35. Busy Spring Season Hacks for Mealtimes: How to Manage Dinners During Busy Seasons

Navigating spring sports season can be overwhelming for parents, especially juggling multiple kids, hectic schedules, and dinner logistics. In this episode, dietitian and mom Sarah Schlichter shares practical tips to streamline meal planning, embrace flexibility, and keep nutrition on track amidst the chaos.

In this episode she discusses:

• How to shift your mindset from perfection to practicality with family dinners
• Strategies for scheduling and planning around unpredictable practice times
• Quick and easy meal ideas for busy nights, including chaos dinners and batch cooking
• Portable and on-the-go dinner options that align with sports schedules
• The importance of involving kids in meal prep and packing snacks
• Top pantry staples and freezer essentials for fast, nutritious meals
• Tips for reducing mental load through predictability
• How to make the most of frozen foods, convenience products, and smart prep to save time
• Creative ways to incorporate nutrition into snacks and meals for active kids
• Managing the chaos: back-up meal ideas and the value of flexibility and adaptability

Want help planning meals for this week and beyond? Sign up for Sarah’s emails!

Try Skout Bars as a great on the go snack!

Recipes Mentioned in the Episode:

26 One Pot Meals for Families During Busy Seasons

High Protein Vanilla Cottage Cheese Fruit Dip

2 Minute Chocolate Cottage Cheese Pudding

Pizza Beans

Amazon Links:

Stasher Bags

Elk & Friends Stainless Steel kids drinking cups

Transcript

Sarah Schlichter (00:47)
Today we're gonna be talking all about spring sports season and how we can better prepare ourselves as families for the chaos and the stress that comes with it. It's exciting, but let's be honest, it can be stressful thinking about dinner, especially if you have multiple kids in multiple sports or activities, logistics get hard. And as we head into sports season, I don't know about you, but we are...

on the edge of starting. think we're starting actually this Saturday is our first practice for one of my children. I think next week two of them will be in full swing. We'll have two different schedules and I am going to be sharing tips that I have done in the past and tips that I'll be doing this year. Things that are really going to help us streamline our dinners, our planning, our execution and all of that.

So if you're new to the podcast, welcome. My name is Sarah Schlifter. I'm a dietitian, a mom of three, and the host of this Managing Mealtime Madness podcast. And I'm so happy to have you here. If you're a returning listener, thanks for coming back. And if you haven't rated the show, please take a minute to leave a rating. It really makes a big difference in the scheme of things. Just two minutes of your time, I promise.

whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify or whatever platform, please, please just take a minute to rate the podcast. Let us know what you love about it, what you want to hear more about. Okay, so let's ease into spring sports. maybe you're a veteran at this, maybe this is your first season dealing with spring sports, your kids or toddlers, they're growing up, they're signing up for T-ball or soccer or karate, what have you.

you're probably starting to feel a little chaotic. Okay, practice is when we would normally eat dinner. How are we gonna handle this? One night you're at soccer practice with one kid, the next you're splitting up with your partner, two different fields, two different activities, two different times. Sometimes you have to bring a younger toddler, baby sibling along who needs to be entertained. So you need to have like a bag of entertainment, right? We're not so much talking about that today, more so the food.

aspect but definitely helps to have some books, some toys, some trucks, some cars, coloring, whatever your toddler is interested in to keep them entertained. We do a lot of card games as of late. That is something that all of my kids enjoy so I think we'll be bringing those to the fields a lot.

I also just want to give the disclaimer that sports season doesn't have to mean drive through every night. Like it doesn't have to mean you won't have any family meals. I think realistically just expect that they might look a little bit different, especially on the nights you have practice or games. Okay, that's normal. Your normal dinner time is being interrupted. Kids are in new places and competing maybe for the first time.

