Family Food for Moms .com Dinner Table
Celebration, Podcast

Episode 35 – How to Arrange a Special Fun Dinner for Your Family at Short Notice

Today we’re going to talk about how to arrange a special dinner for your family on short notice. Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m missing all those wonderful Christmas meals that we had in December. We had some graduation meals for our kids. There were the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day meals. There were other celebrations. There was a birthday, and another birthday in January. There was so much slowing down during that time, and making things special – having a special meal where we enjoyed each other’s company. We relaxed, we played games, we did stuff that we hadn’t done before, and we ate good food and made memories together. 

Suddenly things were very busy in January. Homeschool was going on, and work, and lots of cooking for various things, plus some extra challenges on top of that. Then it felt like we hadn’t spent as much time with our kids, and we hadn’t spent enough family time together enjoying each other, so on the spur of the moment, I decided to have a special meal that evening. I had the day to plan it, though I did have other stuff going on during the day, so I kind of did it in between. I didn’t have a lot of preparation time, so I wanted to talk to you about how that worked and how I was able to put that together in a short time. 

So, we’re going to go through some steps to help you get there if you want to do this. Hopefully this will make it easy and practical. We’ll talk about the food, but also the activities and ambience, and all those things.

The first thing to do is to decide what your objectives are. What do you want to achieve? For me, I decided we wanted to have fun together. We wanted to have a bit of laughter, and be relaxed. I wanted to have good conversation and closeness, and just spend the evening doing something fun together.

You may decide you want to do a formal, fancy dinner where everybody dresses up and looks smart, where you have elegant music playing, and a beautiful table setting. Or you may decide to have a more casual, family fun night style, where you just wear what you have on, but have lots of games and connection. So, I decided to have a fun, relaxed evening.

Then the next step is to brainstorm how to achieve your goals. I thought of some things for my goal of having fun and laughter. We printed out some Mad Libs – I found them online with an easy search. I found some Star Wars ones that some of our teenagers would appreciate, and then some other funny ones for our younger child – just a few different options. I printed them out, and then I found some jokes online on some good websites, and I previewed them to see if they were worth using. Then I was thinking of doing a quiz with facts, but I found kind of an escape room quiz where you had to answer questions, but then you had to solve problems using codes and things, which I know the younger one would enjoy. I printed out the escape room quiz game, and I also got out some conversation starter cards for if we wanted to chat and we were stuck for topics. I also thought of Tenzi, and had a couple of games like that on the side. 

So, think about what your family’s enjoyed in the past – maybe a game like drawing a funny creature, where each person draws one part of the body, and then you fold it over and pass it on, and the next person draws the next part. This works with a story as well. The first person writes the introduction to the story, and the next part is written by the next person, and etc. Then you read them out loud at the end. Think about things you’ve done that your family has enjoyed, or google some ideas. You won’t use everything that you plan, but it’s nice to have them ready, and then depending on the mood and how people seem to be, if they’re enjoying things, you can do those extra things. 

Over the Christmas period we enjoyed a game where we put a long metal table in the living room, and we lined the edges with books, soft cover books that we had lying around. Then, using toilet rolls and a large coin, we played a game of hitting the coin to each other. The goal is to try to hit the coin with the toilet roll off the edge of the other person’s side, and you get a point but they’ll try and hit it back obviously, so it’s just a fun hitting back and forth game, but it can be quite rowdy and lots of fun.

So, just see what you can add to your list that you feel like doing, and that you think your family will be in the mood for. Then you have the activities planned.

Next would be to think of special touches that you want to add. If you’re having a special meal, maybe you want to make specific place names for each person, put out an elegant menu, or maybe find little containers to put a little chocolate or two in at each place.

