the shop and you can make it a home. So you can either buy the bigger ones. You can buy the thicker base, the thinner base. You can use wraps as bases. You can use the little mini bases. They're also quite popular. My husband likes those.

And you can really use whatever topping you want. I know for kids, they just like cheese and I'll often, I'll do the pizza sauce. So I like the Romano, it's called Romano pizza sauce, but basically it's just a tomato based pizza sauce. If it doesn't have herbs, then just sprinkle a bit of oregano on there. And then the cheese, if you can get other things on there, like roasted capsicum or raw capsicum or mushrooms or a bit of chicken, then great.

My kids, they'll serve veggies on the side, so it's kind of like a deconstructed meal, of course. And, well, not of course, my kids are starting to eat things mixed, which is great, but they do like their pizzas more plain. For my husband, what he loves is, and this goes back to a recipe from an Italian pizza place in Adelaide a gazillion years ago, but basically they use balsamic vinegar to soak the chicken. Delicious. You could just use rotisserie chicken, they soak it in balsamic vinegar and oil.

Pizza Recipes and Schnitzels (19:13.462)
And then you put it on the pizza with roasted capsicum, spring onions. And then if anything else you want, go on there, but you can literally keep it as simple as that. yeah, capsicum, spring onions, chicken, cheese, done in the oven. And that's a really quick and easy dinner option for the family. And then you can just serve chopped raw veggies on the side. Okay. Moving on to number six, we have homemade schnitzels. Now look, if you don't have time to make homemade schnitzels, then buy them.

My favourite would probably be the Bore ones would be the Lilydale schnitzels. They're probably the favourite from my family's perspective, aside from my homemade ones. So for homemade schnitzels, I'll literally cut up chicken breast. What I'll do is I'll chop up the chicken breast into slices, little pieces. You can make them as small as nuggets if you wanted to. Then what I do is I have three bowls. In the first bowl, I'll either have corn flour or plain flour. In second bowl, I'll have a couple of eggs that I've beaten up.

And then the third bowl, I'll have the breadcrumbs, whether it's panko breadcrumbs or just your regular breadcrumbs. If you make your own breadcrumbs, if you've got a whole bread, it in the oven and blitz it up. 50 % bread, 50 % oats is a great one as well. And that can be your breadcrumbs. So you do chicken breast in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. And then I pop it in the pan with extra virgin olive oil to fry. Now with extra virgin olive oil, can absolutely fry in extra virgin olive oil.

You just have to make sure that he doesn't get too, too hot because that's when it goes past its smoke point. And that's when it can start burning. But I love extra virgin olive oil for frying for everything, to be honest. The other good one is avocado oil. That's a really good one to fry in as well. That's an even higher smoke point. So fry in extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil. The taste does change. So I actually used a bit of avocado oil with my extra virgin olive oil the other day. Cause I just had someone who wanted to.

what it tasted like and I could notice the difference. you just have to kind of have a play and see what taste profile you like or your kids like. But another one would be sunflower oil you could use, but I extra virgin olive oil would be the first choice. Well, not I think, I know for sure. I think it's liquid gold. So I would fry my schnitzels in extra virgin olive oil and then serve them with, I mean, in our family, I serve them with roast potatoes. So I'll just roast some potatoes in the oven.

Quick and Easy Meals (21:37.122)
with extra virgin olive oil and rosemary and you can put a bit of salt on there if you want. I usually use dried rosemary and then I'll serve it with broccoli, steamed broccoli with olive oil and lemon juice. That's a great one. And then just literally chopped raw carrot and chopped red capsicum. I started doing roasted cauliflower as well. you have time, roasted cauliflower is amazing. If you literally just sprinkle cumin and turmeric and paprika on it and salt and olive oil and just chuck it in the oven, it's so good.

Again, now we're getting to a not as quick and easy meal. So if your quick and easy meal is a schnitzel that you've bought and then you just literally serve up the veggies with it, then that's totally fine. Sometimes you might even serve some pasta with it on the side. That's totally fine as well. So homemade schnitzels would be my number six. Number seven would be stir fry. So stir fry is a great one because again, you can serve it separated, deconstructed, or you can serve it mixed.

So with stir fry, I would grab the chicken and I would coat it in a little bit of corn flour and then drizzle honey and soy sauce over it, mix it all together. So it's like a honey soy marinade. And then you basically fry that off in extra virgin olive oil. You steam your veggies and then you pop some Hokkien noodles. I mean, you could use rice as well, but I like the Hokkien noodles and pop them in boiling water for a couple of minutes.

basically then you can either serve them deconstructed, you can pour a bit of extra soy sauce on the noodles. And the ketchup manis soy sauce is a good one because it's a bit sweet, so the kids often like that. So you could use that as the honey soy marinade as well, or you can just use the plain soy sauce if you prefer that because you've got the sweetness from the honey already. But on the noodles, the ketchup manis is quite nice.

