Freshly cooked meals for children? How often a week?

[Mum84762002]

How often are you cooking freshly cooked meals and how often are you cooking frozen food for your children?

By fresh I refrigerated meat/fish etc.

Thank you!

We do a combination. DS only eats one meal at home during the week (evening meal) as he goes to preschool for breakfast club - although there has definitely been mornings his tantrums over not wanting to wake up and go mean we’ve ran late and we’ve chucked him a croissant or pain au chocolat to eat on the way in case breakfast has ended (just the ones you get from Aldi in the little packets). Our go-to meal a few nights a week is a combination of fish fingers, a turkey dinosaur or chicken goujon out the freezer with fresh vegetables and whole grain rice. Or he’ll have a burger or a sausage and a lot of veg. He does now eat chicken with a lot of persuading and gagging so we’ll all have chicken breast with veg one night. Another meal we do is a slow cooker sausage casserole and veg as it’s a family favourite, DS eats the lot. A quick pasta and sauce is always popular too. Fridays are pizza (unless it was on the menu at preschool that day, which it is once a month) so that’s out the freezer. I make a homemade curry on a weekend sometimes which he will eat with us. We definitely have days where it’s a plain omlet with fruit and yoghurt for tea. Or beans on toast. Or he’ll have spaghetti hoops, cucumber and tomatoes with his meal instead of veg. We try and eat as family but the reality is we all get in/finish work gone 6pm, DS is 90% of the time in a bit of a state as he’s shattered and has been woken up or prevented from napping in the car, just wants some food asap and then bed. DS meals are the quickest to make (10-15 mins) and so we do his first and then get him to bed. DH and I will then have our meal later, usually one of us will cook it during bedtime routine, because ours takes longer to cook.

This is where everything has gone nuts. Spaghetti, as in dried spaghetti, has no difference in nutritional value if dried, fresh, or homemade?

I don't have children, and I do cook from fresh most nights that I'm at home with DH, but I know that's a luxury. And I use dried spaghetti if I need to. Running eggs and flour through a pasta machine doesn't make it any more nutritional than pulling it out of a packet?

Every day, or 6 days out of 7.

Batch cooking is a great way to boost everyone's intake of healthy, homemade meals.

This week's meals for DC:

Breakfasts: homemade egg, spinach and red pepper muffins (really quick and can make a few at once so more than one day sorted in one lot of cooking); porridge with fruit; croissants with butter, jam and fruit; scrambled egg with tomato and spinach (my kids are weird and like spinach a lot).

Lunches: hot meals at pre-school; weekend we went out for fish and chips one day and the other day we had packed lunches so cheese salad wraps, veggie sticks with hummus, grapes.

Dinners: veggie pasta bake (homemade apart from the pasta which was wholemeal); homemade pizza with vegetable toppings; spicy lamb and veg tagine (batch cooked); beans on toast; saag aloo (homemade, batch cooked). Making enough for two nights at once saves on cooking time and doesn't really increase the amount of effort needed. If you have a blender/mixer, stick in loads of veg and you can add them to most dishes. Things like beans on toast can be made less unhealthy by choosing wholemeal bread, making your own bean mix, adding veg toppings, or just being mindful of what kinds of baked beans you buy (you can get 5-bean options, ones with minimal added sugar/salt, etc). Pizza is easy to make from scratch, and doesn't have to be unhealthy when you can make your own toppings, adjust how much cheese you put on, etc - my kids don't like a lot of cheese but love tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, peppers. Serving salad alongside the 'main dish' is also a good way to add in nutritional value as well as helping with managing portion sizes.

Popular Snacks: homemade smoothies; yoghurt with fruit; cheese (decent quality); vegetable sticks with hummus; low sugar flapjack; home baking. We usually bake something at the weekend (a lowish sugar recipe for a loaf cake or something like that) and then everyone can have a little bit if they fancy something less healthy. Usually very little gets eaten and I end up taking most of it into work to get it used up. But, it's a creative activity for the kids and gives them early cooking confidence, plus the knowledge that cake isn't forbidden. This week's was a chocolate and vanilla cake that I think each of them had about two small servings of in total before boxing the rest up for me.

Ok my week normally looks like:

1. Roast dinner - whole chicken or pork joint with home made roast potatoes (olive oil), shop bought Yorkshires/gravy, fresh veg (usually carrots, parsnips, peas)
2. Some kind of pasta dish, usually with pesto, tuna and more fresh veg. Otherwise I blitz a roasted tray of med veg and make a sauce.
3. Lentil curry in slow cooker - 4 cups of lentils, a whole cauliflower head, a tin of coconut milk, a couple of tablespoons of red curry paste. Served with rice
4. Fish fingers with home made sweet potato wedges and broccoli
5. Salmon side with baby potatoes and veg
6. Omelette with toast and fruit/yoghurt (midweek slacker meal)
7. Spaghetti bolognese or chilli con carne, made from scratch

I would be genuinely interested to know what posters make of my menu? Kids are 2 and 6

From frozen maybe once every couple weeks. I certainly wasn’t making gourmet meals (I don’t like cooking) but simple ones with plenty of steamed veg (my kids love veg), a protein and potato or similar. Occasional all in one traybake or pasta bake with cut up fresh veg. My DH liked to cook so ‘better’ meals at the weekend.

