What are you feeding your baby, toddler or kids right now?

[HappierAtHome]

A thread to share meal ideas and recipes for your mini mustaches, in the spirit of the "what are you eating right now?" thread.

[HappierAtHome]

Just fed my 17 month old hummus, crackers, carrot sticks and slices of red capsicum. Also served blueberries but he didn't eat any (bizarre!).

[Anatidae V]

My 1.5 year old had leftover rice mixed with a tin of tuna and some mayo for dinner. He was also offered pumpkin, but declined to taste. We had a handful of blueberries picked fresh from the garden and a couple of plain crackers for dessert.

[okits]

For us, our 2.5 YO will eat bread-type foods (toast, bagels, muffins, quick breads*, crackers), rice, yogurt, a rotation of fruit (bananas, apples, pears, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, honeydew, watermelon), and, bizarrely, tourtiere (French Canadian meat pie).  Sometimes he will eat pasta, cheese, hummus, peanut butter, bacon, fish sticks, chicken fingers.  If we are very lucky he will eat chicken, shrimp, and vegetables. 

For other people he will inexplicably eat stuff he won't even try with us (last night the babysitter got him to eat roasted carrots and broccoli and mashed potatoes).  Daycare tells me he eats pineapple and quinoa.  What?

(Or 4.5 YO was picky like this at 2 and she eats what we eat now.  It's just a sucky phase for some kids, I think.)

* I bake the fruit or vegetable-based ones.  Sub white flour for 2/3 whole wheat flour, 1/3 large flake oats; use only 1/2 the sugar; add flax seed meal.  Better for him than other bread-y things, at least.

[MrsDinero]

Whatever I can get them to eat and it varies each day.  I don't stress about them eating too much of one thing because I know they can go from to like it to hate it quickly.

Today's preschooler lunch was leftover pasta, steamed broccoli, raspberries, cereal, & walnuts.  Now what she comes home with will be another story, but I know at within the past week she ate all of this.

Breakfast was 1 pancake and some leftover baked oatmeal with 1/4 of my avocado.

The 2 year old is very picky right now, but we just continue to expose him to foods even he he rejects it.

[FireLane]

Our 2 y.o.'s mainstays are:
Gerber instant oatmeal with milk (this is breakfast almost every day - he ate it when he was an infant and still likes it, plus it's iron and vitamin fortified)
Bagels
Cheerios with or without milk
Any fresh fruit, especially bananas, strawberries, blueberries, grapes or apple slices
Store bought applesauce or mixed fruit cups
Homemade pumpkin puree
Sweet potato boiled and cut up
Toast with butter or almond butter (nut allergy, but almonds are ok)
String cheese or deli cheese slices
Greek yogurt
Chicken nuggets or cut up hot dogs

He used to eat yellow rice and black beans for lunch most days, but he got tired of it.

He occasionally eats avocado, canned sweet peas or slices of bell pepper, and we sometimes give him lentil chips, fried plantain slices or bits of dark chocolate as treats. I try to offer him at least a bite of whatever I cook for dinner that week.

He hates eggs and doesn't even seem to like baked goods with egg in them, like pancakes, although we're sure it's not an allergy. We've tried salmon and tuna without success, although he did eat a few bites of store-bought fish sticks.

We haven't tried broccoli, that's a good idea. But at a restaurant last week, he ate fried zucchini slices in tomato sauce.

Bizarrely, he likes coffee and tea (although I never let him have more than a sip, caffeine is the only advantage we have).

