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please help with some (veggie) meal-planning before I lose the will to live.....

9 replies

Tommy · 17/11/2009 20:43

It's driving me crazy!

We all eat a vegetarian diet but I find it so difficult to cater for everyone.

DS1 is very fussy - will not eat anything "wet" with sauce, gravy etc. Will eat veggie sausages and some sort of potato product, carrots, peas and baby corn and that's about it.

DS2 is a bit more amenable - he will eat soup, pasta with a sauce and a mild curry (mostly likes dipping bread into it but that's good enough for me!), pizza etc but doesn't really do many veg

DS3 will give anything a go but I know he gets bored with the plain unvaried fare I usually offer because of DS1

DH and I usually eat later and will eat anything - curries, chilli, stews etc.

Please, please can anyone give me any tips and ideas as to how to make it all a bit more straightforward? Ideally, I would like a couple of dishes that I can make for all of us that DH can eat later or that we can adapt for the grown ups.

Thanks in advance - sorry - didn't realise it was so long

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StirlingInDaHouse · 17/11/2009 21:33

I dont know if you have already looked, but at the top of the page is a button for "Family Meal Planner" and if you click on that you get regular and veggie meal planners - might be some ideas there

Tommy · 17/11/2009 21:36

I have, thanks. It's not really the meals TBH - I've realised since I wrote it that it's more of a behaviour issue with DS1 that needs dealing with really...

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stressedHEmum · 18/11/2009 10:00

I have had this with a few of my kids, to be honest. They have Aspergers and eating was really a problem, it still is quite bad with DS4, but improving.

I think that I may be a bit cruel and old fashioned, but what I do is make just one meal for all the children and not offer any alternatives. Anyone who REALLY can't eat it and has life threatening hysterics gets a bowl of weetabix and a piece of fruit, nothing else. I find that over time, they eat more meals and less weetabix, but it does take a while, a lot of determination and a realisation that there are some things that a child may never eat. DS1 & 3, for example, won't eat raw tomatoes, DD won't eat eggs, DS2 doesn't eat salad veg or leafy things.

It used to be that DS4 ate the weetabix about 5 nights a week, now its only about once. Last night, we were having oat steaks with mushroom sauce, pasta and cabbage, once upon a time he wouldn't have eaten any of it, would have had a shrieking tantrum and screamed until he was sick! Last night, he had the pasta, cabbage and sauce. DS2 eats almost everything, now, but when he was small existed for about 3 years on shreddies, sausage rolls and pancakes with peanut butter.

You could try starting by serving something different with the sausages. MY 5 like tomato rice with a little grated cheese.

Cook 2 cups of rice with an onion, 2 tins of tomatoes and 3 cups of water, salt and pepper. Bring it to the boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer very gently until all the liquid is absorbed and rice is cooked. (about 12 minutes for easy cook white rice, about 45minutes for ordinary brown rice.) When you put it on the plate, sprinkle a little grated cheese on top.

We eat this on its own with some bread or tortillas at lunchtime, but the kids like it with things like sausages for tea as well. It is pretty dry, not saucy and doesn't have a strong taste, so is quite a good place to start.

Another easy thing to try is lentil and rice tacos. Cook 1 cup green lentils and 1 cup brown rice in 5 cups stock, with an onion and some taco seasoning, as above until all the liquid is absorbed. Serve it in tacos or wraps with some grated cheese and whatever other things you like, avocadoes, salad, sour cream. Again, no sauce, not bitty, no obvious chunks of veg unless you put them in.

You could also try eggy rice. You need 1 cup of cooked rice, 1/2 an onion, a little garlic and 1 beaten egg per person. Then you can add other cooked veg as you like. I usually add some tinned/frozen and thawed peas.

Fry the onion and garlic until softened. Add the rice and fry about until hot through, Stir in egg, some seasoning and any veg and cook, stirring all the time, until cooked. All my kids love this, even the ones who don't like eggs. The bigger ones eat it with tortilla wraps to make it more substantial. No sauce, no bits, no chunks of veg, pretty non threatening.

Other things that might work are bean burgers, pasta bake (most of the sauce is sucked in), rice and beans, split pea dahl. Try making something new a couple of times a week to begin with and gradually increase the repertoire until you are making varied meals every night. Sadly, in my experience, it is a bit of a long haul, but you get there in the end. In here, nobody wants to eat weetabix for ever

twoisplenty · 18/11/2009 10:07

I agree with stressedHEmum. I do the same, one meal for us all. If my dd (the fussy one) says "yuk, I don't like x y or z" I point out the things on the plate she does like, and then tell her to eat those, and just to try the thing she claims to hate. Over time she loses the fear over the hated food. If there is a meal which she absolutely dislikes (curry) then I will make her a sandwich and she eats it before we eat our meal. I will then put the curry dinner in front of her and she can just look at it!

Tommy · 18/11/2009 11:44

thanks - feel a bit better about it now. Ds1 does quite often eat a dull version of what the rest of us have - e.g. at the weekends we might have pasta bake and galic bread and he'll have plain pasta with cheese and plain baguette with butter

Think I will have to go down the "this is what we're having - there is the cereal if you don't want it"

trouble is - DS1 is very tall and on the go constantly so needs the calories but sometimes he rather go hungry than eat something he doesn't want.

Thanks stressed and twoisplenty - that was helpful

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stressedHEmum · 18/11/2009 12:12

Tommy, a couple of my boys are big and active, but 3 weetabix with milk is usually enough to fill tummys and provide slow release carbs that keep them going till bedtime. I usually give mine a snack before bed, anyway, so that they aren't hungry then. The children will eventually get the message and start to lose the fear of things that they think they hate but it takes a while.

most children will not starve themselves to the extend that their bodies suffer anyway, to be honest, unless there is an underlying issue like AS. Sooner or later, they will eat what's available. Just try not to worry too much about it or make too big a deal out of it, because that just makes it harder for everyone.

Tommy · 18/11/2009 13:28

It is very hard but there are lot sof other issues around mealtimes which don't help (like table manners etc). DS1 deosn't like weetabix - his cereal of choice is rice crispies and even he might get bored of that!

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Herecomesthesciencebint · 18/11/2009 13:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Tommy · 18/11/2009 23:30

thanks - i have tried every trick in every book. Over the years (he is 7) we have grown it, found it in a recipe book, watched it on telly, shopped for ingredients, cooked it and then..... refused to eat it

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