Stuck in a fish finger shaped rut

[JimbosJetSet]

DD (3) is a picky eater. I am not a particularly good or adventurous cook and I usually get approx 30 mins to prepare, cook and serve a meal.

Dinner in our house consists of omelette, cheesy pasta or processed meat/fish (fish fingers, sausages etc).

She will eat an an acceptable range of fruit/veg and pasta/potatoes.

I also have a one year old, and I am worried about the limited variety he is getting in his diet because of the above, and I'm concerned about the salt content.

Advice please? How can I shake things up a bit and improve their diet?

Many thanks.

Have you tried making your own fish fingers/chicken nuggets? Really easy and you know exactly what's in them.

Could you do pasta with a tomato and veg sauce with cheese on top? You could puree the veg to make them disappear?

Baked potatoes with tuna?
Spaghetti carbonara? (spag with eggs, cream and ham or bacon)
Make your own chicken dippers? (dip chicken strips into beaten egg, then into breadcrumbs, the either shallow fry or spritz with oil and put into the oven on a tray)

If you are concerned about the levels of salt, step away from the processed food now!

Bolognese is easy to make and hide veg in and it freezes really well. You could serve it with pasta/rice or top it with potato for cottage pie type thing.

Pasta with pesto & sweetcorn/ham/chicken/sausage.

Home made fish cakes or cheesy potato cakes made with leftover mashed potato.

I work full time and single mum, so leave at 7.30m and get in at gone 6pm every weekday so I make as much as possible in advance or cook quick and easy

Typical week

Quesillidas (dd loves taco bell ones) so dry fry or put 2 tortilla wraps under grill under lightly brown and crispy both sides. top 1 tortilla with meat of your choice, we have roast pork left over so will use that tomorrow and will quickly fry to reheat with onions and peppers, garlic and some seasoning, grated cheese and under grill again. top with diced cucumber, tomatoes, sliced lettuce, guacamole etc place other tortilla on top and slice into pizza slices.

Spag bol or sheph pie (prepare night before so just matter of reheat and some garlic bread for spag bol)

I am lucky in that my dd loves veg, but as a tip which I have fed to many of her friends who apparently hate veg but they always scoff is that to my spag bol and shep pie I always start by frying finely diced onion with grated carrot ( u don't even see it in there as melts to nothing) and also once I have added the sauce to whatever one I cut the broccoli from the top so your literally cutting off the tiny dotted sprinkles of broccoli and add a few handfuls, again you cant even see it!

my dd loves loves broccoli and cauliflower cheese!! worth a try along side a roast

Roast dinner (I will cook the meat the night before and make some cheesy mash, so when I get in just cook some veg and yorkies and reheat rest)

The microwave rice and veg steam packs my dd will wolf down

Stir fry , easy takes mins

Stuffed jackets, my dd loves these!!!!, cook jackets night before, scoop out all potatoe leaving just small skin and put skins in oven to crisp for few mins. Mash potatoe as you normally would, I then add lots of cheese, spring onion and cooked bacon but u can use anything. add cooled mixture to cooled skins and then just re heat next day under grill until golden.

Steak and homemade oven chips with veg.

chicken Caesar salad

chicken casserole with cheesy mash

Many thanks, there are lots of good ideas to try there.

Thanks for this, I have similar issues. Good luck!

I'm glad it's not just me, I feel so guilty about it, even though I know there are kids out there with far worse diets than mine!

one of our very very quick "go to" meals is spaghetti carbonara made with Philadelphia which the kids gobble up

Here's a really quick one my dc love:

Pasta with creamy mushroom and parma ham sauce - Bill Granger recipe

Cook some spaghetti
When it is cooking slice a handful of mushrooms very finely, put in a large frying pan with a good knob of butter and lots of black pepper, cook the mushrooms till golden, snip up about 3 slices of parma ham with a scissors into bite sized pieces, add to the mushrooms with half a crushed or grated clove of garlic. Cook for about 3 mins until the ham crisps up a bit, but be careful not to burn the garlic. Add 100ml good quality chicken stock and reduce by half, then add 100ml fresh cream and simmer away until the pasta is cooked,

Drain the pasta and then tip it all into the pan with the sauce, mix well and serve with lots of grated fresh parmesan - really delicious! My dc started off by picking out the ham and mushrooms but now they are used to it and it is one of their fav pasta dishes. The whole thing can be cooked in 115 mins.

That does sound delicious, thank you!

My kids love risotto. I know the 'stand and stir for 15mins' seems like a faff, but it is actually pretty soothing and also mindless enough to be able to have quality conversation at the same time. Perfect for school age children and catch up chat.
Add to it: cooked chicken (roast dinner leftovers) and chopped chorizo, prawns and peppers, butternut squash and, ham and peas, smoked salmon and chopped cucumber (added at the end). Always use a little onion and garlic as the base. Anything you fear may be given the evil eye should be chopped very finely!

I put forwards- baked risotto. not traditional, but lovely and half, no quarter, the faff. And DC love it.

I always suggest these, but BBC good food website cheesy butter bean burgers are great for fish finger lovers

Baked risotto?? Recipe please. I want theatre fire way of making a pilaf, too... the one that you bake and it goes crusty on the bottom. Mmmmm.

don't know about baked risotto (but it sounds intriguing...), but I make this quick not-risotto risotto-like rice.

If chicken, chorizo and prawns aren't for you the basic method still stands and stick in what you like : )

tyne-teas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/rice-with-chorizo-and-prawns-sometimes.html

My son adores fish pie, especially with broccoli, but I appreciate that that's not to every child's taste.

I'm not home in time for dinner usually (I do 'earlies' with son, husband does 'lates') but I was getting a bit bothered that he was over relying on toast and something, and the something didn't involve any veg. But if I left food that was ready to go in the oven (eg the aforementioned fish pie, or something like a pasta bake) it was left as son was too tired to eat by the time it was ready (or too hungry and demanding toast). My solution to this has been realising that the oven has a timer. I basically freeze a meal, stick it in the oven to defrost in the morning and set the oven timer so it cooks and then cools a wee bit (son not a fan of the burnt mouth) by the time they get home. Could you maybe do this? Batch cook on the weekends, and then you have home made hot food ready for tea?

You could definitely do a baked risotto that way, also any kind of potato topped pie, pasta bake, home made pasties or pastry pies, etc. Stuff all of them with veg and don't add salt and hopefully that would give you a bit more variety.

i'd buy a student cookery book. they tend to have simple and quick recipes that don't use a load of ingredients and are also fairly cheap. try and do one new recipe a week and before you know it you will have a load of stuff you can do.

I can't link on phone, but I was introduced to it via the my Daddy cooks blog (and cook book) so am confident it is accessible on the internet. It's just normal risotto, but shoved in the oven instead of standing and stirring. It works

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2818/ovenbaked-risotto-

Risotto in the oven is an absolute stalwart. We have it all the time.

Thanks! X