Spanish Date Night with our kids

Last updated on November 19th, 2023 at 12:20 am

We have been taking Spanish classes as a family for a few years now and I have even been for years before that. We also have a huge love for Spanish food. While I am not the best chef in the world, my skills stop at baking, it’s always great to find brands that you can make at home and taste good.

This week we have been under the weather with sick children and Mr P too. I thought we needed a much needed relaxing family date night in. I love a good date night with Mr P but I also like to make special date nights with our kids. As a family we deserve to be spoiled and celebrated together as much as Mr P and I do as a couple.

This particular night, I choose a Spanish theme and a movie. I let Buba pick the movie out and I had heard great things about Lidl’s great new limited Spanish & Iberian range. I have never shopped at Lidl before as there isn’t one near us. After seeing how great the prices are for all the normal things I buy anyways I was really impressed and excited for the one being built down the street from us. 

We decided on a tapas & pizza buffet night. On most nights we eat quite formal with their plates already filled and handed to them. There really is never any food up for grabs on the table. It was so lovely to fill the table with paella, pepperoni sticks, pizza, tapas chicken, and croquets and all tuck in. The kids thought it was heaven to have the table so full in front of them and being able to just grab whatever they wanted to try and serve themselves. It was definitely a special night for them. 

Buba kept asking who’s birthday it was which really tickled me. Sometimes it great to do something fun and different for the whole family. It seems small but it was a big deal as the kids don’t get many treats like pizza and dessert which are definitely huge deal to them. It was lovely seeing them be independent and deciding on what they wanted. 

Mr P loved the paella, and I was so impressed with how homemade it tasted. Scouts honor! It was so easy to make too which is a bonus when you are busy working all day and rushing to get something on the table. The chicken tapas came in their own dishes which is a huge bonus for a foodie like me and tastes great. The croquets and pollo con chorizo were not my favorite nor Mr P’s as they were a little greeay but the kids loved them. The pizza was right up our street, spicy and thin crust what’s not to love about that. Missy Moo is a huge fan of spice so this range suited her perfectly. 

You can see how good the food looks above. I made the paella in this casserole dish and the pizza was easy to just toss directly on the rack in the oven along side the tapas chicken dishes too. If you have an oven you can have a lovely buffet style dinner ready in under twenty five minutes. 

It was a great night spent at the table chatting to the kids and between Mr P and I. We probably spent longer at the dinner table then we normally do but those are always some of my greatest memories growing up for me and I want that for my own kids. This night has really made me want to spend more time at the table as a family. Sometimes when our lives get busy we rush dinners and what to put on the table but I think I have been doing that too much lately. It’s nice to see how excited the kids got over just picking their own foods out. I want to make date night with our kids a once a month tradition where I put on a buffet and let them dig in and the really cherish our time together as a family (not that I don’t already).

If the buffet and movie talk wasn’t enough to get the kids excited. The Spanish & Iberian desserts I brought to the table afterwards just about knocked the kids off their chairs. Missy Moo actually squealed when I gave her an almond cookie. I was most impressed with the desserts from this range. While I am a huge pizza girl I also have a massive sweet tooth and I could have ate the entire box of almond cookies or the almond nougat circle myself and gladly not shared.

Missy Moo has a sweet tooth like her parents so she wasted no time digging in and trying a piece of everything. She preferred the heart shaped puff pastries the most, while her brother loved the sweet pastry swirls more. 

As I said I would have ate the whole box of almond biscuits (cookies) and the almond turron (nougat) with my hot cup of tea. Mr P loves any dessert and I think his sweet tooth is far beyond anyone’s in the family so we tucked into a little (a lot) of it all.

We don’t usually have a pudding (dessert) after dinner unless it’s someone’s birthday or a special occasion so it was great to spoil the kids for our family date night.

The fun didn’t end with our buffet dinner and desserts. We let the kids stay up a little later to finish the movie Groods! We scooped it up at Lidl for a mere £3 bonus!!! It was a great family movie to watch together all snuggled up in our pjs. I love watching movies together with my kids and husband.It was the middle of the week and our routines were in full force and every once in a while I think it’s important to let that all go and just make good memories together. We left bath time for the morning, we ate more goodies then we should, and we stayed up a little later but all that doesn’t matter because we were spending quality time with our kids. Family date nights, I think are just as important as date nights as a couple. While the kids are still young enough to want to hang out with their parents all evening I will take full advantage of it.

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