So you have to either think about dinner on the go, early dinners, later dinners, split dinners, snack dinners, whatever that looks like, we're gonna walk through it. But mentally as a parent and mom who has been through this before and is planning to go through it again, a little planning and a lot of flexibility can go a long way. So let's be kind to ourselves. Let's put some of these strategies into action and you've got this.

Kind of goes along with just this mindset shift, right? Perfect family dinners are not gonna happen every night. I feel like shifting our mindset first helps us better prepare. If we have this expectation that we're supposed to sit at the family table every night at six o'clock, that's probably not gonna happen when your kids are in sports. So I think we just have to, again, be flexible with that expectation. Remember, family dinners can look different. Sometimes it's half the family at once. Sometimes you're eating in the trunk of your car.

on a picnic blanket, sometimes it's just earlier or later than normal. But also a reminder that breakfast and things like that can count as family meals too. So they can still happen. It might just look a little bit different. Again, let's focus on consistency over perfection. After the mindset shift, what comes top of mind for me, what's very important in the first step is really the planning. So once you have the schedules,

And can we talk a minute about how stressful it can be as a parent when you don't have the schedules? Like you're anticipating and maybe you're trying to plan things, but you don't know what night's practice is going to be yet, right? Schedules aren't released. So it's like that in the air feeling and that's hard. We have schedules for one of mine. We're still waiting on the days for the other. I'm hoping they're not the same day. I have no idea. That's the hard part, right? So.

Once you have the schedules, at least you can start planning around them. On Sundays, I will sit down and I'll look at our schedule for the week when I'm planning meals. And when we have activities, I know I'm probably not going to be cooking from scratch that night. That might be a chaos meal, which we're going to talk about. It might be leftovers. It might be a crockpot. It might be just like a frozen meal that I just have to heat up. Right. So I'm

purposefully planning those on days that we have late activities. If we're home early, those might be the nights I will plan to cook. And it'll probably honestly still be easy-ish meals. Sheet pan dinners, one pot meals. I have a whole bunch of one pot meals. have a whole roundup on the blog that we can put in the show notes. This also...

gives you a chance to think in advance. So if you are cooking, cook double, right? Make your life easier next week. Freeze half of the meal that you're cooking this week so you can use it next week. And if you get in the habit of doing that each week, that's one less meal that you have to worry about, right? So that's something that I'm trying to do better. Just double up now, freeze it, take it out next week or the following when we need a easy meal.

for those late night activities.

Also, the idea of having a portable dinner can be helpful. Again, we're trying to remind ourselves dinner doesn't have to be perfect during this season of life. It might be eating with your three-year-old while your five-year-old practices, right? They might be eating on the picnic blanket now and your five-year-old can eat after. And having some of these quick dinner ideas. So maybe when you get home, you need something quick.

having those convenience options on hand is really helpful. And later I do have like a grocery list, just pantry staples to fill up on easy, quick cooking options. But things that come to mind right now, rotisserie chicken, bagged salad, or just chopped raw veggies, the mini peppers, things that are portable. Pair it with rice, quick cooking rice. You can buy potatoes that you can microwave. You can microwave sweet potatoes, right?

even tortillas, whole wheat tortillas, quesadillas with beans and cheese, right? That's ready in five minutes. Pasta. Pasta is also something you can cook earlier in the day and then just reheat, bring to the field or just reheat after activities later at night. Breakfast for dinner. That's another easy five minute option. Kids seem to love it. I think it's just because it's less expected, but breakfast for dinner is always a hit in our house.

And it's nutritionally sound, right? If you're doing something like eggs or protein pancakes, you're getting the protein, carbs you can get again through the pancakes, through the toast, through the fruit, get those antioxidants and fiber through the fruit. You can add some veggies if kids are open to it, scrambled with their eggs or even on the side. So. Breakfast for dinner can also be a great easy option and one that we're going to rely upon a lot during this season.

