I've started to dread a particular kind of evening. The sort where everyone's home, nobody has anywhere to be, and somehow within about four minutes we've all wandered off to separate screens in separate rooms.
I'm not anti-screen. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I claimed to be. But every now and then I get the urge to do something with the kids that isn't just sitting next to them while we all stare at different things, and that's usually where it goes wrong, because most of the "wholesome family activity" ideas you find online are either expensive or need a load of stuff I don't have in.
Food tends to work better. Everyone's going to eat anyway, so you're not really adding a job to the evening, you're just making the job a bit more fun. Asian home cooking is particularly good for this. A lot of it is really just assembly, which makes it forgiving, and there's usually plenty for small hands to get involved with. These are the ones we actually come back to.
Rolling your own sushi
It looks far more impressive than it is. You don't have to use raw fish if you don’t want to, which can be a relief on a normal weeknight. Cucumber and avocado are the easy fillings, but cooked prawns, smoked salmon, leftover chicken or even a bit of cream cheese all do the job.
The one thing you do need is a little bamboo rolling mat, and kids tend to love the actual rolling. Squashing it all into a log and then cutting it into rounds feels like a real achievement, even when the first couple collapse completely, which they almost always do.
If the idea of buying rice, rice vinegar, nori and everything else from three different places puts you off before you've even started, you can get a MoruEats sushi-making set with everything you need in one box. That's what I do now, having long since accepted I'm never going to be the sort of person with a well-stocked Asian larder.
Pressing onigiri
If sushi feels like a stretch, onigiri are the easier option. They're little pressed rice shapes, usually triangles, with something tucked in the middle, and they're genuinely hard to get wrong.
You can press them in damp hands or use a cheap plastic mould that does the triangle shape for you, which I'd recommend if you want to keep the frustration levels down. Tuna mayo is the usual filling. A cube of cheese works for the children who view anything unfamiliar with deep suspicion. A bit of furikake sprinkled over the top makes them look properly made. They also keep well for lunchboxes the next day, which is about as organised as I get.
A build-your-own ramen night
This is what I do when I've got no energy left but still want the evening to feel like a bit of an event. You sort out a base, and a good shop-bought broth or a decent instant noodle is absolutely fine here, then you put a few bowls of toppings on the table and let everyone make up their own.
Soft-boiled egg, sweetcorn, crabsticks, spring onions, leftover chicken, some greens, chilli oil if anyone's feeling brave. The useful part is that fussy eaters can quietly leave out the things they don't like without it turning into a whole discussion, and for reasons I've never really understood, children will happily eat vegetables they'd normally refuse if they've put them in the bowl themselves.
Folding dumplings, if you're feeling ambitious
This one's a bit more involved, so it suits older children better. You buy ready-made dumpling wrappers, make up a simple chicken or vegetable filling, and the job becomes folding and pinching the little parcels shut, which is fiddly in a good, absorbing sort of way. Some will split. Some will end up looking fairly tragic. You cook them anyway and they taste exactly the same.
A few things worth knowing
The main one is to drop your standards early. None of this is meant to look neat at first, and the moment you start trying to make it look like a restaurant you've taken all the fun out of it.
It also helps to give everyone something to do, even if that's just tearing up nori or being put in charge of the topping bowls. And there's no need to buy loads. The whole point is a cheap, low-pressure evening in rather than a new hobby, so pick one thing and keep it simple.
It's never going to be perfect, and there will be rice on the floor for days afterwards. But everyone's in the same room for once, doing the same thing, with their phones face-down on the side, and most weeks I'll take that.
