struggling with meal ideas

[BabyMamma93]

Malakai has cereal for breakfast, usually something wheat-y if not he will have toast, but im really struggling for lunch, dinner & snack ideas!

ive looked online but im crap and finding things on the web.

Can anyone suggest any quick, easy and pretty cheap meal and snack ideas,
He will sometimes eat Banana, wont eat carrots any more, he likes just about anything apart from carrots and fruit, how can i get fruit in his diet if he wont eat it? i did give him half of my smoothie that i got from the shop the other day and he loved it, maybe i should do that?

ive noticed the things he doesnt like holding in his hand are anything with a wet, cold or slippery texture, and this is the same with eating, he will sometimes eat a banana, but he wont eat grapes, apples, strawberries etc. he wouldn't eat tuna pasta for tea last night, but he will eat pasta bolognese.

as for snacks, i made him some cheese twists using puff pastry but he hurt him gums eating them, i got him some dairylea dunkers and he loved them but i think these may be a bit too crappy for a 1 year old? he loves bread but i dont want to give him sandwiches every day.. no one told me this was going to be the hardest part!!

i will add that i do like to get meat or fish in his diet at least once a day, but the odd meat free meal i dont mind

 

[noon_child]

If he doesn't like slippery textures, I'd give him a fork to use for things like strawberries, mango chunks etc.

Cauliflower and broccoli in a cheese sauce is a tasty veg option.
Vegetable stew (or a meat stew with veg in).
I did a lot of toast pizzas at that age too (where you use a piece of toast instead of a pizza base) with a homemade tomato sauce with chopped up mushrooms and peppers hidden in it.
Noodles stir fried in a tiny bit of soy sauce and honey (Yey being 1 he can have honey!) was a fav for my LO. I would add sweet corn, leftover fish, peas, whatever was around and cook it all in the slightly salty slightly sweet sauce.

For snacks, cheese chunks, banana chunks with peanut butter, rice cakes, hummus, blueberries, cucumber sticks, yoghurt (sometimes with cereal mixed in).

If you are worried about wheat intake of bread is a favourite of his you could try swapping his breakfast to something oaty instead of wheaty.

 

[MindUtopia]

Personally, I would just offer him a wide variety of things and not worry about whether he doesn't eat them or doesn't like the feel of them or whatever. Because one day, he magically won't care and he'll devour them. They go through these weird phases all the time where they won't eat certain things, but if you limit offering them, it will become a food he permanently refuses. If he is continually offered it, one day he'll just eat it and love it, and it will limit any pickiness that might be developing. So I just would try not to necessarily come up for ideas of things that you think he'll eat, just come up with really varied meals and snacks, even if he doesn't eat any of it. And then offer the same sorts of things again, even if he doesn't eat it, etc. If that makes sense?

So for lunches, we often do sandwiches, or cheese and cold meats with crackers or oatcakes, with vegetables, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, baby tomatoes, and then yogurt or a fruit (usually fresh, sometimes dried fruit like raisins, dried cranberries, dried apple rings or banana chips). Or sometimes hummus with breadsticks or oatcakes to dip in it, plus the assorted sides above.

For snacks, I tend to offer a vegetable or fruit with something more calorie dense like a carb or a protein. So half a banana with some crackers, or cheese cubes with blueberries, or oatcakes with apple slices, or grapes with a yogurt, etc. Smoothies are also great. I don't make them as much anymore, but I used to make them a lot. Try to make them yourself rather than buying (probably cheaper anyway) as some of the store bought ones have added sugar. You can even add in spinach for some extra nutrients. I used to make one with a banana, half a mango, some yogurt and a handful of spinach, then a tiny bit of honey or agave nectar if it wasn't quite sweet enough. Banana, berries (frozen are cheapest), and yogurt is good too.

As for main hot meals like dinner (for us, lunch tends to be a cold meal), really it's anything you can think of that you feel confident cooking, but we often do pasta with pesto and peas stirred in, which is a big favourite, and heavy on vegetables as there is basil or rocket in the pesto and peas obviously too. Fish pie or cottage pie is good and usually pretty easy to make, then serve with a roasted or steamed veg of some sort - peas, broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, etc. Then anything that falls under your typical 'meat and two veg' type dinners, so tonight we're having baked salmon, jacket potatoes, and roasted beetroot. For the beetroot, it's really easy, I just wash them, chop off the knarly root and stem bits, cut into about 1 cm square pieces, and roast in some olive oil til they start to get soft, then I squeeze some honey over top, add some fresh thyme (which we have in our garden, but dried will do or leave it out), and roast until it becomes more caramelised. Sometimes I also do carrots and beetroot like that. Or roast chicken, mash and broccoli. Tomorrow we're having a bit of an easy dinner - steak and ale pie (store bought - I try not to use a lot of ready made things because of the salt, but once in a while it's fine), mash and peas. So I think things like that are good when you just don't have time and energy to cook. And then you can add vegetables and things to lots of stuff, like spag bol. You can chop up courgettes and carrots fairly fine and add them in to squeeze in an extra bit of veg.

Basically, past a year, they really can and should be eating whatever you are. So it's more about just getting yourself a cookbook or looking online for recipes for easy family meals and trying all sorts of things. It doesn't matter if you think he'll eat it. Just keep making lots of different things and eating together as a family. You'll be amazed what they'll suddenly try and love one day when they've been turning their nose up at it for so long. My daughter refused to eat raw tomatoes (probably because I don't really like them), and would never even try one until she was about 2. I just kept offering them here and there though, knowing she'd probably not eat them, then one day she did, and now tomatoes are one of her favourite foods!

 

[BabyMamma93]

thank you that helped alot, i think its because we eat really crap why i go out of my way more with Malakai, we are pretty much always strapped for cash atm and crappier foods are cheaper to get, but them in spending more getting M something good sometimes, im going to look for a few cook books maybe with recipes on a lower budget.

 

[Smiler82]

I hate cooking and have zero imagination when it comes to meals! I just bought a recipe book called Top Bananas! which is a compilation of recipes from Mumsnet. It only arrived the other day but I could immediately see they were things I could do quickly and easily It has good ideas for all meal times and snacks as well. DS can be a bit fussy and I do tend to stick to what I know he will eat, but I always put things on the plate I know he likely won't eat, but sometimes he will play with those things, put them in his mouth etc so even if he doesn't actually eat them I am at least glad he's showing an interest, and just hope one day he'll eat them properly!