Easy meal ideas for 18 month old?

[Cigal]

I really want to make an effort to give my daughter more of a variety of meals as sometimes it’s easiest to just give her pasta with vegetables in the sauce.

I’m a full time working mum although on the days I work from home want to prep some food but this can’t take hours.

What easy, nutritious meal ideas do you all have for me for lunch / dinner for a hungry 18 month old!

Anyone?? 20 min meals for toddlers 🙏🏼

Pasta with meat sauce for iron (Batch cook and freeze the sauce into portions)
mild chicken korma with rice
wraps, houmous, veg sticks
chunky fish fingers with sweet potato wedges and peaa

Can't she just have what you're having? In the long run this is what you will be working towards, so I'd say at least some of the time you should be making something that suits you both.

Shepherd's or cottage pie is a good one to make ahead as you can make the meat/lentil base and the mashed potato separately if necessary, assemble, bake when you need it. Add some veg to the base sauce and serve more veg on the side if you want/have time.

Frittata/tortilla/Spanish omelette is a great way to use up odds and ends of vegetables. You could do the peeling, chopping etc in advance.

Feed her what you're having is surely the simplest option.

I find it helpful to think of serving toddlers from the 5 food groups rather than a "put together" meal. E.g. It's typical to serve fish with chips, Bolognese with pasta, curry with rice, but toddlers doing care about that. Pasta (or other starch), grated or chopped cheese (or other protein & fat), with peas (veg & protein) followed by plain yoghurt (dairy) with some frozen/fresh fruit is quick, easy & nutritious.
I hope that makes some sense. I wouldn't mix plain yoghurt, blueberries and leftover veg into my pasta/rice but a toddler might yum it up.

I agree. We eat a lot of slow cooker meals or soups together as they're good for batch cooking. But on evenings we're eating at different times my son loves a typical toddler dinner.

Examples:

Fish fingers, a babybel, oat cakes and humous, chopped grapes and strawberries.

Pesto pasta, grated cheese, sweetcorn and peas.

Sausage, egg, and toast soldiers.

All followed by a yoghurt.

At 18 months I would just give whatever you're having, the only thing I try to avoid is added salt so I just salt the adult portion afterwards. I have an 18 month old and he particularly enjoys, mild curries, chilli, pasta, jacket potatoes, enchiladas/ fajitas, meatballs, stews, roast dinners etc. I also often save an extra portion for him where possible so he can have it the next day for lunch/ a nice quick dinner.

Also to add, Lunches I try to keep easy and tend to do more like pp suggested and try and get something from the 5 food groups in there. So it might be like grapes, yoghurt, grated cheese, cucumber and some meat, perhaps leftover from a roast or something.