Seeking New Ideas for What to Feed My 16 Month Old for Lunch

This is a thread from mothering.com that gives TONS of ideas for a snack tray. Not exactly traditional lunch, but at 16 months, she is probably at the "eat a little, play a lot" stage and not so much into sitting at a table. I used these ideas a lot and it saved me a lot of headache. I still use it and my girls are in school!
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=257621

(If the link doesn't work, go to mothering.com, then to "discussions" and search for snack tray ideas. The thread is titled "Need more ideas for my toddlers snack tray." Hope that helps.)

I usually try and make a little extra of dinner to have for lunches the next day. If that doesn't work out, Emme likes spaghettio's, ravioli, buttered noodles, crackers with PB and raisins, hotdogs, chicken nuggets, etc.

Try an English muffin topped with with marinara and mozzarela cheese, or with spaghetti sauce, crumbled hamburger and Parmesan cheese, then put it in a toaster oven for a bit. My son loves it! Have with a simple salad, or (raw or cooked) veggies and something you didn't yet mention - FRUIT! Watermelon, grape halves, orange slices, honeydew melon, kiwifruit, pineapple, cantaloupe, mangoes, etc.

Snacks: Cottage cheese and tomatoes, cut up fresh veggies, yogurt with fruit and granola, cashew butter in celery sticks with raisins on top ("ants on a log" - I would avoid peanut butter due to allergy threat - my pediatrician suggests waiting until over 24 months).

A nice, healthy 'treat' to sneak in a fruit: core and dice an apple, sprinkle cinnamon on top (you might top with some granola) and microwave for 1 to 1-1/2 minutes to soften, and stir before serving. Tastes like apple pie without all the sugar and additives. Fast, Easy, Healthy....Delicious!!

I have four boys and a cheap lunch or snack is tortilla, pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperoni's or use whatever meat you chose. Put the ingredients together on the tortilla and put in the oven on broil. Slice it up into bites and you have a tortilla pizza. My kids love it!

I am feeling in a similar rut, mostly because my daughter has become SO picky.
Two things my daughter liked for a long time, around your daughters age was hummos, and you can give it to her with whole wheat pita bread.
Another easy meal I would serve her was rice with black beans. I would use canned black beans-drain them and I would add a small pinch of cumin and cinnamon and just mix them with the rice. If I had leftover rice I would also cook up frozen veggies and mix it with a little teryiaki sauce and the rice and she would gobble that up.

Try Kraftfoods.com if has some tasty little lunches for little fingers.

If you are looking for some healthy and inexpensive ideas, my kids love hummus (it comes in lots of flavors and is cheap, esp. at Trader Joe's, but can easily be made at home too) and whole wheat pitas, you can slice sweet potatoes thin or fry style and bake them in the oven (and these keep awhile too and make great snacks), no sugar added applesauce, cottage cheese, yogurt (plain or you add fruit), any type of beans and veggies from a can (just make sure to get the no salt added kind), sunflower butter on whole wheat toast is really good and tastes different than peanut butter, hard boiled eggs are great to have around because you can just make them and have them on hand for days, you can make jello with plain fruit juice and gelatin so you don't have to have all the sugar and food coloring (my kids won't eat jello in any form yet, but I tried with this recipe), I shred raw carrots with my veggie peeler so the toddlers can eat them also. I have heard (and have one great cookie recipe from) that cookbook Sneaky Suppers (or something like that)by Jerry Seinfeld's wife has great, healthy, tasty recipes in it. I wonder if they have it at the library yet? Hot dogs and lunchmeats have nitrates in them which are carcinogenic so we don't use those, and most of the convinience foods also seem to have a lot of salt and not as many nutrients as more regular foods, so we try to avoid those when possible. Good luck!

I have the Super Baby Food book and it has all sorts of recipes for toddler meals and snacks.

Try pastas with mixed in veggies and tuna or chicken.

I have read that you feed your daughter who is 16 months old PB&J,ususally peanutbutter is introduced at a later time I belive 2 yrs or older,because it is a major food allergy introduced too soon may cause allergies laternot only that it is considered a choking hazard.Just trying to be helpful so if not already asked your pediatrician if it was ok to do so I might.MY sis is allergic to peanuts so I decided to hold off on peanutbutter till 3 yrs of age.Since it is likely to be triggered if someone else in the family has an allergy.

