What Do You Feed Your Family?

I think all the suggestions have been good. I have one picky eater who is always "starving". Something I started doing about 3 months ago has helped more than I thought it would.

I serve everything on the table family style & help the kids pick what they want to put on their plate. Instead of mixing things together (like chicken in a sauce over rice or noodles and vegetables) I put the chicken, sauce, vegetable, and rice/noodles in separate dishes. I will also put out pita bread or whole wheat tortillas sometimes. They can make up their own dinner with what I had already planned to cook.

They have actually tried new things and been more adventerous, including with vegetables that were once shunned.

It did add about 2 - 3 extra plates to clean-up per night, but I am still able to pre-cook and freeze meals and it didn't add any time to the food prep.

Black Bean and Chicken Enchaladas!!! Everyone in my family loves them, they are filling and excellent for leftovers (my kids will eat this in the lunch ANY day!) We have a family of five; the kids are 15, 14 and 11 and my husband eats as much as they do...

Three boneless/skinless chicken breasts; cook on medium till cooked through. Cut into small chunks. Add one chopped red bell pepper, 1/2 cup of salsa, 1 to 2 teaspoons of cumin, one can of black beans, undrained. Simmer until thickened. Place 1/4 c +/- of filling into tortilla, add cheese (to your liking) and roll up. Place rolled up tortillas in greased pyrex pan. Top with one cup of salsa and cheese to your liking. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until heated through.

Add a salad and some sliced oranges or apple and you have a meal - you can also serve refried beans.

Enjoy

I made these last night and easily had 15 enchaladas - we only had two left over which my 15 year old took for lunch today.

R.

The most important thing to remember is to keep offering new foods all the time. Sometimes it takes awhile for kids to accept new things.
breakfast/snack
Vanilla yogurt with grapenuts and fresh fruit mixed in. My daughter calls this a special treat and loves it. Kids love new textures.
We also use yogurt and fruit instead of syrup to top our pancakes for some added nutrition.
Fruit smoothies- blend 2-3 TB vanilla yogurt, 3-4 strawberries, 1 banana, approx. 1/2 cup pineapple juice, 1 cup apple or orange juice. (I like to keep some cut up strawberries and bananas in the freezer ready to use)
Lunch ideas
Try substituting spinach instead of lettuce on sandwiches
veggies and dip- we always have plenty of carrots, celery, broccoli, and cucumbers ready for snacks or lunch. never underestimate the fun of dipping foods. My kids also love sweet bell peppers.
Edamame is also a really fun food for kids to eat. I buy the ready to eat packs and we have fun "popping" them in.
Cheese quesadillas
avacoda and cheese on fresh bread
We also enjoy homemade pizzas. We buy the boboli crusts and then let the kids top them. Some examples
Chicken BBQ - chicken, bbq sauce, red onion, red pepper, moz.cheese
veggie pesto- pesto sauce, spinach, onion, mushroom, bell pepper, feta cheese
the options are truly limitless.
Try chicken breasts instead of chicken nuggets. you can cook several breasts in the oven ahead of time. Then add it to pasta or just serve it cut up for lunch.
If the little ones see you eating and enjoying fresh fruits and veggies, then they'll be more likely to try them.
I hope that some of these ideas are helpful for your family.

I get most of my recipes from www.allrecipes.com. It is a wonderful site! If I have a certain kind of meat I'll do a search and find the most popular recipes. Be sure to read all the reviews because there are usually some great suggestions on how to cook or alter the recipe to make it even better.

Hope that helps!

This was my exact issue until a friend of mine suggested that I try Dream Dinners. It's a meal prep place where you choose from their monthly menu ahead of time, and then when you get to the place, they have done all the prep for you. Then you just assemble the meals, take them home, and freeze them. Believe it or not, I have been saving an average of $200 a month on my grocery bill, and the food has been consistently really tasty. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of grocery shopping or cooking, so this takes those two chores off my plate for the most part. You can view their menu (it changes every month) and nutritional info online at www.dreamdinners.com. I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me!

I'm pregnant with my 4th and I have adopted this GREAT idea of once a month cooking I bought 2 books "frozen assets cook for a day eat for a month" as well as the same title but "lite and easy" So far it has been great, the recipes are easy and the kids love them...so far they even help with the cooking! You are in charge of how much you portion out so you end up saving money because you dont have a ton of left overs to throw out. I highly reccomend trying it and seeing if it helps you. The only thing I didnt like was there were alot of repeat recipes throughout the first book, but I customize anyway so just learn to write down what you add to recipes so you know how to make it next time if its a huge sucess. After we eat I go back and put how many "stars" it earned for future reference. Hope this helps. Oh I also use FoodTv.com, cooks.com or the Kraft and cambells websites for quick recipes.

another great way to intorduce new veggies is to dip them in peanut butter since they already like that. zuccini dipped in PB, celery, carrots, you name it...also hummus is a great thing to dip into!

well besides dream dinners there a is www.dinnermyway.

I have used them for some dinners and its healthy too. They also have the food ready for pickup too.

I have also found doing a menu for the month helps too.

Hmm. I am pretty lucky we don't have a picky toddler.

But she's a low-volume eater, so that's a problem in itself. Her weight picked up once she started school, they give her more calori-dense stuff, which I don't really mind but I don't really eat it at home, and we give her more healthy stuff (lots of fruit and veggies, lots of high quality protein, not a lot of refined carbs.)

We've found soups to be really great. I make the weight watcher's zero point soup for myself and puree it. She loves a few tablespoons a day! I boil it down with a bouillion cube and add a bunch of fresh and frozen veggies, like kale, chard, leeks, broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage and cauliflower, onions and garlic, and spike it with v-8 type juices. When you puree it, it is very green and velvety, so we call it Green Velvet Soup. Sometimes I put noodles in it for her.

Tempura veggies are really palatable and my daughter will now eat steamed carrots and steamed broccoli. Our daughter will also eat pasta, and we get the high protein/high fiber version from Barilla. It really boosts the protein consumption. Typical meal for our kid: barilla pasta with light sauce, apple slices, steamed broccoli. If she's still hungry, she eats tofu or drinks a yogurt. We're not vegetarians, but our kid won't normally eat meat. Chicken legs, on the bone, and last night's steak for some reason, tends to be the limit of her meat palate, but we still offer things with meat in them to her.

Toddlers really seem to love to dip things, so we give her toast fingers or pitas with hummus, organic strawberries with yogurt dip, chips and salsa and that sort of thing for snacks.

The biggest thing seems to be that you just have to offer foods many times. And praise them like mad when they try it, even if they spit it out.

It just takes awhile to get used to some tastes and textures, I guess! I didn't start eating mushrooms until I hit my 20s!