By Taylor Sutton, MS, RDN, LD
We’ve officially made it back to school and into National Family Meals Month. This is the perfect time to start making family meals a normal occurrence in your home. Now, we’re not talking about having gourmet meals seven nights a week because that’s not the world we live in. In our world today, with fast paced lives, busy work schedules, and extracurricular activities, making the time can be a challenge. But let’s look at the fact that preparing and eating meals together, stimulates communication, creates memories, and establishes healthy eating behaviors that have a long-lasting impact.
If you’re looking for a few novel ways to add fun to the family meal, we’ve got you covered with a few ideas:
Have a list of conversation starters that everyone contributes to. This can range from serious to funny questions. Our favorite to get you started is “What’s your favorite meal we make?”
Try an indoor picnic. Having a meal around the table is practical but having it on the floor, in the dining room, or even outside can add a bit of fun to change things up.
Have themed meal days like taco Tuesday or charcuterie Monday even pasta Wednesday! There’s something to be said about expectations with meals and what’s on the menu to look forward to
Create meals based on favorite cookbooks or authors. Have you ever watched a chef on TV or social media and been inspired to make that dish? It’s a great jumping point to recreate it exactly or use it as inspiration. We love trying this once a week and rotating who gets to pick the meal.
Let your child pick the music that’s playing in the background. Music has a way of bringing people together and even though we all have different tastes there’s always something special about listening to what other people listen to.
Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps
Ingredients
- 1 lb Ready Meal Pulled Rotisserie Chicken
- 1 Head Lettuce
- 1/4 c. Dressing of choice (we like a honey mustard, Caesar, or buffalo sauce for this recipe)
- 4 Mission Whole Wheat Tortillas
Directions
Chop your chicken down to the size of chickpeas.
Roughly chop lettuce.
In a large bowl combine the chicken and lettuce.
Pour dressing over top and mix well.
Portion out the meal into 6 tortillas.
