Stay at home mums

[emmajk25]

What do you cook your little ones for lunch? It's driving me mad feel like I'm having to make a weekly meal plan for lunches and dinners and I'm sick of making the same things and trying to come up with something yummy for both lunch and dinner! I have an 9 month old and a 4 year old, I am vegetarian and they both eat meat but tend to only cook chicken as if I make a big lasange ect with beef mince it never gets eaten so we tend to eat quorn for things like that to avoid wastage, someone help me before I set my kitchen on fire!

The most I cook is scrambled eggs or soup for lunch or the occasional pizza. Otherwise they can do very nicely with a sandwich, cheese, grapes, hummus & breadsticks/carrot batons, cherry tomatoes, ham, filled pitta bread, egg mayo, garlic bread etc.

Picnic food.

What about veggie lasagne and freeze into small portions for the dc.
I used to do soup, fish fingers, mash, egg on toast, veggie stew with lentils to bulk.
Rice pudding, cremola pudding/ they loved this.
Fruit flans and jellies.
I think the trick is to make double the amount and then freeze, then you have more variety.

Sandwiches and veg sticks

Veg soup and cheese scones

Cheese and ham pancakes, veg sticks

Scrambled/poached/boiled eggs and toast

Baked beans on toast

Falafel in a pita bread with salad and tzatziki/hummus

Peanut butter on toast

Crackers with cheese, veg sticks, fruit etc

Cheese and tomato on toast

Pasta pesto

Sandwich, something on toast or a baked spud for lunch. If I do a main meal at lunch then he would get lunch food at dinnertime instead. I add fruit, crackers, cheese and crisps for variety (crisps not every day).

mostly we do fine on sandwiches, dippy eggs, cheese/ham/crackers or omelettes with some fruit and a yoghurt.

on the occasions that we stray from this it will be gnocchi and pesto (not homemade) or a baked potato.

I do love cooking, I just can't bring myself to invest that much time and generate that much mess creating an elaborate meal for the two of us.

Thank you all for your suggestions, I think I was feeling like I had to make two full meals a day and I the mess was killing me! I think I will stick to simpler things to prepare such as sandwiches ect now

if you feel the need to feed dc something home cooked for lunch, leftovers could be your salvation.

chilli/bolognaise on a baked potato, for example. various other things can be made into soups or pasta bakes.

I don't know about anyone else but neither of my two would have eaten two cooked full meals a day at that age anyway. Even now at 5 and nearly 3 they are happy with a good breakfast and dinner and only ever graze over lunchtime.

I really don't know why I have always done two Cooked meals and roll on the sandwiches now I just totally cba anymore!

Thats the spirit.

I make a batch of soup on a Sunday that'll last half the week.

We have it with sandwiches, toasties, quesadillas etc. If you have one of those foreman grills, they make great toasted sandwiches.

When I have time, I make a batch of cheese scones or savoury muffins and freeze them individually for other days.

As someone else said, leftovers are also your friend. Sometimes I'll freeze small portions of leftovers for other days.

Other things we do are baked potatoes, omelettes...

I think I'd run out of ideas if I had to do 2 proper meals a day!

My 18 month old son has pretty much the same thing for lunch every day but he's weird and doesn't eat many different things.

A peanut butter sandwich, some cheese and some grapes or strawberries.

Sometimes I will make him some eggy bread or a little pizza but that's usually a waste of time and ends up in the bin