dinner on wheels

We are cruising through a longer Daddy-less stretch and also prepping for a few weeks away from home.  And what that means is we are scrambling to make meals happen :)  I'm aiming to just cook once a day (apart from breakfast, which is both cooking and not-cooking, depending on what label you use for things like big pots of oatmeal and dozens of fried eggs).

This afternoon I found myself without a dinner plan (ha!) and five hungry kids to feed, so we headed outdoors on a combination of bikes and roller blades and scooters.  First stop? picking up some photos I had developed.  Next stop?  something for dinner!

We ended up at a little hole-in-the-wall type place for 包子 and 稀饭 (fist-sized meat-filled dumplings and watery rice soup).  But it wasn't quite enough to fill all the tummies all the way, so we planned a little extra stop right at the gate of our complex.

Deep fried potatoes, hot hot hot.  (temperature-wise and spicy-wise!)

We rolled up to this rolling cart and wheels = convenient, whether they are roller blading kiddos or carts full of deep fried potatoes and all the fixins'.

We bought our potatoes, rolled on inside the gates and settled down on benches just outside our building to munch our second course.  We had a beautiful view of newly-lit-up trees as the skies darkened - the maintenance staff here is busy decorating for Chinese New Year and we watched them put those lights in the trees before we left for dinner.

All in all, dinner was a win.  Now I just gotta figure out what we are going to do about tomorrow :)