Single mum so it falls to me. 3 dc.
I work full time and am fed up of catering to their preferences.
It seems as if we eat the same small list of things on rotation- spag bol, fajitas, roast (with limited veg) something boring and brown with beans, yada yada yada.
Smallest won't entertain veg unless its hidden in a sauce, won't eat curry or anything rice based/couscous
Middle ok but won't eat standard boiled/steamed veg
Eldest picky but eats ok if he feels in the mood- just isn't really bothered with food so I can never tell whether he will eat something or not
I haven't got time to faff about preparing a homemade sauce/2 different meals every evening just to make sure they all get enough veg in them. Even batch cooking in advance is a pain because the sauce still limits us to the same type of meals over and over.
We all need to eat more healthily and middle one and I need to shift a bit of weight.
I've tried getting them involved in meal prep, weve grown our own veg so they might want to eat it etc but still no joy.
I've also tried restricting snacks post after school club so that they are hungrier at dinner time but they get so hangry that I often relent and do a small picky plate of cold meat/the limited veg or fruit that they will deign to accept, because otherwise it's "mum I'm hungry" and whiney whiney whine whine/arguments ahoy x 1000 whilst I'm cooking.
I try and get dinner on the table as quickly as possible and do batch cook so that we have something readily available for those nights where there just isn't time but I am getting so resentful of mealtime boredom!
They are smashing otherwise but this is really bothering me. I dread cooking and its just adding to the stressful dinnertime until bedtime witching hours.