[chaskavitch]

On a consistent basis, our 2.5 year old will eat:
Almost all fruits - bananas, apples, pears, peaches, plums, berries, grapes, pineapple
Yogurt
Toast
Crackers
Grilled cheese
Rice, rice pilaf, and Spanish rice
Jam on anything
PB&J
Waffles or pancakes
Pasta with butter and cheese
Candy and all other desserts (ice cream, whipped cream, cake, cookies, brownies)  TBH I don't love how much he loves these, but between DH and I he ends up with far more than I want him to have
Liverwurst
Hot dogs
Salmon
Scrambled eggs
Potatoes in cube or fry form with ketchup
Cheese
Cooked broccoli
Fresh snap peas
Asparagus
Applesauce
Sauces - sour cream, ketchup, cream cheese

Occasionally, he'll eat:
Cooked onions
Cooked beets
Oatmeal with berries
Sandwiches with lunch meat and cheese
Cherry tomatoes
Bell pepper slices
Peas
Corn

Various things daycare says he eats that I don't believe:
Cheeseburgers - I've seen him eat the cheese off the top, then eat the ketchupy bun by itself.  Ew.
Tomato soup
Chicken tenders
Meatballs
Fish sticks
So, basically most meats, I guess?

He's gotten better about his variety, and I try to give him some sort of protein or fat with all his various carbs.  I always give him at least some of what we're eating for dinner, possibly in separate pieces if it's assembled toward the end of cooking.  He'll usually at least try it, but so far we're not doing well finding more things he enjoys.  Trying is better than nothing, though! 

I'm trying to have more variety in my diet during my current pregnancy, and I'm absolutely going to be feeding this next baby a LOT of veggie purees to try to expose her to more flavors earlier.  We did a kind of baby-led weaning with our son, and it worked well enough, but he gravitated toward sweeter things and I don't think I challenged that enough.

[GuitarStv]

This might be the only area that we were awesome as parents at.  We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

He got his teeth really really early as a baby at about the time he was weaning off breastmilk so only tried the baby food thing for a week or so.  Pretty much no problems with solids ever if they were cut up small.  At almost five now, he's a very good eater.  Raw beets, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage rolls, yogurt, oatmeal, sushi, Indian/Chinese/Greek food, it's all good.  The only type of food that he's picky about is spicy stuff, so we'll usually make it less spicy by adding some yogurt or cream to his portion.  Other than that, he happily eats anything that we eat these days.

Between the ages of two and three we had a lot of arguments about food, but eventually he figured out that he only gets what everyone is eating and that refusing food means he'll be hungry later on.

[chaskavitch]

This might be the only area that we were awesome as parents at.  We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

He got his teeth really really early as a baby at about the time he was weaning off breastmilk so only tried the baby food thing for a week or so.  Pretty much no problems with solids ever if they were cut up small.  At almost five now, he's a very good eater.  Raw beets, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage rolls, yogurt, oatmeal, sushi, Indian/Chinese/Greek food, it's all good.  The only type of food that he's picky about is spicy stuff, so we'll usually make it less spicy by adding some yogurt or cream to his portion.  Other than that, he happily eats anything that we eat these days.

Between the ages of two and three we had a lot of arguments about food, but eventually he figured out that he only gets what everyone is eating and that refusing food means he'll be hungry later on.

When did he get to the age where you didn't feel, like, REALLY mean sending him to bed hungry?  I feel like we're getting there, but I still feel bad right now.

[GuitarStv]

This might be the only area that we were awesome as parents at.  We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

He got his teeth really really early as a baby at about the time he was weaning off breastmilk so only tried the baby food thing for a week or so.  Pretty much no problems with solids ever if they were cut up small.  At almost five now, he's a very good eater.  Raw beets, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage rolls, yogurt, oatmeal, sushi, Indian/Chinese/Greek food, it's all good.  The only type of food that he's picky about is spicy stuff, so we'll usually make it less spicy by adding some yogurt or cream to his portion.  Other than that, he happily eats anything that we eat these days.

Between the ages of two and three we had a lot of arguments about food, but eventually he figured out that he only gets what everyone is eating and that refusing food means he'll be hungry later on.

When did he get to the age where you didn't feel, like, REALLY mean sending him to bed hungry?  I feel like we're getting there, but I still feel bad right now.

He's given food at dinner, and knows that that's all there is to eat until breakfast.  He doesn't get snacks or crap between meals during the day.  If he changes his mind and decides to eat supper then as long as it's not bedtime we'll let him.  I think we only had to send him to bed without supper once . . . he doesn't want to be hungry any more than we want him to be hungry.

