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Toddlers: 24 Months+
Tell me what healthy snacks/meals u give your toddler
I'm trying really hard to cut out processed foods. We did so well for awhile, but then along came easy mac and spaghetti-o's (Yikes!) I'm making my grocery list, what do you feed your toddler? TIA!
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Re: Tell me what healthy snacks/meals u give your toddler
I make her a smoothie sometimes for a snack: milk, yogurt, fruit, and a few ice cubes.
Cheese and crackers
Apples, peanut butter, and raisins
M/C 1/6/10
DD eats what we eat for meals. In the morning it's usually toast... whole grain (3 grams of fibre per slice.) Bit of peanut butter and a banana sliced on top. Milk. Then another fruit. (Persimmons and pomelo are her current fall favourites.)
We don't do a lot of snacks. If we do it's more fresh fruit. She gets a snack at school. Right now they're eating a lot of different varieties of local apples. And kale of all things! One of the classes made a lot of jams in the summer, so they get the breadmaker going some days, too and have jam on freshly baked bread.
For dinner, I cook from around the globe. We visit a 'different' country every night. Soups, stews, whole grains, lean meats/fish/seafood... a pile of veggies. Some of DD's favourites? Korean bul goki or Jap chae. Pad Thai. Moroccan tagine (beef and veg). Pretty much anything Japanese. Philippino pancit. Souvalaki, rice pilaf and a Greek salad... Penne with spinach, sweet onion, mushroom in rose sauce... All kinds of stuff. Sometimes we'll do something standard like grilled salmon, baked yams and steamed broccoli. She loves that, too.
Anyway, there are very few things she won't eat. I guess I just never gave her the option of being picky. She's more adventurous at dim sum than DH is.
My advice is to go to your local library and take out some books. Inspire yourself! (I'm not a fan of browsing recipes online. I like the book in my hands.) Also, when you're shopping, just do the perimeter of the store -- not the aisles. That's where all the processed/pre-packaged stuff is. Buying fresh is SO much cheaper and healthier.
GL!
For meals, I make most of her food myself. I'm a big fan of the Deceptively Delicious cookbook, which is all about sneaking in fruits and vegetables into kid-friendly food; I now make macaroni and cheese with pur?ed beans and cauliflower, spread pur?ed butternut squash on her grilled cheese, and add flaxseed meal to whole wheat breadcrumbs when making homemade chicken nuggets and fish sticks. One of her favorite meals is cheddar mashed potatoes and cauliflower, with diced chicken and sometimes peas stirred in. (She's not a big meat or veggie eater, so I often have to hide those to get her to eat them.) When I'm in a pinch, we like Annie's whole wheat shells and cheddar (to which I add steamed broccoli or peas) and Whole Foods 365 brand organic cheese tortellini, cheese ravioli, and chicken ravioli. For breakfast she normally eats quick-cook oatmeal mixed with YoBaby yogurt and sliced banana, or cottage cheese pancakes (1/2 cup oats + 1/4 cup cottage cheese + 4 egg whites + 1/2 ripe banana + cinnamon mixed in a blender and cooked like regular pancakes; they're actually very good and a complete meal with whole grains, protein, and fruit). I also keep 365 brand organic mini blueberry waffles in the freezer for when we're in a rush.
For snacks, DD loves all fruit; right now her favorites are apples and bananas -- and she loves peanut butter with both. She loves hummus and will eat it with a spoon or with sliced cucumber or tortilla chips. She also loves string cheese; we buy organic string cheese at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. She also likes Cheerios, Barbara's Puffins, Goldfish, and Trader Joe's honey wheat pretzel sticks.
My husband does the same thing about some of the things I feed Jack.
It's hard to get away from processed food entirely. Here is what I usually do for meals.
Breakfast: Typically it's either yogurt and a banana, re-heated frozen pancakes (I do a double batch when we make them fresh) with blueberries (also frozen when they go on sale in the summer), organic instant oatmeal with toast or an english muffin, eggs either scrambled or fried, bacon or ham.
Lunch: Annie's mac n' cheese, coleman's natural hot dogs, PBJ, ham and cheese, grilled cheese, spinach cakes (let me know if you want the recipe, they're awesome and he can't get enough of them), spinach meatballs (also a great recipe that freezes well), leftovers from the night before. Round it out with cottage cheese or apple sauce or cherry tomatoes with italian dressing.
Dinner: What we eat. I try to make it fairly kid-friendly, but if he doesn't eat it, too bad. I'm not a short-order cook. He'll usually eat it.
Snacks: Cheese sticks, yogurt, fruit, crackers, frozen waffles. Whatever, really. I'm just trying to get something in him so that he can make it to the next meal.
I'm personally not a fan of Deceptively Delicious. I don't like the idea of hiding things in my child's food, because he's not stupid. He'll realize I'm doing it and assume there is a reason I can't just give him the cauliflower. It's worked for me so far. He eats pretty well. Kids will eat what you put in front of them if you don't give them another option. If they know you're going to cater to them, they'll hold out for the good stuff.