After you've mentally started to plan out your week and your meals, I always recommend doing some sort of batch cooking for the week. And this doesn't mean meal prepping for five hours on a Sunday, Instead of full meal prep, for me, it can just be helpful to focus on components. So what proteins do we have this week? we have a lot of ground turkey. I'll just cook it all at once.

We have a ton of chicken breast. Let me cook that and then I can use it for multiple meals, whether it's putting it in wraps, whether it's putting it in burrito bowls, in soups, in casseroles, on its own with dipping sauces, right? On a snack tray. Just having that already prepared is takes so much off of your mind for when you're in the moment. For carbs, make a big pot of rice or quinoa or your favorite grain or roast a bunch of potatoes or sweet potatoes, squash.

We're heading out of squash season now, but that's such a great carbohydrate. You can even buy the pre-cut frozen ones and just go ahead and roast those, even microwave them. Those are great.

other batch cooking methods, even just washing, prepping, cutting fruits and veggies so you can put them in individual bags for grab and go. You can just put them in huge containers. We use Stasher bags a lot. They're just reusable on the go bags. And having that already prepped is just, again, one less thing when you have to head out the door. Bonus with cut fruit and veggies is you can add a fun high protein dip.

So we'll link in the show notes, we have a high protein vanilla dip and a chocolate dip. Both are made with cottage cheese, but I promise you would not notice, your kids will not know. It's just giving this extra protein and texture, but they are both delicious and pair great with crackers, fruits, And honestly, just put it in a little Tupperware, bring it to the field, have your cooler packed. That's an easy snack dinner option.

Other prep ideas, just intentionally doubling recipes like I said before, right? Work smarter, not harder. Harder seasons of life, busier seasons don't need to necessarily be harder on you for meal prep. We can take shortcuts. Shortcuts are okay. I am a dietician. I am telling you, shortcuts are okay. Your mental health, your time with your family, your time matters. There are plenty of healthy shortcut options we can take. Freeze those extras, pull them out next week.

Preportion your snacks ahead of time like these take minutes and you can put your kids to work Actually what we do often is we buy the portable trail mix from Costco But sometimes I just buy pumpkin seeds cashews almonds raisins dried fruit and I'll have my kids assemble them in little mini trail mix bags and they like doing this because they can add chocolate chips to

and they're making their own Tromix bags. It's pre-portioned, it's easy to take on the go. It's a great pre or post activity snack. It's full of healthy fats and protein and fiber. involve your kids when you can too.

Aside from meals, I do think we can't skip over snacks. And as you know, if you're a parent and you have kids, snacks are life. We need snacks. And if we're getting creative with dinner, maybe we're eating dinner earlier before activities, they'll probably need a heftier snack after. If we're eating dinner later after activities, they'll probably need a heftier snack or two before.

So being open to that and planning for it is important. There are plenty of healthy snack options out there, right? Whether you're feeding teen athletes, we have a blog post on healthy snacks before practice for teens and older kids. We also have toddler ideas. For toddlers and kids, I will say one thing my kids are into right now, scout bars. Amazing. And they're organic, their ingredients are very wholesome.

They use dates. There are some nuts for the protein, it is plant-based, dairy-free if you need that. They're just tasty and they're easy to take on the go. So that's also something I'm always packing for my toddler. You can get 20 % off with my link, which will be in the show notes if you want to order your first variety pack of Scout bars. Highly recommend that. But kids come home from school hungry. Some kids eat lunch early, very early.

And anyway, school can be a lot. So having an after school snack can be a great way to kind of boost that nutrition and make it bigger than normal. know, make sure it's full of carbs, fat and protein. I like to say no naked snacks. We're not just giving fruit here. We have to offer other nourishing options, especially if they're heading to practice or running around after that. Protein, cheese, nuts, seeds, peanut butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, smoothies.

We love and do all of these things. Healthy fats, a lot of that you can get through nuts. Jerky, we do a lot of jerky. Apples and peanut butter, cheese and crackers, yogurt and granola, smoothies, turkey roll ups, pair it with pretzels or goldfish. this is a great opportunity to add in nutrition. So I like to talk to parents and my clients.