[dashuk]

We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

Yeah, this. Tonight they've both had courgette soup, yesterday it was chana masala. #2 (18 months) loves lentil curry.

Actually more accurately - we've always let them feed themselves whatever we were eating. Or at least have a go - making a baby try and eat soup with their hands is quite funny, but a bit unfair. Can't remember when #1 managed it, but #2 is already pretty good with a fork or spoon - lately he'll sit and patiently finish up the milk from his cereal with a spoon.

Not to say we've never topped them up with say bread and butter, crackers and soft cheese, something like that when they've balked at something while too young to understand "you'll be hungry in the night" (#1, 4yo can now usually be persuaded to eat enough, if not everything).

Also not to say we always insist on clean plates before dessert. But at least a credible effort.

And they are randomly picky about some things, #1 will currently defiantly pick all the mushrooms out of a stir-fry. He used to do the same with olives in pasta dishes, but we just kept serving the same thing to him and now they are apparently tasty.

I have an enormous amount of self-doubt about basically everything I've done as a parent, but going down the baby-led weaning route with both of them is one of the things I look back at and go "yeah, that was a great call". Especially when looking at friends spoon feeding 2+yos or having to send the kids to school with packed lunches because there's no way they'd eat whatever was put in front of them by the school.

[bognish]

My kids are 7 and 10. If they had a decent portion of dinner we still give them as much cereal as they want before bedtime. My 10 year old has a tiny appetite, so eats in small portions. My 7 yo never stops moving or growing and eat twice what I eat in a day. Neither can have a large enough dinner portion at 5 or 6 PM to keel them through the night. Well they probably could, but life is easier when they have a bowl of raisin bran at 8:30pm.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

I have a 11 & 12 year old. Current favorites include:
-Pizza of any kind. I try to make homemade pizza with naan bread, which is super fast to assemble. We could make our own naan, but for now buy & store in the freezer
-Tacos. Easy to assemble, everyone can have different toppings.
-Spaghetti with meatballs. Meatballs from Coscto, kept in the freezer
-Pasta & baked chicken (grill in large batches & then freezer for quick reheating)
-Potstickers
-Hot dogs (I know, health pros here)
-Kebabs & rice

[Anatidae V]

Our breakfast yesterday was microwaved quick oats with blueberries from the freezer and soy milk. Last Sunday I was extravagant and made us French toast.

[kimmarg]

This might be the only area that we were awesome as parents at.  We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

He got his teeth really really early as a baby at about the time he was weaning off breastmilk so only tried the baby food thing for a week or so.  Pretty much no problems with solids ever if they were cut up small.  At almost five now, he's a very good eater.  Raw beets, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage rolls, yogurt, oatmeal, sushi, Indian/Chinese/Greek food, it's all good.  The only type of food that he's picky about is spicy stuff, so we'll usually make it less spicy by adding some yogurt or cream to his portion.  Other than that, he happily eats anything that we eat these days.

Between the ages of two and three we had a lot of arguments about food, but eventually he figured out that he only gets what everyone is eating and that refusing food means he'll be hungry later on.

When did he get to the age where you didn't feel, like, REALLY mean sending him to bed hungry?  I feel like we're getting there, but I still feel bad right now.

We do a variation on the idea.  Dinner is dinner and is what there is BUT I try to include at least 1 element I know the toddler eats. Also while I am not willing to make a whole extra meal I am willing to split it into pieces. Thus while we have a bowl of fried rice/stir fry, toddler has plain rice + plain veggies + plain meat (pull their portion before I toss together and add sauce). We call it a 'deconstructed/hipster' meal but it works.

[meerkat]

For dinner I put 3-4 things on a plate, at least one of which is a surefire thing kid (3.5) will actually eat. He can have an endless amount of those four things but can't have some other random thing. If he wants more of x we will ask him to take a bite of y first if it's untouched and usually he'll at least take one bite but if it's a hard "Fuck no" body language response then we don't push it. I have found that being Extremely Uninterested in what he's eating off his plate leads to him at least taking a bite of the new thing. This is with the caveat that we don't serve him anything soup-like, burritos, etc. so he gets a deconstructed version of it if that's what we're having for dinner.

