Healthy meals a 4 & 8 year old will eat!

[Curlywurly1975]

I am so in a rut with meal times. When they were little, they never had stuff like chips, anything at all with salt, only ever tried chocolate for the first time when they were 2 and any drinks other than water and milk only once they turned 4.

But things have slipped as they’ve got older, as they do. They by no means have a bad diet but we tend to eat the same things all the time and I feel like we have too much meat and bread and more sugar has crept in than I’d like. It’s so frustrating when I spend ages cooking something new and they don’t like it.

They like pasta (but not with red sauces), roast dinners, “gravy” dinners, sausage & mash, fajitas, lots of different veg and fruit.

But they don’t like (even mild) curries, spice, rice, fish (except breadcrumbed 🙄) and have that irritating “I’ve decided I’m not going to like this before I’ve even tasted it” look on their faces when served something new ...

So what healthy meals do you give your kids? Quick to prepare ones preferably so it’s not so annoying if they don’t like it!!!

We got into a similar rut a few years ago and so I started making dishes that I could serve up 'deconstructed' as well as 'together' to get them used to the various parts, and also to make sure that there was always something on their plate that they would enjoy. This made a massive difference and took away their anxiety around unknown foods.

Example - egg fried rice with cashews, chicken and veg. I would serve up a little pile of cashews (which they liked), some veg (less keen), a pile of sweetcorn (which I knew they liked), rice (disliked) and scrambled egg (they liked). I would then put a pile of it all mixed together.

I would do this with as many meals as possible, or at least make sure that alongside things they would be less keen on (curry) there was a pile of rice and some veg they would be happy eating.

I found this made them much more likely to try the whole meal once they had eaten some of the component parts.

Chicken noodle stir fry www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8260/zingy-chicken-stirfry
This is also really quick and easy to multiply up for however many mouths you're feeding! www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8035/smoky-bacon-pot-noodle-for-one
Mine like this pizza omelette but I don't put on the olives! www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3451/pizza-omelette
My DC also are fussy about fish and they used to only eat fish fingers but now they eat fish pie too. www.womanmagazine.co.uk/archive/creamy-fish-pie-2326
They also didn't like rice but found it all right in a nice cheesy, creamy risotto.

Avocado, udon noodles and black beans. Fry black beans with onion, garlic, Worcester sauce or Cholula. Smash them down a bit. Then do noodles with soy sauce in same pan so they get a bit crispy. Serve with sliced avo. My 3 year old is obsessed and it takes minutes and is really tasty.

Thanks all - some good ideas and recipes here and I like the “deconstructed dinner” idea.
Would love some more of your favourite recipes!

DH dislikes red sauce with pasta so I make a pasta bake with whatever meat/veg we have, a good dollop of bbq sauce instead and cheese on top. We've also started doing more bbq pulled pork as DSS really likes it. Gammon with fried eggs and potatoe wedges goes down well as does sausage casserole. I've also started making my own calzone with pizza dough and filling it like I would pasta bake.