Let's add in nutrition when we can. If we're having an after school snack and usually it's just like fruit, let's add to it now, right? We can preload these little bodies, get them extra nutrition before practice. We're still probably gonna need to feed them something after, but why not get an extra nutrition when we can, right? This is energy for them.

30 to 90 minutes before practice is a good timeframe, right? If they're after school and they have a few hours, probably a hefty afternoon snack will do. You also wanna keep them hydrated, maybe even drink some chocolate milk or something before practice. If their practice is later and they have more time to digest, you might even wanna consider something like a second lunch, a sandwich, like a full turkey roll-up, PB &J.

a breakfast burrito. You could do either lunch part two or dinner part one, whatever works on your family dynamics for how you want to call that. You can split dinner into two things, serve a sandwich now and maybe it's cereal or a smoothie later or leftovers from the night before. Pizza, a lot of people think, pizza is void of nutrition. False, right? We're getting carbs, protein, fat. Cheese is giving us calcium and you can

you know, add some veggies on top. You can serve it with fruit alongside for extra fiber. So again, these are opportunities where we can add things. Think out of the box. It doesn't have to feel right. It doesn't have to feel like this belongs here. Kids don't really care about that. We just want to fuel them and take advantage of these different eating times where we can pump them up with nutrition.

Let's talk about some portable dinner ideas. So if you do find yourself eating at the field, maybe that's just gonna work best for your family or for your other kids while the older kid is practicing. Having some dinner ideas that are portable is helpful. And again, back to our first reframe, it's okay that this looks different. It's probably not gonna be your hot.

chicken and rice casserole that you would eat together at the table, right? We're taking on the go snacks. And if you do cook in a crock pot and you can keep it warm and your kids and family are open to that, that is a great option. But we can also do cold cut sandwiches, deli sandwiches, have some fruit, veggies on the side, right? We're just trying to hit all our components and get food in when we can. We're still eating together.

Some of us maybe, maybe not the whole family, but we're making use of that time and those resources. Pasta salad can be really great for portability. It doesn't have to be warm. You can eat it cold. Of course, if your kids like warm pasta, that's another option. know, warm it up before you leave and then serve it when you get there. Wraps or sandwiches, like I said, chicken salad, tuna salad, turkey, ham, BLTs.

PB &Js, egg sandwiches, right? This is again, where we can make easy, simple things, but they can be totally sufficient for meals. Grain bowls and containers. that can be, again, if you did the meal prep by components, cooked a bunch of chicken, cooked a bunch of rice or sweet potatoes, just throw that in a bowl. That's my favorite kind of meal when I don't know what to eat. Just layer a carb, a protein.

If you have a fun dressing or a sauce or top with avocados, something like that. A bento box meal. Honestly, if you just have different components and you put it in a bento box or a lunch box for kids, they don't know the difference. Just pack what you would normally pack for lunch and just serve that for dinner. We do smoothies a lot in the spring and summer, and they're so portable. They're so easy. I have these toddler smoothie cups.

that come with tops and straws. link them in the show notes. And what I love about smoothies is I put yogurt in, I put milk in. Occasionally I'll give them a little of my protein powder. There's fruits in there, there's spinach in there. Right, they're getting everything. There's chia seeds, hemp seeds. They're nutritionally sound and they love it. Smoothies are great. Sometimes we'll...

put some granola on top. Sometimes we'll pair it with muffins or toast. You can even take waffles, right? Think out of the box. Again, it's not perfection. We're just trying to get by for this busy season. Yogurt parfaits are great. Again, whether you make your own, if you buy like even the yogurt pouches are pretty portable, especially for young kids. So take a yogurt pouch. You could...

have some cereal on the side, you could squirt it into a bowl with cereal or granola, fruit. Another thing we do is the snack dinner, but Mediterranean-ish style. So the little pita breads, I get those from Costco in bulk. Hummus, you can also get the little individual hummus cups, very portable. They also have guacamole cups now, depending on which one you like. So pita bread.

hummus or guacamole. We buy the portable olive cups. Those are great for lunches. If you've never bought olives, for some reason, my kids love salty olives, but they're a healthy fat. So we'll throw that on there. I might throw some Harvest Snap Pea crisps. I love those. They're crunchy like chips, but they're getting protein and fiber. You could have some hard boiled eggs if you did bulk.