Ideas I use for getting enough variety on the plate and have zero extra time:
* Vegetables picked out from our dinner and cut up
* Vegetables, reheated from frozen
* Lunch meat
* String cheese
* Graham crackers, ritz/off brand crackers, etc.
* Fruit cup, cut up apples, whole banana, cut up oranges or grapes (note, the grapes have to be watched carefully because of dog). I try to get something different every few weeks but seasonal things make it difficult.
* Craisins (not raisins, because dog)
* Noodles, ramen
* Yogurt
* Chicken nuggets from the freezer
* Hot dog (cut up)

If I'm feeling ambitious:
* Scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese. Kiddo likes standing on a chair and watching me cook and has learned that pans are hot so he's very respectful of them now. When he was tiny I'd put the whole thing on his tray and we'd both eat it, I'd like to think this helped him not reject the spinach but who knows.
* Peanut butter sandwich. He likes to open them, eat all the peanut butter, then eat the bread. This is as messy as you'd imagine.
* Rice, if we're already having rice. He loves it but is still a messy eater.

We're also trying to fatten him up so we do ice cream most nights after dinner, which can also be a tool to get him to eat a couple more bites of whatever. I also made pudding with half milk half cream instead of all milk, I need to make that again. Unfortunately kid does not like avocados any more. I'm considering trying to make some avocado/banana nicecream sometime soon.

[chaskavitch]

For dinner I put 3-4 things on a plate, at least one of which is a surefire thing kid (3.5) will actually eat. He can have an endless amount of those four things but can't have some other random thing. If he wants more of x we will ask him to take a bite of y first if it's untouched and usually he'll at least take one bite but if it's a hard "Fuck no" body language response then we don't push it. I have found that being Extremely Uninterested in what he's eating off his plate leads to him at least taking a bite of the new thing. This is with the caveat that we don't serve him anything soup-like, burritos, etc. so he gets a deconstructed version of it if that's what we're having for dinner.

Ideas I use for getting enough variety on the plate and have zero extra time:
* Vegetables picked out from our dinner and cut up
* Vegetables, reheated from frozen
* Lunch meat
* String cheese
* Graham crackers, ritz/off brand crackers, etc.
* Fruit cup, cut up apples, whole banana, cut up oranges or grapes (note, the grapes have to be watched carefully because of dog). I try to get something different every few weeks but seasonal things make it difficult.
* Craisins (not raisins, because dog)
* Noodles, ramen
* Yogurt
* Chicken nuggets from the freezer
* Hot dog (cut up)

If I'm feeling ambitious:
* Scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese. Kiddo likes standing on a chair and watching me cook and has learned that pans are hot so he's very respectful of them now. When he was tiny I'd put the whole thing on his tray and we'd both eat it, I'd like to think this helped him not reject the spinach but who knows.
* Peanut butter sandwich. He likes to open them, eat all the peanut butter, then eat the bread. This is as messy as you'd imagine.
* Rice, if we're already having rice. He loves it but is still a messy eater.

We're also trying to fatten him up so we do ice cream most nights after dinner, which can also be a tool to get him to eat a couple more bites of whatever. I also made pudding with half milk half cream instead of all milk, I need to make that again. Unfortunately kid does not like avocados any more. I'm considering trying to make some avocado/banana nicecream sometime soon.

Ooh.  My MIL (Queen of "getting you all the kitchen appliances you'd never buy for yourself", /sigh), got us a Yonanas machine, which is basically a super fine grinder/blender to make "ice cream" with a banana base and fruit.  Our kid LOVES it.  Avo/banana mix with some berries would be delicious.  I also add frozen coconut cream to give it some more fat - it doesn't blend as well, so you have to thaw it a little or you get minuscule chunks that are very crunchy and make the texture weird.  Avo is probably a better plan.

Our 2.5 year old also eats the insides out of his sandwiches, then asks for more jam...  So messy.

[I'm a red panda]

Last night my 19 month old had mahi mahi with mango salsa and white cilantro rice. She loved it.

