Dinner Tonight

Dinner Tonight

Healthy Cooking for a Healthy Texas

Family Mealtime Challenge

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This month, we’re encouraging families to come together for dinner and create lasting memories. Join us for a series of fun and easy challenges designed to strengthen family bonds and make mealtime a meaningful experience. Here’s what we’ve got planned:

Did you take the Challenge? Please take this (short) post challenge survey to tell us how it went! https://poll.app.do/family-mealtime-challenge-2024-post-test

Week 1: Family Dinner Week: Commit to having dinner together as a family at least 4 times a week. If 4 times a week sounds too challenging, try adding one extra mealtime more than your typical week. Let’s make mealtime a priority! 🍲 Adding additional family meals may take some additional planning, check out our list of slow cooker recipes or air fryer recipes to make dinner easier.

Week 2: Tech-Free Table Challenge: Make dinner a screen-free zone. Put away the phones, TVs, and tablets and focus on each other. 📵 Tech Free week is a great time to discuss Table Manners! Table Manners are an important skill for kids to learn, read more about table manners here and start creating a positive mealtime experience!

Week 3: Dinner Conversation Starters: Engage your kids with fun conversation topics. Ask your kids about their day, favorite hobbies, or dreams for the future! Let’s make every meal a time to connect. 💬 Learn more about why family mealtime is important and how it can benefit your family and children.

Week 4: Kid Cooks Week: Whether they help with the chopping or the cooking, get them involved in the kitchen. Let them help plan and prepare one meal this week! 👩‍🍳 Check out our list of Kid Friendly recipes to gather some inspiration for your kiddos!

Week 5: Clean-Up Crew: Make post-dinner cleanup a team effort. Assign tasks and work together to tidy up after dinner. 🧽

Join the fun, share your progress, and let’s make September all about family mealtime! Tag Dinner Tonight on Facebook and Instagram to share your experiences and use the hashtag #familymealtimechallenge ! 

Southwest Egg Muffins

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Breakfast can be hard when everyone in the family is going in a different direction in the mornings! Remember that planning is key when it comes to breakfast. Try making large batches of egg muffins on Sunday and refrigerate and freeze them until you need them during the week.


Southwestern Egg Cups
Votes: 2
Rating: 4.5
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Servings Prep Time
5 servings (2 "muffins") 10 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes
Servings Prep Time
5 servings (2 "muffins") 10 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes
Southwestern Egg Cups
Votes: 2
Rating: 4.5
You:
Rate this recipe!
Print Recipe
Add to Shopping List
This recipe is in your Shopping List
Servings Prep Time
5 servings (2 "muffins") 10 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes
Servings Prep Time
5 servings (2 "muffins") 10 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes
Ingredients
Servings: servings (2 "muffins")
Units:
Instructions
  1. Wash your hands and clean your preparation area. Rinse any vegetables before sicing. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Coat a muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.
  2. In a large skillet, sauté the ground turkey, bell pepper, garlic, and green onion until the turkey is fully cooked and reaches 165°F and vegetables are tender. Add the salt, pepper, cumin and chili powder; cook for 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat.
  3. In the muffin tin, evenly divide the turkey and vegetable mixture among 10 individual muffin cups.
  4. Pour the eggs evenly into the 10 stuffed cups. Top with cheese.
  5. Bake 20 minutes or until the eggs are set.
  6. Portion the egg muffins out into serving sizes and store in the refrigerator for 3-4 days or in the freezer up to 3 months. If frozen, thaw in the refrigerator the night before and heat in the microwave when ready to serve. Reheat to 165°F before eating.
Recipe Notes

Spaghetti Squash

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Spaghetti Squash can be super intimidating to try and work with, but its so yummy and good for you! See our tips, tricks and safety information below so you can incorporate this veggie into your diet.

 

Intimidated by how difficult a spaghetti squash can be to cut into? Use your microwave! Microwave your squash for about 5 minutes to soften it, this makes it easier (and safer!) to cut into. 

Now that you know the microwave tip and your spaghetti squash is soft, how do you cut and deseed the squash? See our video below:

 

Help to promote your child’s creativity by asking them to make something with some of the spaghetti squash you saved to the side. Ask them to create a funny face, a favorite animal, or even have them use the extra squash to work on their letters and numbers. 

