Do you prepare a different meal for each child at mealtimes?

[Upsadaisy]

My two are fussy and despite trying to just prepare one meal for us all to eat, I end up preparing several different.

I'm curious to know what everyone else with more than one child does?

I will not prepare a completely different meal for each member of the family but I do "adapt" a meal to suit all tastes....tonight kids had chicken with baked potatoes and corn on the cob as they detest fish which is what I had with my baked potato and corn on the cob.
When we have pasta me and dd2 have pesto stirred into it and dd1 and dh have a chilli sauce with theirs.
Of course if me and dh are going to get a sneaky takeaway once the kids are in bed I let them choose what they want out of the freezer.....my youngest always says "yippeee no veg tonight!"

Thanks for advice for a newbie. Feel v.frustrated, I didn't know how to produce the family meals mentioned on here before I had a child & haven't magically learnt since. Struggled with weaning on, really. It's hard work for me, but I want my family to eat together a few times a week at least, we're rarely managing it now. dp gets home at 6.30/7 weeknights. Have suggested or made lots of veggie meals since giving up meat and none of them terribly popular with dp (ds fine). He says 'it's nice', but there's the unsaid 'would be nicer with meat'! And so now I'm meant to fork. He doesn't cook veggie meals for me, keeps 'forgetting' that I don't eat chicken etc or asks if I can be a carnivore for a day. Previously he cooked a lot of curries, risottos etc for all of us, so I guess he feels a little frustated too.

He feels we're getting by, but I see family meals slipping to one a week at a restaurant which isn't good enough. He often cooks something for himself at night & I'm so tired in the first trimester I'm hardly eating a thing at night (had some almonds last night!). Am I just aiming too high here, I just want what I remember from my own childhood (4 kids +parents eating together 6 nights a week). Put my energies into really great weekend meals & eat veggie with ds during the week? Twould also be nice to have romantic meal with dp not at a restaurant now and again, we haven't managed this since I turned veggie. Sit at a table, that kind of thing :)

I will be doing a naughty tonight as I don't have to go into work. The children can have fish fingers or something and DH and I will have roast chicken dinner after they have gone to bed!!!!!!!

aq - it is difficult. Could you maybe buy a cooked chicken or something like that and freeze portion sized amounts to add into DP's portion. I am not veggie but have decided that we will eat veggie twice a week. Twice a week we have "cheap" meat - sausage, mince, bacon and twice a week we have more expensive meat - chicken, a roast ham, braising steak, pork loinsteak etc. The kids definitely have no preference for whether the meal includes meat or not. And DH is gradually coming round to the idea although he definitely prefers some of the vegetarian options to others.

foffsmum our dd eats earlier than us as she is in bed by 6 aswell but if we are ahving chilli or spagettie or something with chicken and pasta i will cook the main part during the day then cook her pasta or rice so she can have hers then we cook our pasta and rice later when we have ours so she still eats the same as us or soemtimes we all sit down together if we are all hungry as dp is a postman so is in by 2 everyday so its no problem for us to all sit down and eat at 5.

AQ: I think your husband needs a couple of good vegetarian cookbooks. And if he wants to fork, he can cook an extra bit of meat for himself and fork off that (sorry, couldn't resist).

well i'm not at all clear what the mumsnet verdict is on this. is Forking merely pandering to spoilt fussy children, or is it an acceptable tolerance of different tastes?

Forking is a good word. i didn't know that was what we did.

It's OK to fork your partner, I think the verdict is.

Snigger.

Well I do make different meals for my two at the moment for the most part - but that's because one's a toddler and one's just started on weaning, so they need different things and different textures. Occasionally I'll make one batch of stuff and then puree half and leave the rest for the toddler, but that's rare.

I have always been a slave to making my own baby food but since weaning the second child I've found making two different meals 3 times a day hard work (and that's excluding us because we're following the GI diet!)

But I recently found Babylicious and Kiddylicious frozen baby and toddler food in Tesco. So now I cheat sometimes and use those

dp would be glad of amusement about forking, he's quite pleased with himself coming up with that (and doing none of the work...). :o
Am going to relax about this more, think I was feeling guilty for going veggie & trying to make up for it (make up for what?). Not keen on even having to touch raw or cooked meat and why should I if ds doesn't care (although he does enjoy his bacon...). He gets meat at nursery & other times during the week & I can add some more iron elsewhere, spinach & ricotta cannelloni yum yum.
So nice to finally post after nearly 3 years of lurking...

just had another forking meal in the fennel household (do keep posting accesorizequeen you are extending my vocabularly here). feta and roast veg parcels for me, meat sausage roll for DP, and veggie sausage version for dds. not sure who's the fussy one here but none of us would have deigned to eat what the others were eating. forking is the only harmonious way for us.