Weeknight dinners can be impossible. Many of us moms rely on pizza, chicken nuggets, and a bevy of microwaveable items from the grocery store to get us through the week. There’s one fun way to spice up weeknight dinners, though, if you have a couple of friends with some killer casserole recipes. Organize a supper swap with some of your busy mom friends; it’s a great excuse to get together, try each other’s dinner specialties, and throw some variety into your suppers!
My neighbors and I call it “The Busy Moms Supper Swap,” and we’ve fine-tuned our food swapping skills over the last year. We started the supper club when comparing notes about how our weeknight dinners were dull, lacking in variety, and basically limited to whatever we could heat up quickly. So far, it’s been a delicious success. Here’s how the supper swap works for us.
We meet on a Sunday evening once a month. Sunday evening is a great time for us, since the weekend is winding down, we’ve had all day to find an hour or so to cook, and there’s usually a ton of gossip from the weekend to keep us entertained when we’re not talking food! We rotate houses, with the hostess for that month providing some wine and a couple easy snacks, such as veggies and dip.
There’s four of us, and we each bring two suppers. Basically, each Mom creates a double batch of her supper, with each batch containing at least four servings. Creating a double batch is a pretty manageable task, and doubling a recipe is a lot easier than tripling one. This means that we each show up with two suppers and two of the three remaining women in the group gets to take home that particular meal. This works well for several reasons. Some families are more partial to certain ingredients and meals than others, and each mom ends up leaving with two different meals for her family, which we’ve discovered is plenty for the month. Also, if a meal is a hit, a mom can create it again and the woman who didn’t get to try it last time will get a chance!
We make freezer friendly meals. The whole point of the supper swap is to be able to pull a meal out of the freezer or fridge, stick in the oven, and be able to eat an hour later with minimal fuss on our parts. Thus, each meal we bring to the swap must freeze well. Good examples of this are noodle or rice based casseroles (there are countless casserole recipes!), meat loafs, stuffed manicotti, marinated meat and vegetable dishes, enchiladas, soups, stews, and pot pies. Once you get the hang of cooking ahead for the freezer, you can figure out how to create most favorites for the freezer!
We have agreed to keep our food container dishes in rotation. Basically, there’s an understanding that our glass baking dishes and other food containers are in constant rotation until the sad day comes when the Busy Moms Supper Swap disbands.
The supper swap has been a fun way for us neighbors to get together, share our favorite recipes, socialize, and give each other the gift of an easy weeknight meal. And, for one Sunday morning of cooking one specialty, we each end up with two nights of food! Mathematically, it works out beautifully. The dishes are usually pretty healthy since they’re homemade, and I’ve tried so many great casseroles that I would never have thought to make myself. If you’ve got three neighbors or friends in need of some weeknight solutions and a little girl time once a month, why not start your own Busy Moms Supper Swap? Your hungry family will thank you!