your top 3 favourite meals for your LO's

[mousemole]

I feel like I am stuck in a rut with meals for my ds's aged 3 and 5. I feel like I am serving too much meat. The arrival of ds3 10 days ago has robbed me of inspiration- please can you let me know your top 3 meals so I can try and shake up my meal repertoire !

Fish pie
Lasagne
Mince and tatties

We have meat/fish more or less every day in my house.

haricot bean and ham soup with crusty bread or rye bread.

cheese and tomato rice with tortillas.

Creamy spinach lasagne and garlic bread.

All of the above are very popular in here. We don't eat much meat, really. Also very popular are hedgehogs (rissoles made from mashed potato carrot and swede, a little bit of left over cooked meat, 1/2lb per 2lbs of potato and veg, rolled in porridge,) cottage pie, chicken pasta bake, mac and cauli/broccoli cheese and barley mince.

lasagne- that's a good one that I've not done for a while. Love the sound of your hedgehogs stressedHEmum.

forgot to say currently the food rota is
roast chicken, sausages mash and veg, tuna and pasta, spag bol, homemade pizza, chicken and rice and brocolli, tuna rice and brocolli/baby sweetcorn, chicken with new potatoes and veg.
That's about it really and I realise it's been those meals for the last year at least.

DD goes for pasta and tomato sauce, fishfingers, dragon bean pie, and scrambled eggs quite a lot and a snacky meal of cheese, hummous, carrot and breadsticks or oat cakes. Lots of broccoli too.

Dippy eggs with soldiers
Pasta with homemade tomato sauce and lashings of Parmesan
Spaghetti with meatballs

Maybe try a few more pasta variants - different shapes/spag/linguine etc with basic tomato sauce and additions eg peppers, pancetta or spinach/mascarpone or peas/pancetta the combos are endless and you tend not to miss the meat or just have a small amount for flavour

Spag bol
roast dinner
and cheesey pasta are my three and six yr olds fave meals

Meatloaf (courtesy of the Australian Womans Weekly)
Roast Pork
Caesar Salad

Cook some chicken in a basic tomatoey sauce with a little chili. Then serve with flour tortillas, shredded lettuce, grated carrot, grated cheese, sour cream etc. - they can all make and roll their own tortillas. Mine adore it!

liking the sounds of the tortillas. They like making their own pizza so am sure they would love getting involved in tortillas too. taffetacatski, I think you are right - more veggie varients of pasta would be good.
Howstheserenity - I LOVE Australian womans Weekly - especially their cakes !

-Roast dinner
-Pasta of almost any kind and sauce
-Stir fries, either with diced or minced meat and whatever veg we have chopped small. Dead quick and amazing how much flavour you get from sesame oil and a tiny dash of soy!!

OP, you have a 10-day old baby? Please get out of the kitchen and stop thinking about anything other than sandwiches, omelettes and takeaways

Tinned tomato soup
Dippy egg
Pizza
Pasta
Houmous, pitta and slices of apple for dipping

you should not be worrying about cooking anything else right now, get plenty of fruit in and it all balances out.

1. Pasta with anything (meatballs, bolognese, tomato-based sauce & grated cheese, tuna and sweetcorn, pesto, carbonara, cheese sauce, penne al salmone etc)

1. Fishcakes ( make them myself and rotate between using tuna, salmon, haddock etc)

1. Eggs - boiled or scrambled with brown toast and beans (quite healthy for a lazy-arse meal); eggy brd; omelettes. Good for Friday nights when you really cannot be arsed to cook.

1. Spag/risotto carbonara.

1. Roast, particularly chicken or belly pork.

1. Fish pie, with some smoked fish and prawns.

She also loves korma and tikka masala, and fajitas.

She's a bit older than yours-8, but has eaten these since being tiny.

We're trying this tonight as I have leftover gammon to use up.

Pasta with tuna/ham etc and veg with a couple of spoonfuls of creme fraught is a winner - you can chuck it together, top with cheese and bung it in the oven for pasta bake.

I love Fay Ripley's book - lots of recipes that adults and kids can eat. Can't link unfortunately as on phone and technology defeats me - Right now though, I cannot believe I've never made pizzas using muffins for bases - genius idea!!

• jacket potatoes with "choices" = ramekins full of grated carrot, sweetcorn, tuna, cheese, beans. always a winner when they have friends over as they serve themselves and all like something

• pasta with tuna and sweetcorn

• roast chicken with any veg / mash /new potatoes/pasta, then we have the roast chicken in a salad or with lentils for our dinner later

• pasta with cheese sauce and broccoli baked. serve alone or with fish fingers

• rice with chopped up cooked meat and veg. anything left over really. serve in small bowls with kids' chopsticks (and a fork for when they get fed up). thai rice is good as a bit stickier

Clearly that should be creme fraiche - bloody spell check on phone!!

Oh and mince cooked with onions, dried apricots, kidney beans, courgette, pepper and chopped toms - add of cumin and Ginger and sometimes cinnamon - great with rice or cous cous. Also v popular.

mushroom strogonoff is yummy and you can have it with rice or pasta
veggie lasagna, made with peppers, mushrooms, corgette, spinach
my boys love curry too, either with chicken or chickpeas. i get the little packs of popadoms for them
calzones go down a treat too
homemade soup
tomato sauage casserole, you can use veggie sauages if trying to cut down on meat
i make a pasta bake type dish using quorn and a tomato sauce with mushrooms and peppers in
pasta & pesto
veg chilli made with peppers, mushrooms, tin toms and kidney beaans with rice, pitta, jacket spuds, wedges...

Here's another one, chicken fillet strips dipped in flour, then in egg, then in crushed cornflakes. Either brush with oil and grill, or shallow-fry. DH likes this too!

loving all these ideas ladies, thank you so much. I've just cut and paste them onto a word doc and printed off. Yes, I know I am bonkers to be thinking of this with such a wee baby but I am suffering from guilt that the others are being neglected with the arrival of baby !

mousemole i know exactly how you feel i have 3dc elsdest just turned4 middle was 2 a few dasy after ds arrive 16wk ago!

I dont seem to ever get round to cooking decent meals.

Im sure my dcs live on pesto and pasta
tuna sweetcorn pasta
fish cakes (bought ones) and veg.

And ive even resorted to crumpets followed by fruit and ice cream when desperate and no time

Some great ideas here! I'm getting hungry....Omelettes are a healthy fast food. I used my slow cooker often when my boys were babies. I could pop the meal in at my convenience in the morning.