What can I feed my 3yo? Please help!

[CupcakeBlues]

Our cooker (oven and hob) stopped working earlier today. It's going to be a week at least until we can get a new one ordered and fitted.

In the meantime, I'm struggling to think of meals I can do for our 3yo DS. He's a fussy eater and normally we do a lot of roasts, baked fish, boiled vegetables, noodles, plain pasta etc. DH and I can survive on microwave meals until the new cooker comes but DS doesn't like the kids ones (I've tried him on them in the past and he finds them too mushy).

Tonight's dinner was microwave cheesy mash with carrot sticks.

Plan for tomorrow is cheese sandwiches with sweetcorn cooked in the microwave for lunch and then cold chicken and ready-made pasta salad for dinner.

Struggling a bit for inspiration. I'd happily feed him takeaway food but he won't touch most of it (with a McDs Happy Meal, for instance, he only eats the fries).

Any ideas welcome! What can I do with a microwave, toaster and kettle that a fussy 3yo will eat?

Beans on toast?
Scrambled egg
Have you a slow cooker?

No slow cooker. Though maybe now is the time to invest ! We'll have to see how much the new cooker is going to be, though - it's going to be an expensive month .

I've never cooked beans on toast in microwave before but I suppose it's possible . Ditto scrambled eggs...don't they come out rubbery? I usually do my scrambled eggs on the hob with milk and cheese and they come out beautifully fluffy. But we do have 6 eggs to use up...

Microwave noodles
Not great but those microwavable chips.
Cheese on toast
Waffles in the toaster
Spaghetti hoops
Tinned macaroni cheese/ravioli
Dairylea on toast

You can get tinned spag bol etc

We could do microwave chips and cold chicken. He's not a big meat eater and won't eat ham.

Will he eat soup? Can get fresh or cans and heat in the microwave.
Baked potato cooked in the microwave

Microwave rice and precooked meat with salad veg

BBQ

I believe Asda pizza counters can cook the pizzas for you

OP my slow cooker was 9.99 from Asda, their own make. It’s great!! It doesn’t need to be expensive. Get some of those toastabags to do toasties? We use the microwave for tin Ed’s beans, peas etc a couple of mins in a bowl. Absolutely fine. We also do rice in it. You can buy ready made jacket potatoes frozen too which are fine.

Tinned not tin Ed 🤣

Microwave rice

You can cook fish and chicken breast Sun the microwave

Crumpets, cheese and beans

I'm pretty sure you can cook pasta with the microwave. Noodles would also cook in boiling water, possibly heated again in the microwave. Ditto for boiled veg.

What about getting a cooked chicken from the supermarket for tye roast meat part. Fish in the microwave.

Beans are fine in the microwave. Personally I'm not a fan of scrambled eggs that way, but worth a try. Otherwise, Delia boils an egg by bringing water to the boil, turning off the heat and putting in the egg. So boiled eggs are probably possible.

Can you get a table-top plug in hob? When our old cooker died (spectacularly!) we used a couple of plug-in induction hobs for a month - we were able to borrow them, which kept the cost down; they start at £35 each on Amazon.

Toast, avocado, cream cheese, tinned salmon.

Sub toast for crumpets, wraps, pitta and English muffins

Cottage cheese with any of the above

Sub salmon with tuna or mackerel

Hummus + ^^

Does your DS eat potato waffles? Because when recently reading the packet you can cook these in a toaster- who knew!

Re: beans on toast - if you have one of the sistema microwave soup Tupperware - beans on full power for 3 mins, lid on - I never heat beans on hob now, so much easier.

Also the trick for microwave scrambled eggs is to mix your eggs, splash of milk and knob of butter together and microwave on high for a minute, stop stir so all of the "cooked" edges go into the middle and repeat until almost looking cooked because obvs microwave food continues to cook for a short while so always stop when it still looks a little sloppy. I always microwave scrambled eggs.

I could get some of those microwave veg bags. He'll eat microwave rice (we often have this with chilli) and I could try to find a microwave chilli (although he only really likes the chilli I make - it's the same with mac cheese and bolognese ).

Do you know anyone who camps? They'd probably have a little gas stove you could maybe borrow (the type with gas cannisters)? They're pretty cheap if you have a go outdoors/decathlon near you and sometimes supermarkets have them at this time of year? X

Have you tried him on the little dish ready meals? They're great and so handy.

Do you have a George foreman? Most things can be cooked on there!

Do you have a friend or relative who would let you use their kitchen to batch cook chilli etc? Then you can just reheat portions in the microwave.

Someone will lend you a slow cooker, we don't use ours all summer anyway.

We don't know any campers unfortunately! We're several hours away from family and we don't normally batch cook since we have a tiny kitchen and so just have a small fridge-freezer (live in a city so tiny house). Chilli is my go-to meal but we normally store it in the fridge and eat over 3 days so no spare portions unfortunately.

We do have lots of shops/takeaways within reach. Most major supermarkets, Lidl, Aldi, M&S food etc. I've tried my DS on the M&S kids microwave meals (mostly rejected - though I eat them up and I think they're yummy!). Haven't tried the Little Dish ones so I'll give them a go.

He won't eat soup but we can definitely do beans on toast in the microwave. We've never tried potato waffles but we could give those a go. He'll eat tinned tuna with sweetcorn pasta so we could try cooking pasta in the microwave.

Avocado, houmous, cottage cheese are all out unfortunately...he ate all of these as a baby but won't touch them anymore. He will eat cous cous and kidney beans.

Jamie Oliver has a nice veggie chilli in a pouch you just stick in the microwave, you can have that with microwave rice.

You can also do polenta and couscous with just water from the kettle and seasoning.

Have you got a garden? BBQ?

We have a (very small) garden - no BBQ but we could get a couple of those disposible ones and cook some sausages. I'm not sure I'd trust them to cook chicken on.