You can do anything unusual to change the mood of dinner. Think of some music. If you’re doing some kind of theme, you can do specific music for it, like if you’re doing a Lord of the Rings theme or a Star Wars theme, you can use that music, and then try to think of anything that would go with that theme. Maybe you can make a headdress for each person to wear if it’s a Lord of the Rings theme. You could have fun eye masks for each person. On New Year’s Eve we had tons of glow sticks of different shapes and sizes. Some for earrings, some for bangles or necklaces, some for swords. We also had photo props to take photos – the ones on a stick where you hold up a mask or a hat or a pirate eye patch, or anything like that. We also had party poppers and sparklers. Just add a few small touches to make something fun. You don’t have to make it a huge expense if it’s not a particular occasion – just look what you have in your cupboards, and often you’ll find something you can use. 

Think about props, and think about decor. Do you want to bring anything in from outside? You can do things like flowers, or leaves like ivy leaves. Do you want to use special napkins, maybe paper napkins with special patterns on them? Do you want to use your fancy glasses, your fancy crockery? Do whatever you feel like. Decide on your music for ambiance. Decide on what kind of lighting you want. After all the planning, it’s quick to get it set up in the evening. If everyone helps, and you know the plan, it doesn’t have to take long. 

The next thing would be to think of a menu that matches your activity plan. If we’re having a games evening, it’s often fun to have finger food for an appetizer. You can do things like little sausage rolls, little pies, deli meat, cheese, and fruit like grapes. A charcuterie board is also a nice appetizer for a fancier meal. 

We were going to do halloumi and zucchini for our appetizer, but then somehow I couldn’t get what I needed in time, so we ordered a little bit of sushi as our appetizer, and for our main course we had ravioli. I ordered some pre-made beef ravioli and some pecorino sauce, and we just cooked that up, and that was slightly elegant, different to usual, and delicious.

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Think about what each of your children might want to help with in the cooking. Ask them if there’s anything they’d like, if you’re not sure of what to eat, but have something that’s easy for you, something that’s not going to require you to be busy, so that you can be part of the festivities. We started with the Mad Libs, because it always helps everyone relax and get the right mood going. Then we did the quiz game, and we did it in between courses with lots of chatting along the way. 

It’s also good to try and have your house stuff out of the way beforehand – no washing left to fold, nothing specific that you have to do that evening, so that you can just go with the conversations that happen. You can even do your dinner chores like packing the dishwasher together, and chat while you’re doing them. Just relax and let the evening run its course. Be present, and have fun. 

If you’d like to do a dessert course, you could do something fancy like cheese and biscuits with coffee, or you could do hot chocolate, or something like that. You could do something like an ice cream bar where everybody helps themselves – a DIY with sprinkles and chocolate flakes, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and different flavors of ice cream. This might be a bit too much to organize at short notice, but ice cream would be easier than my next idea, which is cupcakes – you each decorate your own cupcake; add your own frosting, and your own decorations, like candy of some kind. That requires a bit more preparation, but I think it’s still lots of fun and helps you to laugh and relax together. 

Another delicious dessert idea that works well at the last minute, and doesn’t require much preparation in advance, is a chocolate fondue. All you need to do is, just before dessert, melt a couple of chocolate bars. I would use Dark Lindt, like 70%, and then add a tiny bit of cream, but not too much. It’s best to melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Once it’s melted, you either put one bowl in the center, or a little bowl for each person. This works well because it’s less messy. Each person gets a small bowl of melted chocolate, and things to dip in it. Sliced banana, cherries, and sliced apple are yummy with this. You use fondue forks and you dip in the chocolate, coat the fruit with the chocolate, and then eat it. It’s so yummy! 

Somehow an evening like this just helps everybody to reset and reconnect, and to feel close, because somehow being busy is hard to get your head out of sometimes, especially for mom and dad working, or working from home, or just doing all the things that are needed in the family home. It’s really great to do something that’s fun together, and that’s a yummy dinner, and it feels like you go to a bit of an effort without it being too much work. 

I hope you can get a few ideas, and let me know if you try this. I would love to hear what you do. My email address is karyn@familyfoodacademy.com. Also, if you’d like some conversation starters, we have a free download on our website. If you go to familyfoodformoms.com/conversation, you can download the PDF with the conversation starters for dinnertime.