In the summer months my mom would always feed us egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches. you could also put it on endive(endive is like a combination of lettuce and celery) to make it a little more fun to eat. What about peanut butter or cheese wiz on celery or crackers. (she is old enough for peanut butter and she won't choke if you don't glob it on) Cottage cheese & ham is another idea. Just try to think of what you liked to eat when you were a kid. I know what you mean about being stuck in a rut. you could also use cookie cutters to cut out sandwiches and other things, that always make it fun. My mom also would put food coloring in our milk to make it "cool" so we would drink our milk. Just put your creative mind to work. Good luck!

Have you tried other lunch meat? Like Ham or Roast Beef? I am sure you want to keep things relatively un-messy, I agree, it's easier to feed them messy stuff at dinner, then right up for a bath ;-) My daughter loves chicken nuggets, like her big brother and if you are on the run, Lunchables makes Jr.s that have small cut up turkey or ham, cheese and crackers. She loves those too.
If she loves dinner food too, try to give her some left overs. My daughter loves veggies, NOT like her big brother, so I always make sure I make extra for dinner so we have some left for lunch.
Good luck! when they start feeding themselves, they start to get picky, so keep giving her a variety for all meals! Wish I would have done that with kid #1! he's the pickiest now!

I'm sure if you went on line you could find lots of ideas for kids' lunches. But, if you really want to stay out of a rut, don't limit what you consider lunch food. There were dinners at our house that were scrambled eggs, pancakes, etc.

Hi C., I had a hard time with my first boy at that age due to it just being him and I to feed, I really hated to cook a lot of foods that he would not eat and have to waste. I came up with little things that he liked macaroni and cheese with hot dogs diced up really small or ground hamburger mixed in with it, he loved it, chicken nuggets, the spegetti o's or ravioli like the other mom said are good, for those fast easy lunches. I still to this day love fixing breakfest foods for lunch pancakes, eggs, fried bologna and such the kids luv it. I really hope this helps some and I have others if interested I will be more than happy to dig out and email them to you.
Good luck Mandie

I don't differentiate b/t lunch & dinner. Leftovers are always good. Sometimes he gets fruit/yogurt & bread, grilled cheese & fruit/veg, I steam a lot of things, fresh or frozen. My son loves zucchini & yellow squash with some olive oil & seasoning. We eat lots of organic & whole foods at our house, so lots of veg/fruit/grains/beans, some meats.

Some things that have been favorites of my boys at that age are: baked beans, vegetable soup (strained from most of the broth so they could pick up the pieces), scrambled eggs, pasta salad, black olives, whole wheat waffles, mac and cheese, tofu hotdogs (cut up very, very small, of course). She may balk at some of it at first, but if you keep trying new things out, eventually she'll start being more experimental about what thse eats.

Cut up lunch meat, leftovers from dinner, fruit and veggie variety, try different cheeses and meat in the grilled cheese, anything you like to eat. . .

This is a little late in coming, but hopefully will help you or someone else.
It sounds strange, but if you often go to the same grocery store, try going through it "backwards" next time. For instance, if you usually go from the door to the produce section, through aisles 1-10, and then frozen foods last, try starting with frozen foods and ending with produce. KWIM? Sometimes a new "viewpoint" really helps you to take notice of foods you don't normally buy. This may help you find things for lunch that you would not have thought of getting otherwise--simply because you didn't notice them.
Make sure your dd sees you trying new foods, too--if she sees that you enjoy something, she may be more willing to give it a chance!
Also, offer a food several times, not just once because she rejects it the first time. Some foods she may reject at first, until she gets used to seeing them--and suddenly, one day, she might love it.
Some possibilities: pasta (mac & cheese, spaghetti-Os), rice, tater tots, french fries; tuna, baked fish or fish nuggets; chicken nuggets, crackers with pizza toppings (instead of crust), browned hamburger bits, chopped salisbury steak, stir-fry (use items she won't choke on), tofu, and there are lots of veggies and fruits you can try!
If she is getting enough nutrition, though, it's okay to let her have the same lunch every day if that's what she wants (as boring as it seems to us adults!). As long as she's eating other things at dinnertime, she will grow out of it and eventually, she'll start asking for different things at lunchtime, too.
HTH!
--A. in MO