Cook your protein, add the chicken or chicken nuggets or meatballs, add some string cheese, right? This is fun for kids. There's a lot of components and different things to choose from. And if you are buying individual servings that are easy to transport, that's very portable. I'm sorry to the environment. We are not as worried about being sustainable in these cases. We do want to feed our family, okay?

⁓ If sustainability and packaging is important to you, of course you don't need to buy the individual sizes. You can buy the bulk and pre-portion them out. It's a little bit more work, but do what works best for your family. Do what fits with your budget and your values. Okay. There's no right or wrong here. I am just sharing so many ideas and tips to help you feel more empowered and hopefully less stressed because these spring sports are going to be during normal dinner time.

So we do have to adapt and figure out what works and if getting takeout works for your family every night Great, you can totally do that, but you don't have to do that. You can also plan plenty of things from home Include healthy convenience items some home-cooked items and you can make it work that way too again I'm not here to judge. I don't care what you do. I just want you to feel less stressed

If you don't have a cooler, it probably is a good idea to buy a cooler and you can call it, the sports cooler, something that you just keep in the trunk every time you're going to a game, add what you need to put in there, put some ice, put some drinks, all of the food options that we've talked about.

Okay, we've shared a lot of ideas. I still think the mental load can be strong, especially for us as moms, right? Spring sports are logistically exhausting. There's a lot to consider. If you have friends or neighbors who are open to carpooling or feeding kids, that's great. Take a night off, offer to do the same for them. but other ways to reduce that mental load, repeat the same meals each week, you know, doing it for four weeks in a row.

isn't going to make or break nutrition. It's predictability for kids. It's easy for you. Again, especially if you're able to cook in bulk and freeze for later. Share snack duty with other parents. I know this is something that we do here in Virginia after games, especially. I'm actually in charge of assigning parents different snack days. I gladly took that on because I am pro snack and

always thinking about feeding the kids. Keep a rotating list of easy dinner ideas, right? This is probably something we should be doing anyway to reduce stress with feeding our family, but especially ones that you know your kids like. And honestly, this can be a great opportunity. Sometimes if kids won't eat something at home at your dining room table, they'll eat it on a picnic blanket. It's wild.

You just change the environment and kids become less picky and open to trying new things. I would recommend being open to things like that too. Just because they don't eat it at home does not necessarily mean they won't eat it on a sunny day while watching their brother play baseball. Never know. Use grocery pickup or delivery. If you're not doing that now, I don't know why you're not doing that. That is like my number one.

tip for busy moms. I used to love going to the grocery store. Now that's just not how I want to spend my time. Although occasionally I will like to go peruse the aisles of Trader Joe's to see what fun new products they have. And I will go to Costco, usually twice a month. Not my favorite thing, but you just kind of have to do that with a big family.

