We know planning our weekly meals is important. Ya know what else is? Planning the family meals (dinner) during the week. Yes, even for gymnastics night, archery practice, football, swim meets, cheer, et c. You know why. Those kids get hungry. Before practice, before dinner, before tutoring, on the way home. What is their suggestion? What is usually the quick solution the stressed-out Mom and/or Dad chooses? The Drive-Thru. (That spelling makes my soul cringe.) A pizza. The gas station. Defeat. A pyrrhic victory: the kids are fed but victories like this lose the whole war.

Why?! At least half the time we cave and get *something* from the menu. A fizzy drink, a small burger, a taco, “just one little” dessert, or we’re weak with brain fatigue and postponed nutrient consumption and BAM! We order a combo, uber-size it, and feel like crap as the fiber-free, necromancically-engineered pseudo fat-laden calories, devoid of any nutritive value all but stops your peristalsis movement and fills your arteries with a plastic-like cholesterol-and-chemical substance settles in faster than everything except your guilt for letting yourself down. Why? Exhaustion, poor planning, and a socially-constructed guilt that causes us to feel like losers if we serve a cold dinner out of bags.

Let’s address the last part first: dinner does not have to be hot. I repeat: dinner does not have to be hot. I said it, I stand by it, and I mean it. Okay, so I wrote it instead of saying it. The rest is wholly accurate, however. You pack a cold lunch for yourself or your kids, right? Why not dinner? Hmmmm? Oh, because you’re supposed to sit around the table together eating a freshly prepared meal and discussing hopes, dreams, events of the day, and enjoying each other’s company? I hope you find what you are seeking, because that very dinner time experience was what Bono was looking for. He didn’t find it, either.

You know when your late nights are. You know when there’s a volleyball tournament or basketball game, when two kids are cheering at two football games at opposite ends of the county. Pack a dinner. Pack brown bag dinners. Seriously. You can be in charge and pick what you eat and eat at the time you want to eat if you have a lunch pail ready to travel to soccer games or youth group or your book club or anything else.

Do you still want a hot meal? Okay, get a thermos and put your soup in there. Get a cooler or other insulated bag and put your sliced roast beef into it. Now get a cooler that will all but take up residence in your trunk, keep your salad base, ice, et c. Oh, but there Are other ways to pack hot meals, too! Those heat packs? (Especially the reusable kind.) Use those.

Do not limit yourself. Do not think you have to break down and get fast food because it is getting too late to cook, you can’t get back to the house, and your quiz bowlers/dancers/soccer players/swimmers or YOU are hungry and you just can’t wait. Pack your dinner. Have a picnic in the “way back” of the car, the parking lot for hockey practice, or drink your soup after your workout and before choir practice. A busy evening is no longer an excuse to treat yourself badly.

(Yes, you can keep lasagna hot in an insulated casserole carrier.)

Enjoy your evenings!