Batch cooked meals for toddler

[spnfan]

Hello all!

A friend of mine just had her second child. Her first has just turned 2.

I was thinking of ways I could help her out in these early days and thought I could do some frozen lunches for her eldest so all she needs to do is chuck them in the microwave and the toddler is fed!

Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated.

Why not batch cook meals for the whole family? I think I would be annoyed at having to heat something up for my child and then also still cook something for myself.

I'm due at any moment and I did a load of frozen batch cooked meals for all of us. Beef bolognese, beef stew, lentil stew, mild veg chilli, beef lasagna, chicken and vegetable soup, all the sorts of things we can have with an easy to prepare carb (rice, mash, pasta, toast). I also have lots of snacks stockpiled for myself and also my dd to keep her occupied (fruit leathers, dried fruit, a little bit of chocolate as a treat, crackers and breadsticks, etc. plus some activities like a few new DVDs and colouring books).

That’s such a thoughtful idea! I’m sure your friend would appreciate that - much better than yet another baby grow! My two year old loves Mac and Cheese which is really easy to batch cook. I also steam and then mash cauliflower and broccoli into it so she gets extra veggies. You could do mini cottage pies, spag bol, pasta bake. We freeze ours in mini ikea plastic tubs which are perfect for little appetites.

I used to make a sort of cottage pie base - beef and onion etc with baked beans on top then mashed sweet potato on top of that, frozen into individual ramekins.

As some toddlers can be really fussy, I’d agree with making meals for the whole family rather than just one. I found Feeding the toddler the easy bit as most days he was happy with a sandwich and some veg or I could put DC2 in the sling and get us both something.