M.B.
I usually include a fruit or veggie, or both with the starchy stuff. Sometimes my picky eater will go for it, sometimes he just eats the starch....
We do apple slices with grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches, frozen peas thawed but still cold have always been a big hit with the mac and cheese. Broccoli (brocolli?) goes over well with the mac n' cheese, too. Beets are a big hit, also. All of the really sweet vegetables are pretty easy to get into my son's tummy...Breakfast for lunch is a hit, too. And if you make pancakes you can add all kinds of stuff to them- bananas, applesauce, pureed carrots. Or else I give him regular pancakes but use pureed (i.e. babyfood) bananas or applesauce for dipping instead of syrup. Yogurt is a big thing at our house, so he'll eat that with any/every meal.
Jackson (my son) is on a vegetarian kick right now, but in the past for meat/protein I bought turkey cold cuts and then rolled them up and turned them into pinwheels and he'd gobble them right up.
Also, I've found that it I let him "help" prepare lunch, he's a lot more likely to eat the meal. And he gets some practise measuring and mixing, following directions. One of the first things he helped with was a Chef-Boy-R-D make your own pizza. Nutritionally questionable, but we added a lot of veggies to the toppings, at that helped. And he had such a good time making it, and was so proud of himself! One warning: The mess in the kitchen was pretty impressive, as was the mess resulting from his helping to clean it all up. : )
When we go out to eat he goes nuts for pho- he'll eat veggies and meat that he'd never touch at home, too. Ramen noodles could be an easy sub' for pho at home, and the curly noodles are pretty appealing to toddler sensibilities.
Good luck to you both! I know how hard it can be to get sufficient nutrition into these little folks every day, not to mention how dull it gets to be, fixing the same 3 or 4 meals day after day.