Table Manners

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Table Manners are as easy as 1…2…3… Learn how to set your expectations for table manners from @EatRightNutrition

Teaching Good Table Manners to Kids

Reviewed by Vicki Shanta Retelny, RDN, LDN

Published August 27, 2019

From high chair to school lunch room to business lunches, your children will have many opportunities to implement good table manners throughout their lives.

Developing table manners is one of the earliest steps parents can take in teaching and modeling good behavior to their children. And, families that eat together most days of the week tend to be healthier.

Teaching table manners can start when the child is eating independently out of the high chair or old enough to sit at the table. Table manners taught in the early phases include teaching kids to not reach across the table, eat from their own plate, put a napkin in their lap and say please and thank you.

Parents are the most important role models for children and can provide ongoing positive reinforcement of good table manners at family dinners.

Having family meals is the best way to model and teach good manners, especially when introducing kids to new foods. They can be taught to politely say when they don’t like something. Also, young kids often can’t sit the whole meal, but can learn to properly dismiss themselves, rather than interrupt the meal.

In addition, never correct manners in an insulting way and explain to kids why you practice manners, such as why we chew with our mouth closed and put a napkin on our lap.

Everyone at the table should get a chance to be part of a positive conversation. Keep it lighthearted and fun and talk about positive things at the table.

Kids as young as 3 to 5 years old can get involved by learning to set the dinner table. Other important rules, of course, are no elbows on the table and in today’s electronic culture — no tech devices, phones or texting at the table!

Good table manners are about respect for the household and can highlight the pleasure of eating. It is something that everyone can do well.

Reviewed May 2018

Find the full article at eatright.org

Conversation Starters After School

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After school snack time can be the perfect opportunity to engage with your children and allow them to debrief their school day. Making connections and staying aware of what’s happening in your child’s life are key to a great school year. Below are some tips on how to talk to your child after school.

How to Get Your Child to Talk About School

By Andrew M.I. Lee, JD

At a Glance

  • Some kids don’t like to share information about their school day.
  • The way you ask kids questions can encourage them to talk more.
  • Ask specific, open-ended questions instead of questions that can be answered with yes or no.

Some kids love talking about school. With others, it’s like pulling teeth to get them to share even a few details about their day—especially if there are things going on that are upsetting them, like bullying or struggling in school.

If your child is on the quieter side or is very private, there are ways to ask questions that will open up a conversation instead of shutting one down. Here are some key concepts for starting a dialogue.

1. Ask open-ended questions. If you ask a question that can be answered with one word—yes or no—that’s what you’ll get. A one-word answer.

Example: “What was the best thing you did at school today?”

2. Start with a factual observation. Kids often have a hard time answering questions that seem to come out of the blue. Making an observation gives your child something to relate to.

Example: “I know you have a lot more kids in your class this year. What’s that like?”

3. Share something about yourself. When someone tells you about themselves, it’s natural to want to do that in return. Share something with your child and see what you get back.

Example: “We always played dodgeball at recess. What do you and your friends like to do?”

4. Avoid negative questions. If you think something isn’t going well, your questions may come out in a negative way, with emotion-packed words like sad or mean. Asking in a positive way lets your child express concerns.

Example: “I heard that you sat with new people at lunch today. What did you talk about?”

Here are other examples of how to say things differently to get your child to open up.

Afterschool Conversation Starters

Instead of this Try this
Was school fun today? What was the best thing you did at school?
How was lunch? Which kids were sitting near you at lunch?
Was your teacher nice? What was the most interesting thing your teacher said today?
Did you get your locker today? How was it getting to your locker between classes?
Were the kids in your class friendly? Who did you like talking to the most?
Did you get your schedule? You got your schedule today, right? Which days look busiest?
Do you have friends in your classes? Who are the kids you talk to most in your classes?
Did your presentation go well? What part of the presentation do you think was best?

Phrasing your questions this way invites your child to talk. But don’t expect for every question to result in a long, detailed answer. The goal is to have many small conversations over time. It helps to find natural moments to talk—like at dinner or riding in the car—when you’re not in a rush.

Sometimes kids, like adults, just don’t feel like talking. It’s important to know when to stop asking questions and leave it for another time. But if there’s something urgent or serious going on, you’ll have to ask direct, specific questions and push for an answer.

Full article can be found at understood.org