Evening meal ideas please?

[schroeder]

I am trying to write my shopping list and I have ran out of ideas my ds is 11 and still quite fussy

He will not eat anything with a sauce or gravy.
This is so unbelievably limiting, so far I have
Wed-Pasta and cheese [boring]
Thurs-Bacon chops and mashed potatoes
Fri-Chicken dippers and chips
Sat-Homemade cheese and tomato pizza
Sun-
Mon-
Tues-
God even what I have thought of looks absolutely pants.

Hot Dogs
Pasta with salmon and peas
Frittata
Egg fried rice with peas, sweetcorn and ham

any of those any use?

Thank you for trying

Other than hotdogs(he likes them, but not exactly healthy) they will not do for him-he hates all vegetables especially peas.

Frittata might be alright for him, but my dd, who eats most things does not like eggs.

He also does not like salmon although he loves white fish.

When I write this down it just seems worse.

Could you do basic 'meat and two veg' style meals with the sauc or gravy separate so you can all have it and he just has the plain version?
Or make a saucy type of meal but dish out his before you add the sauce element.

So you could have roast dinners, no gravy for him,
pasta with a range of different sauces, but dish up his pasta first,
Casseroles but just keep the meat in big pieces and take them out for him to serve with the mash ect.
Quorn burgers or other veggie mock meats served with rice, mash ect.
Grilled chicken with chips (and veggies and salsa/white sauce etc for the rest of you)
Fried white fish fillets (remove his to serve then add any sauce and already cooked onions, peas etc you like to the pan) with mash or new potatoes
Would he eat fish cakes or homemade burgers? You can sneak stuff in there...

meatloaf with wedges (you can hide some veg in the meatloaf mix, maybe, especially if you blitz the meat and veg in a mixer before adding the breadcrumbs and egg, you can also use pasatta as the liquid instead of milk or whatever)

brush chicken drumsticks or thighs with a mix of honey and lemon juice , then roast them. Serve with rice. No sauce just a bit of stickiness and flavour. Also brush chicken bits with marmalade for a sticky coating.

HAve you tried mashing carrots/parsnips into mashed potatoes without telling him, this sometimes works with veg hating children.

Fish finger wraps, everyone else can have salad and salsa with theirs.

Kedgeree

steak sandwiches with frying steak in sub rolls, everyone else could have mushrooms and onions in theirs also.

HM meatballs with spaghetti and grated cheese
(you can hide pasatta and grated onion etc. in these as well)

Will he eat soup if you puree it or is that too much like sauce/gravy?

Jacket potatoes with a hole bored through them, stuffed with a sausage of some kind

mince roly poly, make a suet crust, cook some mince in the usual way, but not too moist, spread on the pastry, roll up and bake. Cut into slices to serve.

Burger squares: make up a burger mix as normal and press it into a lasagna tray. It should be quite thin. Sprinkle the top with some seasoned flour and bake for about 20 minutes. Cut into squares to serve with mash and gravy and veg for those who will eat it.

Chicken breasts stuffed with ham and cheese.

hedgehogs: mash 1lb potatoes with 1lb of cooked veg until smooth then mix in 4oz breadcrumbs and 8oz ready cooked meat of any kind chopped into tiny pieces. Add a couple of tablespoons of milk or stock to help bind it all together. Make the mix into croquette shapes and roll in porridge oats. Bake for 20 minutes until hot and browned. (my kids all love these and don't even realise that there are vegetables in them because there is no evidence of them!)

My AS boys were like this for years. Also their food couldn't touch and they wouldn't eat certain colours of food etc. It does get a bit easier as they grow up and become teenagers. You have my sympathies.

What about chunky cod in breadcrumbs with beans and new potatoes and the rest of the family can have salad.

Amy

You are all very kind I will try a few ideas.

But (crikey I really hadn't realised how bad he was) He won't eat mince or ham he thinks meat and bread don't go together

No to soup too.

He loves cod, but we had that yesterday.

He eats a good amount of what he likes and he eats more variety than he used to. It complicates things that dh does not like plain food, won't eat it-he is also a reluctant veg eater(can we see a pattern)

I think I may try and delegate meal planning.

My Ds2 used to be like that. He still won't eat fruit pies or crumbles etc. because pies are for meat not fruit! Also used to have to serve things on separate plates so there was no cross contamination.

Have you tried doing things like liquidising spag bol sauce and serving it on a separate plate to the spaghetti? Or making chips with swede/parsnip/sweet potato as well as ordinary potatoes? Make burgers and serve them with a roll on a separate plate so that he can eat them one at a time. I know that you will already have tried most of these things, but perhaps it might be worth another go, now that he is older.

Other things that you might be able to try are fajita spiced chicken/beef wraps, everyone else could have salad/salsa etc. in theirs as well. Tortillas might be more acceptable than bread, maybe. Or noodles cooked in stock and coconut milk with thai curry paste and chicken.

how about kebabs? either with chunks of meat or cut up sausages / mini tomatoes / chunks of fish

will he eat prawns?

pineapple & cheese fritters?

Crikey - poor you. Serve it, eat it or starve is my philosophy. How about Toad in the Hole? We are having chicken stir fry tonight and there is no real sauce on that - and my DD picks out the green stuff.

what, my DD does that too. will happily eat broccoli soup and curry with anything in it. Random pieces of green in noodles are obviously a real threat though!

home-made turkey burgers with sweet potato mash? I make two types of veg with every meal, and DS has to eat at least half a portion of one type to get dessert. The choice, and only having to eat half makes him feel more in control, but gets the veggies in.