I mentioned before getting the kids involved, right? Packing the trail mix. But when they get home from school, they can work with you on packing their afternoon snack or think about packing their snack for before or after practice, right? Giving them some agency is a good test of responsibility. It's going to help you. It's going to help them give them choices. So you know, it's going to be nutritionally sound and then let them pick from those choices. They can start assembling snacks and meals and the older they get.

the easier this becomes, I promise. I have an almost eight year old and how helpful she is in the kitchen is astonishing and with her young girls shiblings. So I promise there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Okay, let's talk about kind of some grocery staples to keep on hand. We've talked about plenty of easy meal ideas. I'm a big fan of frozen meals. I actually just got back from a conference and

We talked a lot about frozen and prepared products and how they can be so great for introducing kids to new cultural foods that you might, they might not taste otherwise. Getting some of your favorite foods year round, having access to foods that you might not have access to unless you're paying a lot more for takeout. And then we know frozen produce is flash frozen. ⁓

Same with a lot of these frozen mixed dishes. They are very healthy. The food safety behind them is impeccable. There are very high standards. They have to cook everything safely. There may be some extra additives like sodium for food safety and flavor, but I promise you these frozen mixed meals are not out to harm and poison you. They're out to make your life easier, so rely on them.

Pantry staples, pasta, rice, any grains, quinoa, tortillas, canned beans. we do so many canned beans options, whether it's quesadillas, pizza beans, throwing it in a bowl, everything like that. Nut butters.

We do dried fruit a lot. I mentioned nuts, seeds for trail mixes, cereals, granolas, all of that. Fridge staples, yogurt, obviously milk, your choice of milk if you're doing smoothies, eggs, cheese, cheese sticks are life here, hummus, whether you do big or small individual ones.

Fruits, veggies, again, those can be pantry, those can be fresh, those can be frozen, whatever works best for your family. Other freezer staples, meatballs, precooked chicken, meals that you cooked the week before, give them a freeze so you can reuse them. Frozen meal options, frozen fruit, great for smoothies. Convenience foods that we've talked about, rotisserie chicken, bagged salads, precut fruit, precut veggies.

frozen dumplings, Trader Joe's frozen meals are always fun and unique. Costco has great bulk meals. There's a great quinoa salad that I like. depending on what you're looking for, you can pretty much find it at Costco. So that might be worth checking out. Again, you can freeze things, especially if you're not gonna eat it all in one sitting. Burritos, egg burritos, deli sandwiches, deli wraps, convenience-

foods can absolutely be part of feeding your family. So I just want us all to accept that in this busy season of life. Lastly, I did refer to chaos dinners earlier and I just wanted to bring some attention back to that. A lot of the ideas we already mentioned I would call a chaos meal and by chaos meal, I just mean something that you can put together quickly if you have to. If kids get home at 630 and they're starving and you need to feed them and

bathe them and then put them to bed. This is where the chaos meals come into play. A lot of the frozen meals that we talked about, right? But that's where the components can help the rotisserie chicken, the meal prep, the burrito bowls, the rice, hard boiled eggs, smoothies, even a bowl of cereal. That is a huge chaos meal for us sometimes, especially when I don't have anything prepped or I don't feel like prepping.

Give them a bowl of cereal, add some fruit on the side. I might scramble some eggs or add a hard boiled egg or give them some deli turkey, string cheese. You know, we're kind of just adding where we can here. These are backup systems. Again, we don't need to cook everything from scratch. So the freezer is your best friend. Frozen taco meat, shredded chicken, pasta obviously can be a quick cooking option.

We like the Kevin's prepared chicken a lot. You can throw that over rice or in a wrap or pair it with a grain. Frozen veggie burgers, frozen meatballs cook quickly. So those are some of our go-to chaos meals. So come up with a list for your family and those are what you're going to rely on on those busy nights.

So I hope that was helpful. I think the season of life for us especially is not about perfection, right? It's just getting by, reducing effort and stress as much as possible. We want to enjoy the season of life with our kids, watching them explore a new sport or activity, being able to be present as a parent. But we do obviously have to think about the logistics of feeding them. So hopefully some of these can be shortcuts or just things that you can rely on.

and help you be more present and enjoy the spring season just a little bit more. If you have questions or topics for future episodes, I would love to hear them. You can tag me over at managingmealtimemadness on Instagram. And please, please leave a review if you haven't done that for the podcast and we'll be back soon.