This morning we had a breakfast scramble- egg, potato, homemade sausage, and cheese.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

Tonight was leftover night. Goal was to clear out the fridge. Here's what was consumed:

-DH - naan bread pizza made with pesto + burgers (previously grilled, frozen & then steamed) + salad
-Kid 1 (12, known as non-picky eater) - potstickers + naan pizza topped with pepperoni + salad. Was still hungry, ate some of my dinner as well
-Kid 2 (11, picky eater) - naan pepperoni pizza + meatballs + salad. Still hungry after that, so had leftover noodles.
-Me (avoiding dairy, also have lupus & can relate to many of your eating/food elimination struggles) - had a bowl of dragon noodles (homemade), topped with nuts, cilantro (maybe coriander for you) & hot sauce

[EngineerYogi]

Catching up on HoH's journal and wanted to PTF this for future.

Recently Yogurt tried seaweed salad and LOVED it, she's 15 months. She is also a big fan of chicken in yellow curry. These are not everyday foods for us, so I have to remember to incorporate them more often for her.

[dashuk]

#2 was eating raw Brussels sprouts while we were prepping Christmas dinner at my parents' place.

[Gin1984]

My kids just had cheese and ham for lunch.  Then they wanted bread instead of crackers (weird children). My oldest loves fruit so finished up the blackberries we got on sale (how the heck are there .99 blackberries in the winter) but the youngest seems to hate more fruit so she had none.

[HappierAtHome]

Indian spiced potatoes and peas.

[cats]

This might be the only area that we were awesome as parents at.  We've always just fed my son whatever we were eating.

He got his teeth really really early as a baby at about the time he was weaning off breastmilk so only tried the baby food thing for a week or so.  Pretty much no problems with solids ever if they were cut up small.  At almost five now, he's a very good eater.  Raw beets, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage rolls, yogurt, oatmeal, sushi, Indian/Chinese/Greek food, it's all good.  The only type of food that he's picky about is spicy stuff, so we'll usually make it less spicy by adding some yogurt or cream to his portion.  Other than that, he happily eats anything that we eat these days.

Between the ages of two and three we had a lot of arguments about food, but eventually he figured out that he only gets what everyone is eating and that refusing food means he'll be hungry later on.

When did he get to the age where you didn't feel, like, REALLY mean sending him to bed hungry?  I feel like we're getting there, but I still feel bad right now.

He's given food at dinner, and knows that that's all there is to eat until breakfast.  He doesn't get snacks or crap between meals during the day.  If he changes his mind and decides to eat supper then as long as it's not bedtime we'll let him.  I think we only had to send him to bed without supper once . . . he doesn't want to be hungry any more than we want him to be hungry.

We have a similar approach to @GuitarStv and so far (son is almost 3) have not really had a big problem with our son going to bed hungry.  I consider waking up much earlier than usual to be the most compelling evidence of having gone to bed hungry, and that is definitely VERY rare, even if he's eaten what I consider to be an impossibly light dinner.   If he doesn't eat much at dinner, I put his plate in the fridge and then if he says he's hungry before bedtime, I ask if he wants to eat the XYZ food that he skipped earlier.  If he's not interested in that, then we continue with bedtime.  Sometimes he forgets about it and goes to sleep, sometimes he gets up and eats the rest of his dinner.  Like GuitarStv, we don't offer junk food and while I do offer snacks, we make sure they are healthy things where I'm not too bothered that he wound up eating more snack and less dinner.

Anyway, what are we eating right now--yesterday son and I had the day off together so we made bread (which he really enjoyed doing) and I also tried making kale chips in our dehydrator.  Lunch today was toast with almond butter, kale chips, and a pear.  He actually seems to really like the kale chips, but I had forgotten that it's quite time consuming to prepare them, so I don't think this is going to become my secret trip to constant green vegetable consumption, sadly.

[I'm a red panda]

We are on vacation and my 21 month old has enjoyed ramen, sushi (loved spicy tuna and shrimp tempura) , and tacos. Everything we eat basically.