And then as I said, so you and hubby, and your partner, you could mix it all together, but for the kids, they may like them separate deconstructed and that's totally fine as well. So the veggies I would use again would be like broccoli, celery, capsicum. What else? I wouldn't always use celery actually. Broccoli, capsicum, snow peas, sprouts, cashews is a great one in there as well. Zucchini maybe, mean, whatever you've really got, but snow peas, broccoli, capsicum, carrot, they're all great ones for the stir fry.

Stir Fry Recipes (23:52.972)
And as I said, you could serve it with rice if you want. If you don't have soy sauce, can always use oyster sauce as another substitute option with the extra virgin olive oil. And yeah, see how you go. As I said, whatever carb you want really. I mean, you can always serve it with couscous as well, but no, no, you can scrap that. I'd go with rice or noodles. So stir fry would be my number seven.

Number eight would be sushi. So sushi is a great one. Look, to be honest with you, I tend to just serve this one up for the kids and rather than my husband, he's not really sushi mad. In fact, I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen him eat sushi, but sushi is a good one for the kids. I did a segment on this on Sunrise recently on my website. I've probably got the video on how to make it, so you can always check that out.

Because you know, it's a great family activity. It's a fun one and the kids love it. So it gets them eating good food. gets them making good food. You don't want to do sushi. You could do rice paper rolls. That's another great option. And again, you just use the rice vermicelli noodles and vitroose chicken and whatever other veggies you wanted to put in there. Avocado, you could use cooked prawns as well as the protein or tofu. So sushi or rice paper rolls would be a good one. And that would be my number eight.

So you're to get a bonus one now because number nine was soup. And with soup really, it depends on where you're at with, where your child's at with their soup preferences, because some kids aren't into soup. My son's still not into soup. Whereas my daughter quite likes like a potato and celery sort of more vegetable style soup. Some kids love pumpkin soup, which is amazing. Some kids love all types of soup, pea and ham and you know, all sorts. So it really depends on what.

what your child's been exposed to really at the end of the day and what the family normally eats. But soup is a great dinner option. One way to get them to eat a little more soup is to put croutons in there, makes it fun. So dropping in crunchy croutons can increase acceptance of the soup. Dipping their favourite bread into the soup can also help to increase acceptance.

Promoting New Foods and Eating Habits in Children (26:00.652)
And then just giving them perhaps a little bit of soup on the side of their main meal. If they're not big soup eaters can help to build that familiarity and trust and eventually bring in that new food and increase the acceptance of that soup over time. But soup is a really good one to try, especially during winter. But as I said, if soup's not in their repertoire, then perhaps when you're having it, just put a little bit on the side for them. Maybe some croutons or a bit of something to dip it in, like a bit of bread and build familiarity that way.

See, luckily I gave you the bonus one of the rice paper rolls because soup may not be in your top 10 yet. We'll see. Hopefully it is. And my last one, whether that's number 10 or number 11 now is Mexican wraps. So I know I talked about Poke bowls earlier, but Mexican wraps are fantastic. And that could be burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, however you say it. But basically I'm talking about using wraps to make up Mexican rolls. So basically you...

pop whatever you want inside the wrap. You can also use taco shells actually. And that's another great one. And as I said, you can make them at the table or you can actually pre -roll them and pop them in the oven with extra cheese, or you could do nachos as well. That's another one. Just quickly grab a packet of corn chips and then you could sprinkle them with red kidney beans, chopped tomatoes and cheese, pop them in the oven or you could use tomato salsa, pop it in the oven. That's another quick and easy snack. But

In terms of having it at the table, again, having the different options means that children can really put what they want in them. And my son on his rap, he likes smashed avocado, cheese and tomato. Again, that's quite low -were protein, but that would be his preference. And my daughter, actually now what she likes is she likes fried halloumi and onion and lettuce and mayonnaise in her rap. That's not as Mexican as I initially had thought.

That's not Mexican at all, but that's okay. That's her preference. So she loves halloumi. So wraps are really versatile. And do know why? They don't have to be, you don't have to cook up the chicken in the spice. You could just use roast chicken if it's easier again, because it's whatever's easy, right? So wraps are another really quick and easy dinner option. It can be literally chicken, lettuce, mayo wraps with a side of chopped veggies. It can be as simple as that. So wraps can be whatever you want to make them. And you can put whatever you want.

Variety in Dinner Recipes (28:21.486)
in them, you can put in the red kidney beans, you can put in the rice, you can put in all sorts of different, you know, chopped veggies and whatnot. Cheese, but they can also be very simple, but smashed omelette is a really good base for wraps or hummus is another one as well. So hummus can also be in the wraps and we're changing nationalities a little bit, but it doesn't matter whatever goes and variety is the spice of life, right? So yeah, give that one a go. Okay. So you now have my top 10 or my top 11 different things that I would cook for dinner.

just to give you a little bit of inspiration along the way. I hope that's been helpful for you. I'm actually going to wrap this up now because I have about three minutes to get to my children's school to pick them up after school today. So I'm going to get my skates on and I hope you have a brilliant week and I will chat to you soon. Bye for now.