If they eat it, you're winning. 👍

I think people are quick to criticise but it sounds like your kids are getting a good range of nutrients, tastes and textures. Can't beat homemade Yorkshire puddings though!

I try and cook from scratch each day, but tomorrow DD is out, so as a treat I’m letting DS have shop-bought sweet potato fries & fish fingers / scampi combo (none of which DD likes). This feels massively liberating as a one off and I can’t bloody wait!

Most days, but that’s ’helped’ by the fact my kids are weird and don’t much like the usual kind of freezer food, I would happily bung them nuggets and chips but neither of them like it. So I tend to make most stuff from scratch, but I use the slow cooker a lot as we have very busy evenings generally and I have the most time in the mornings.

i hate this “from scratch” lark, do people not use tinned tomatoes, passata, pre chopped vegetables, pasta?
does from scratch mean you make your own tomato pasta sauces from tinned tomatoes, herbs, garlic etc? If so then yes, I probably cook from “scratch” 5 out of 7 days.
if using a jar or curry paste / sauce / dolmio etc then that’s not from scratch I guess.
if making a pie does shop brought pastry count?
cooking a salmon / chicken breast / pork chop or cottage pie with homemade mash / chips is from scratch, or just cooking with fresh ingredients so nothing fancy or proper about it.

Lettuce rather than the bungalow is healthier... but okay

Usually 6 days a week. The other day usually be a takeaway.

Most days. Sometimes we’ll have a takeaway and sometimes I’ll make the odd battered fish from the freezer with some potatoes and veg or get a frozen pizza.
I’ve learned to cook quick healthy meals and will make pasta sauces and curries from scratch.
I work part time so have the energy to do this.
I dont really enjoy cooking but I want us all to eat healthy food. It’s just another chore to me.

Every day, no takeaways, very very rare meals out and usually involves bringing my daughters meal, no convenience food.
Oh how much I wish to be able to give her fish fingers and baked beans for dinner but she has 20 food allergies including fish and tomatoes so both are out of the question. We batch cook homemade baked beans with sweet potato as a sauce for the freezer so quick lunches at the weekend we even struggle to find sausages she can eat there's literally 2 sausages in Tesco and Sainsbury's she can have. We've considered buying a sausage maker to make our own!
We make our own tortellini and ravioli as well as our own bread. There's very few things in her diet that doesn't come from whole ingredients....it's a bloody pain!

I cook from scratch nearly every day, we only have a takeaway or meal out on average once a month.

I have a 15 month old who basically eats what we eat 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time I will batch cook him things like vegetable curry, lentil spag bol, fish pie etc and take it out the freezer as needed.

A typical week would be;

Sunday: Roast Chicken, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, sprouts/cabbage, cauliflower, stuffing, yorkshire puddings and gravy.
Monday: Cajun chicken pasta with longstem broccoli
Tuesday: Sweet and sour pork with wholewheat noodles
Wednesday: Slow cooker Thai mango chicken curry with jasmine rice
Thursday: Honey mustard chicken tray bake with courgette, peppers and broccoli
Friday: Salmon, crushed baby potatoes and frozen mixed veg.
Saturday: Homemade Five guys style beef burgers and chips

4/5 nights a week. At least a couple nights a week we will take Kievs or pies from the freezer and have that with mash/boiled potatoes and frozen mixed vegetables. It's a quick easy meal, everyone likes it and after a long day, sometimes that's what you want. There's nothing wrong with easy pre frozen meals, even on a regular basis.

I'd class frozen chicken, fish or mince as part of a freshly cooked meal - not sure why you'd class it as different from fresh. It's not processed like typical frozen foods or meals are.

5 days a week we cook fresh.
Frozen meals (processed food) 2 days a week - one is usually pizza , the other is usually chicken dippers or something similar.

Are you asking about nuggets vs. freshly made from scratch, leftovers of same, or batch cooked meals defrosted and reheated?

I rarely served frozen convenience foods, hot dogs, etc. Maybe half a dozen times a year. Though I did serve sausages, bratwurst, bacon, Genoa salami in sandwiches, etc.

I have never used frozen meat only vegetables mainly because it has to be defrosted first. Easy to buy fresh meat with long shelf life.