Looking for suggestions on healthy food to feed my toddlers. Any recipes that your kids love? Would like to try to incorporate more veggies into their diets.
Read Super Baby Food (I forget the author). She has a lot of great toddler recipes too. Mainly vegetarian, though, and she uses soy which i'm not a huge fan of. Nonetheless, it's worth a read. She has some fun ideas.
Just feed them healthy stuff. Use a good pizza cutter to cut things to bite size. It's my best kitchen tool as a daycare provider for feeding older infants and toddlers and even preschoolers! I can whip out a ton of pancakes, french toast (mine will only eat the hearty grain breads cuz its all I offer), or what not all bite size by using my good pizza cutters!
I offer my kids everything! Todays lunch was cottage cheese, whole grain bread, some grilled chicken, and a ton of fruit choicesas I went a bit overboard with shopping this week...pineapple, honeydew, pears and bananas and red grapes (cut small). It was a great lunch and everyone ate a ton (ages 13 mos, 22mos, 23 mos, 2 & 4 years old).
I also occasionally do a copy cat version of Olive Gardens Pasta Figioli soup...low cal, easy to make in the crock pot, and hearty so I can mostly "drain" for the littlest ones. Lots of red and pink and white beans (I add an extra can), carrots, celery. Mostly a base for a veggie soup and you can Dr up how you want. You can go meat like the recipe calls for or meatless. My kids mostly eat this too!
Good luck!
Our son likes steamed brocolli, sugar snap peas, sweet potato fries, zucchini sticks, carrots, celery, brussel sprouts, cheese cubes, whole wheat bagels, anything cooked into an omlette, whole wheat spaghetti, burgers, red bell peppers, quesadillas, rice, corn on the cob, sausage, spinach, cuccumbers, mushrooms, any type of pizza, rotissery chicken, and is crazy about all fruit and all fruit smoothies. If you want to "sneak" extra veggies into a thing try pureeing them and adding them to your pasta sauce, into your pancakes, into the smoothies, and into meatloaf.
Another trick you might want to try, although it might make for bad precedent, is our boy is very excited about whatever it is that we are eating. If it is on my or daddy's plate it is very enticing. We let him use a spork to try to feed it to us, and use a spoon or a fork to give some to him.
good luck to you and yours,
F. B.
Meatloaf: Chop or mince whatever you can - bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, all the squashes, onions, celery, spinach, apples for a little sweetness and avacado for moistness added to a pound or two of ground meat, throw in an egg, squirt on some ketchup, add a cup of oatmeal and bake until bubbly!
Add spinach and tomatoes to your omlettes.
Add minced carrots to make tuna fish spread.
I used Gerber #2 fruits and veggies for the longest time as dips, spreads and fillers. I'd drizzle squash or sweet potato on a spinach leaf and roll it up, dip tortillas or crackers in green beans, carrots in peas.
My son LOVED the dried veggie chips. I'd get a different veggie a week and they were so portable. Again, we'd dip them in #2 fruits or veggies for some crazy fun.
I serve a veggie with every dinner, and my kids (5 and 2) know that to get anything else, they have to finish their meal. I try to offer a wide variety of veggies, even if I don't personally like them, such as lima beans (*shudder*). Broccoli (they like to think they're eating trees hehe), carrots (both canned and steamed baby carrots), beets, corn (cob or kernel), green or yellow beans, cucumbers. I like to use fresh if I can, but we do canned also, and I never add butter like my mom did (and still does). It's just unnecessary calories.
My kids LOVE grilled chicken, pizza (especially when we make our own crust), pasta, and mashed potatoes. Since I've changed a lot about my own diet with trying to lose weight and be healthier, I've done away with a lot of the prepackaged things you can get from the store, such as boxed potatoes. I make my own mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and we do baked tatas fairly frequently because the skin is SO healthy! My toddler eats what we eat, and always has because there's so much more flavor, and it helps them feel more a part of the family :)
Another thing I never do for my kids is cut the crust off their bread or peel their apples. There are too many good things in the outsides of foods :)
Whatever you do have fun with food and make it so everyone can eat it : )
Whole grain waffles, crackers, breads and pastas are good ways to get fiber, if you're not using them you can switch over, little by little or all at once.
Veggies can be added to other foods but if your little ones think they're not eating them and then find out later they may balk at them, so it's good to get them to eat them outright. I have a friend who did this for years, pureed veggies and sneaked them into meat loaves and such, and when her kids found out the two oldest, now in 6th and 7th grade, refuse to eat veggies in any form. You can fix a veggie platter with carrots, cherry tomatoes cut in halves, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms and so on and serve it all with dip, or pita chips with hummus, kids love to dip, everyone does! Shredded cheese or a sauce is a good way to entice children to try a food, too. I make meat loaf for my little guy in a small pan, he loves his own "personal" meat loaf. Fruit salads are a good way to eat fruit, all different kinds at once. You can top waffles or yogurt or cereal with fruit for breakfast or snacks as well.
This site is really helpful and will give you lots of healthy ideas, meal suggestions, and recipes to feed your toddlers any time of day, and the whole family can eat the food:
http://www.wholesometoddlerfood.com/toddlersnacks.htm
There's recipes like Chicken Fingers, Sweet Potato Fries, Pasta Salad, even Egg and Sausage Breakfast Muffins and more from here and grownups and big kids like them, too. Adapt seasoning to what works for you family's tastes.
Hope this helps : )
my toddler loves things he can eat with his fingers (even though he knows how to use a fork and spoon) so things like black beans, and corn, and peas, shreaded cheese. He also loves brown rice, though 6 mnths ago we couldn't get him to go near. Bananas are a good healthy snack. Peanut butter is a good protien for older toddlers. My kid won't eat bread so we spread peanut butter on whole grain waffles and fruit. Tomatoe soup and tomatoe juice is a good way to get veggies. My son drinks tomato soup luke warm out of a sippie cup. He does the same thing with vegatarian spilt pea soup. My son won't eat meat alot so he eats alot of beans and lentils and peanut butter for protien.
My twins are definitely less picky than my five year old. They will eat homemade chili, homemade spaghetti sauce (both of which I top with shredded cheddar) and they will also eat the broccoli slaw that you buy prepackaged in the supermarket, though they won't eat broccoli. I have tried some of the recipes in the Jessica Seinfeld book, but no one would eat them. I'll try again in a few months as tastes change. They also understand now (they are 2.5 years old) that they have to have a vegetable with each meal so will eat raw carrots, tomatoes or peppers - ranch dressing for dip helps. But then these guys eat salad, so I'm guessing they're not your typical toddlers. My older son I fool by putting teeny tiny vegetables in his beef and bean burritos. He's terribly picky so we tell him that he has to try everything on his plate and if he doesn't like it, he can have cereal for dinner. We don't do sugar cereals in our house so I feel like he's getting some nutrition anyway, and I was a picky eater who grew tall and strong on a diet consisting mostly if Cheerios, so... Anyway, he's discovered this way that he does in fact like some of the "real" food we serve him. :-) Hope that helps!
