Kids dinners

[Modestandatinybitsexy]

I have a 3.5yo and 18mo. We're stuck in a bit of a pasta rut and I have no new ideas. They're not particularly fussy apart from being slightly avoidant of veg.

A favourite is mushroom pasta, followed by cheese or tomato pasta. Ragu sauces are tolerated but mostly picked around.

Apart from that it's mostly toad in the hole, shepherds pie, chicken and leek pie, chilli, or fish fingers.

I'm looking at the cupboard now and I could make most of those things but I don't really want to! What do you feed your kids.

Whatever DH and I are having. Either at the same time or left overs form the previous evening if they need to eat earlier. Last night was chicken curry, rice and poppadum's. If we need to feed them something else I do have some fishfingers in the freezer (like tonight, DH and I are having steak with friend potatoes, onions and peppers and side salad, the kids will not have the steak but will have fishfingers instead). We have a pizza night once a week, either Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Schnitzel goes down well here, with mushroom sauce for DH and I but DS doesn't like that so has it plain. Tukey meat balls with green veg and the kids have garlic bread with it. 'cowboy chickpeas' which is chickpeas in a homemade bbq/tomato sauce with chicken in and a fried egg on top. Chicken chasseur, shakshuka, baked cod with a parmesan and herb crust (sounds posher than it is!) with lentils, asparagus and cherry toms.

kids are almost 2 and just turned 5.

My little boy loves garlic . One of his favourite is yoghurt and garlic chicken. With a nice salad. I’m struggling to think of new things though.

Have you tried them on:

• mild chicken curry and naan

• mild thai green curry, with loads of veg and rice
• mild chilli con carne (can be made as veggie version)
• slow-cooker beef casserole dumplings, serve veg on the side
• chorizo, tomato, red pepper and butter bean casserole
• vegetable and country bean soup
• fish pie and peas or sweetcorn
• salmon in teriyaki sauce with noodles
• vegetables and chicken stir fry with noodles
• mild fajitas (stir fry some red and yellow peppers and strips of carrot with some fajita spice, let them try some mild salsa sauce in the wraps, can do a little piece of chicken or even frying steak if you want meat in it)
• slow cooker gammon with mash and sweetcorn

Mine are tweens and in a terrible bland food rut. I can't afford to waste time and money cooking stuff they wont eat and as its just me (sp) I rarely cook really tasty stuff for me either. I wish I'd pushed a bit harder for slightly more varied stuff when they were younger but it's mostly roast, sausages, meat pie, occasionally salmon, mince and dumplings, pizza, kievs. They did like mild fajitas for a while.. Food they can build and assemble is good.

Curries- will eat most curries
Homemade pizza
Baked potatoes
Chilli con carne (DD loves a bit of spice)
Chicken keema and rice is always a good favourite
minced chicken bolognaise (or turkey)

Mine will eat most curries too
Recently tried stir fry which took a long time to eat but they seemed to enjoy it
Shepherds pie
Fish pie
Chicken and mushroom pie
Cheese pasties
Traybakes
They have had steak recently (well done and they enjoyed it)
Any type of fish, mash and vegetables
Fish cakes
Kebabs
Baked potatoes
Pakaros
Noodles
Soup
Fajitas
Lancashire hotpot
Mushroom risotto
Lamb couscous

I'd list 'categories' of meals and explore flavours within them: soups (with garlic bread and cheese), casseroles (chicken, beef, sausage, veg), types of pizza (pitta, tortilla wrap), things with potatoes and veg (pork steak, homemade burger, lamb steak, veggie sausage, pasty), pies (mince and onion, cheese and onion), curry (any meat, paneer, chickpea), risotto (bacon and orange, chicken, mushroom), eggs (part of "fry up for dinner", omelettes) etc etc.

Then browse bbc good food, it's brilliant, for good recipes. I meal plan each week and try to choose a couple of new things each week.

Ooh, forgot stir fry- with different meats or veggies, with noodles or on rice.

Bacon and orange? Think I must have meant leek, or red pepper....?!

Definitely whatever we're having, I need to indoctrinate them into all my food lives as I want half decent dinner companions in the future. 😆 (Only half joking)
I serve a lot of fish, quick to cook, wide variety available so never boring and millions of ways to serve it, also nice and soft which makes it appealing for small jaws.

We also laid out the approach with new flavours - if they had a good try at the new meal (and, say, ate all the accompanying veg), they could fill up with a bit of bread and butter if they really hated it. Trying and making a good effort are non-negotiable though.

My daughter doesn't like omelette, but she does like Moon (thin omelette cooked round the edge of the pan so it is crescent shaped), so we eat the moon quite often for lunch.

My dd eats whatever we do, however her favourites:
Sausage casserole with sweet potato mash
Jalfrezi curry/Chinese chicken curry with rice
Scrambled eggs with bacon, mushroom and beans.
Pizza wraps,
Southern fried chicken with sweet potato fries,
Chilli/Bolognese pasta bake
Chicken fajita, rice and salad

Things they can eat with their hands (and make)
Fajitas
Kebabs
Chicken drumsticks
I also named food (did no real harm, she’s 16 now and doesn’t still call chipolata sausages stuck in root mash hedgehog pie 🤣).
We used to have:
Hedgehog pie (see above)
Finding Nemo wraps (salmon in puff pastry)
Cowboy casserole - basically beef stew and dumplings (she makes great dumplings which were the Cowboy hats)
Paddington bear pudding (this was actually Marmalade bread and butter pudding)
Pizza faces (she’d make her own)
I had others which were basically normal family meals just renamed something twee (it never really lasted much past 10.

@Countdowntonothing

DS went through a stage of only eating pizza.

Potatoe pizza (Spanish omlette)
Pizza bread (cheese on toast)
Mexican pizza (Quesadillas)
Indian pizza (chapatti with chicken and veg on top)
Mini pizza (veggie frittas)
Pasta pizza (lasagne)

Basically anything with cheese that I could cut into triangles!

Genius 😊

Ours eat what we eat, unless we're making a special dinner for ourselves (usually on a Saturday, sometimes Friday, then then have fish fingers or pizza or something easy from the freezer). Tonight and tomorrow it's chicken chilli, then baked fish and chips with peas, and the next night is jacket potatoes with like a cheesy coleslaw, cold salad things on the side.

RealisticSketch

My son doesn't like omlette either, but cheesy egg, well that's a lunch time favourite

Tonight we had chicken pie - chicken breast mini fillets cooked in instant pot in chicken soup so really tender, with a big pastry circle on top, with mash and spring greens followed by apple crumble. They loved that. Yesterday we had beef casserole and dumplings, and tomorrow is meatballs with spaghetti and hidden veg sauce. I find it works to cook the things they don't like so much (my two hate the texture of onions and peppers) and whizz them up with a hand blender before adding the things they do like and carrying on with the recipe.

Both my boys love egg in a nest for breakfast - slice of thickly cut bread with a circle taken out with cookie cutter. Fry with an egg broken into the middle, then flip over.

Stuck in a bit of a rut here too. We have:
Cottage pie
Chicken and leak (potato topped)
Bangers, mash, peas
Roast chicken, mash, peas, carrots, gravy
Beef casserole and yorkies
Steak, salad, new potatoes
Homemade pizza
Chilli and rice
Pasta Bolognese
JP with cheese and beans
Fajitas but kids just have plain/cold chicken salad wraps
Freezer food (not very often)
Occasionally have curry
Occasionally have stir fry

Think that's about it.