What is a “Crappy Dinner” you might ask?

Well, we didn’t invent the term, but we sure have put it into practice. While not every dinner is a crappy one, they are a test of friendship.

Let me explain — Several years ago, several years into our friendships and struggles to make good, healthy dinners for our families (and of course, once our older kids were eating normal food and were past the baby food stage), Erin found an article on Scary Mommy that talked about dinner with friends, and the meaning of true mommy friendship. Essentially said “be a community and don’t care what your house looks like!” That gave us a new opportunity for community.

“You mean, I don’t have to have a clean house to have friends over for dinner? I don’t have to make a special shopping trip and cook a gourmet dinner for my friends to like me or want to spend time with me?”

It was life changing.

Our first of many Crappy Dinners began as an attempt to throw dinner together without ANY preparations, house cleaning, or focus on “entertainment” and were strictly to share a meal, play-time, (and let’s be honest) a bottle of wine, with our closest mommy friends, while maintaining pure acceptance for who we are to each other. We started our Crappy Dinner traditions, and have never looked back.

Sometimes we have enough stuff lying around to make a cohesive meal for 12 (Mexican food is a fave, thanks to the Instant Pot and 40 minute “refried beans”), and sometimes they get whatever we all have in the fridge that needs to be consumed by an upcoming date, but whatever we’re making, the kids fail to complain. They join the heard of other kids, eat their food, and enjoy their play-time together, while we enjoy the sweet reprieve of not having to be the sole entertainer for an evening.

It’s gotten more complicated to maintain these weeknight Crappy Dinners, as we’ve all moved further ends of Los Angeles, further away from each other, but we still try to get together and enjoy our traditions whenever we can.

As four busy, working, food obsessed moms, who want to do the best for and by our kids, our group text thread (which some years ago someone named “Hot Moms”), is a daily event. Though we talk almost every day, and have for going on 6 years, we have one major theme, and that’s food. “What’s for dinner?” “Who has a recipe for X?” “How do I cook this thing that showed up in my farm box?” “I’m bored with this thing and need a new way to cook it.” All day, every day.

After 6 years of losing texts with recipes, asking for the same thing from the same person again, and after years of forgetting to write stuff down and put it in a place where we’ll remember to find it, we gave figurative birth to this new endeavor, “Hot Moms, Crappy Dinners,” as a way to help us keep our shared recipes organized and somewhere we can find them again.