Feeding little kids!

[failiangatfood]

PLEASE can you share your tips and tricks on feeding the family!

I have 3 under 5, reasonabley fussy as small kids are. I feel totally overwhelmed by the chaos that is anything to do with food in this house. I feel like it is never ending stress meal planning, shopping, total refusal from the kids, too much snacking etc.

Advice welcome on routines, meals, foodshopping!! How are we doing it?!

If you make cheese sauce, make extra and freeze it. So you can always make macaroni cheese in the time it takes to make pasta …

Ive seen parents put down snack trays e.g. hummus and carrots/pepper/cucumber and say not a word. Just let them explore it throughout the afternoon.

My friends have fussy eaters and they eat dinner buffet style. So I.e. Spaghetti bolognese would be a bowl of pasta, the sauce, cheese, all laid out in the middle of the table. Let them help themselves and over time the idea is they get more confident and try other things.

I have an extremely fussy eater and we follow the Ellyn Satter feeding method, specifically the family style service.

We choose the food, we choose when the food is served, and it is served communal.

It includes nutritious foods, foods we want him to try and some of his safe foods.

He can choose what he eats from what is available, and we don't make a big deal out of it, and over time he has explored new foods himself from the pressure being off.

That means we might for example have rice, salad, and cheese burgers and then a small selection of chicken nuggets.

At first he just went for chicken nuggets, but occasionally stole some tomato or carrot from the salad, or maybe even the cheese off of a cheese burger, until he eventually took a bite out of a cheese burger, went off it for a bit, revisited it, decided he loves it.

We just do this with all our meals. We don't make too much, just enough for everybody as though it was on plates, but in the middle for everybody to self serve.

You have my total sympathy. I had to go down the no snacking, just fruit route so many times.

At that age I did a lot of 'picnic' dinners. Cheese, veg, houmous, a sandwich etc. it doesn't need to be hot to be healthy and filling.

I have 4 children from 9 down to 2 and I work 4 days a week. I menu plan on a Sunday afternoon, do an online shop on Sunday evening to arrive Monday lunchtime (I wfh that day). DH books the Sainsbury’s shops a few weeks in advance and just pre-fills the basket with recurring things like milk, eggs etc. I keep a list on the kitchen wall of anything we’ve run out of and I print the menu each week so that everyone knows what to expect.
I try to make double whenever I cook so some days it’s easier as I’m just putting something in the oven.
Examples of meals that I make: chicken fajitas, chilli con carne, bolognese (bulked out with lentils and plenty of hidden veg), paella, salmon topped with pesto (I included fish at least once a week), roast chicken (then use the carcass to make stock in the slow cooker). I like slow cooker recipes from Taming Twins and the Batch Lady and I like some of Joe Wicks’ quick ideas (for example last night we had sticky orange chicken).
I have thought about doing a 4 week rotation but I quite like having the flexibility to choose each week.