How to make food more nutritious?

[NancysGarden]

Any tips on making pasta pesto, fish-fingers or omelettes more nutritious? (My LO is so fussy with her food at the moment that her diet consists only of the above (as well as some others such as grated cheese, raisins, yoghurt, porridge and banana).

Or as long as I'm giving vitamin drops should I just relax about it and stop giving the poor kid a complex? (First child, as you can see)

Can you stick some fruit/salad in there somewhere? It sounds fine to me.

You can buy frozen, chopped spinach - while your pasta is cooking, put a couple of cubes of this in a dish and defrost in the microwave.

Add them to the pasta along with the pesto and stir in.

chuck a spoonful of wheatgerm into things for added vitamin E and folic acid.
I use it in casseroles, yoghurt and fruit, smoothies, it adds thickness and tastes yummy!
My dcs love it stirred into yoghurt.

chop some sundried tomatoes into the pesto pasta - good source of vitamins and minerals

grated carrot as a snack

chopped up dried apricots (good source of vitamin A)

Can you add fruit puree to the porridge?

Will she eat omelettes with different fillings? E.g. ham, cheese, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, etc? Same for pasta - green veg are easy to sneak into green pasta sauce.

If you make your own fish fingers you could vary the fish you use - try salmon for lots of omega essential fatty acids...

Porridge with fruit compote / dried fruit...I also sometimes add some milled seeds like flaxseed/pumpkin seed, etc as they go unnoticed in porridge.

I second the spinach idea. I have the same problem but I put some frozen spinach in with the pesto and pasta and maybe add a few peas and some finely cut up broccoli. She doesn't really notice it TBH.

I add frozen spinach to anything wet (pasta sauce, curry, soup, casserole, whatever). You can chop it finely and add to the omlette as well.

I make mini muffins for park snacks with either courgettes or carrots and walnuts, and use flaxseed oil rather than rapeseed or sunflower for the omega three.

And I keep a bag of frozen blueberries on the go and throw a small handful into every yoghurt I give DD.

THanks all, some food for thought (sorry ) anything unexpected is met with horror, so all extras must be disguised. Omelettes generally are only allowed to contain cheese and only a little at that. She does eat peanut butter, and now I know she likes fish fingers I will try my own. It's very frustrating I used to make everything from scratch for her: fish-cakes, meatballs, chicken nuggets, pizza, sauces and of course all the purees etc etc and then little by little she rejected it all and now she won't touch all the old favourites: cauliflower cheese, fish-pie etc etc. She is hating "bits" in things at the moment so I often have to mash things or even puree still at times (she's 2;6). I work FT so time is precious I get very upset when she won't a meal I have just spent X time making when I could be doing something else with my octopus arms! Will try the spinach and she might go for more grated things, didn't think of that doh!

Cauliflower smashes to nothing and doesn?t colour things - second the spinach - mine get it in everything also try parmesan cheese on the pasta /omelettes higher calcium than most cheeses. Homemade pesto with ??good oils?? can conceal quite a few things as flavour so strong - also try health food shops for ?pasta? made from different things as would add variety to her diet

And donn' stress It will pass and her diet sounds pretty good if a little limited - far better than many 2 year olds !

If you're making fish cakes, fish fingers and chicken nuggets, you could experiment with putting ground nuts in the crumb coating. I think Brazil nuts are very high in folic acid (dim and possibly inaccurate recollection of pregnancy book). Walnuts are also superb on the health front, IIRC.

How are you making your fish cakes? They're another thing I add finely chopped frozen spinach to.

Courgettes can be grated into almost anything. They don't seem to taste of much. DD will gnaw them raw, actually - perhaps your DD would try them?

Maybe the clue is on your last post, op, that you get very uptight when she won't eat your food. I'm sure she won't voluntarily starve herself (though tots can be extremely stubborn) so maybe chill out and just ignore the protests when new foods appear.

I used to put a TINY amount of new stuff next to the accepted foods and make sure there was a favourite pudding after - bribery and corruption won over in our house. The rule was you got the pud if you cleared your plate - and it may only have been 4 contentious peas!

But ds1 still makes a hullabaloo at some foods (but does eat them in the end).

Good Luck