dinner and lunch help

so at a loss here!
kids are eating NOTHING these days. one refuses to eat meat.. and lives on pasta.
ugh

i get home from work and the last thing i want to do is slave over the stove. i want to play with the kids!
can you please recommend your quick, HEALTHY toddler-friendly meals for the whole family?

 

I "hide" food that I would like my kids to eat in dishes they like, e.g. I add butternut or cauliflower to the potatoes in mash, chopped up chicken to macaroni & cheese.
My kids tend to eat less at dinner time than at lunch. I now give them their cooked meal at lunch time.

Good luck, my kids tend to go through better and worse eating phases, but I know they will not starve themselves...............I hope

 

Weekend I always marinate chicken, pork, beef, then freeze them. During the week, I just throw some on the grill, steamed veggies, and white rice. Usually I cook a pot if rice and refridge.. So dinner only take like 15 mins.

My kids also love lobsters and shrimp. They enjoy a bowl of cook tail shrimps or lobster tails. I steam the tails and they dip with butter. It's fast and simple. I always buy a bunch when they are onsale.

My kids eat big breakfast and lunch, small dinner. I make sure they got what they need at lunch. They are not that picky anymore. But when I run out of idea, I always take them out to restaurants or buffets. They will tell me what they like to eat .

 

I give them things they like at lunch. Usually a sandwich of some sort, or chicken nuggets, or bagel with cream cheese. I give them the choice. I do fast food once a week though to make it easier on me!

Dinner they get no choice at all. It took a few months but now they eat pretty well. There's typically a starch/grain that they will eat at least. I'm just not making 2 different meals for dinner.

 

we eat things like spaghetti, tacos, meatloaf, baked chicken, just the usual. I try not to fix too many casserole things so that they have some control; we don't require anything other than one bite of each thing.

 

I agree with Fran...lunch they usually get to choose what they would like but at dinner, I make what is easy for me and best for everyone (when my husband is home, he works out of town half the time. On those days I don't spend an hour in the kitchen...I make easy stuff they will eat like noodles or chicken nuggets.) When I make "real dinners" for the whole family I try to keep in mind what they like and what they truly hate. I know they don't like meat so when we have steak I make sure I give them plenty of other things like a sour cream baked potato and green beans since they will eat those. So I guess that is sort of the way we do it with regular dinners, have a few things offered on the plate. But they are required to eat SOME food before they can be excused. If they refuse and eat nothing, they get nothing til the next day. Which happens sometimes but I know they won't starve

That being said, some dinners we make that they generally don't make a stink about are: home made spaghetti (with curly noodles rather than long noodles so they don't need help eating), swedish meatballs (they love tiny "baby sized" meatballs we make for them), tacos (again, we cut up tortillas so they are really little and give them various toppings so they can basically make their own little tacos), stir fry (they like plain rice and can choose which veggies they do/don't like and eat more or less of them).

Some things we started doing at dinner time to help them eat is making it kind of like a game. We will each take turns picking something on the plate and say "Ok everyone get your green bean ready!" then we all take a bite at once. Sometimes we "race" to see if one can have more bites before the other (I love that one cause they eat more and don't even realize it, haha). Sometimes they like to pretend their food is something else. With the spaghetti, they get a kick out of calling it "worms" and "worm blood". Ha, kinda gross maybe but it gets them to eat and actually is sort of funny. We try to joke around and keep the mood light because in the past we found the power struggles with food NEVER EVER worked. It only made it worse.

 

Lunches tend to be easy foods that they like. For dinner, I make one meal for the whole family. There are usually 3-4 components to each meal and at least one of them is a food they like.
My boys eat a pretty decent variety BUT one of them has sensory processing disorder and went through 6 months of feeding therapy last year; without that we'd be dealing with a lot more pickiness!
Some of our favorite meals are:
* quick and easy chicken chili (from allrecipes.com)
* meat and vegetable stirfry with rice
* pasta with meat sauce or meatballs
* meat loaf; for some reason they like it a lot more if I make it in muffin tins
* parmesan-crusted tilapia from allrecipes.com. They LOVE that, much to my surprise. I think with the crust it reminds them more of chicken nuggets or fish sticks.
* homemade pepperoni pizza
* grilled chicken with various vegetables